I agree that regime change is desirable in Iran, but international relations are ultimately based on commonality of interests, not on who's our "friends" or who lives up to our standards of national morality. There's a strong element of Salafist power who has declared both Shiite Iran and the USA as deadly enemies. It is therefore common sense that Iran and the US both at least pull the punches they throw at each other.
“I agree that there’s al-Qarda in Iran, but as enemies of the Iranian regime.”
The regime offers protection, safe passage & cooperation to alQaeda and has for years - it’s no secret. In fact, they allowed safe passage thru Iran for several of the 9/11 terrorists. (though their association with alqaeda goes back before 2001)
The situation in Baluchistan is religious, tribal & territorial & has been going on for many decades and is a separate issue.
” international relations are ultimately based on commonality of interests, not on who’s our “friends” or who lives up to our standards of national morality. There’s a strong element of Salafist power who has declared both Shiite Iran and the USA as deadly enemies.”
You seem to not understand that the IRI is the #1 State sponsor of terrorism in the world.
If they kept all their problems within their own country, it would be a different story. To the IRI, it goes beyond sunni vs shia....anyone who is not Khomeinist is the enemy, though they use whoever they can along the way to achieve their ends.
I doubt very much that you’re aware of the annual terrorist ‘conference’ held in Iran. They may invite members from 30 different terrorist organizations worldwide for a week or 2 of meetings and training and comparing notes, so to speak. (these are not just muslim groups - some are from S. America)
Your fear & loathing of Salafists is justified, but that’s a separate issue from from the IRI. There can be no international relations with the IRI. When Iran becomes Iran again -after it brings down this regime- then we can have international relations and cooperation against the Salafists and others in that part of the world.
This was written by M. Ledeen in 2004:
“In order to conceal their activities from us, the Iranians have deployed several deceptive myths. The two most effective are “al Qaeda” and “Zarqawi.”
“ I had read German and Italian court documents that proved Zarqawi, operating from Tehran, had organized a European terrorist network. “
“This was the period when, according to our intelligence analysts, Zarqawi became a major player in al Qaeda.”
“It follows that the Iranians were involved in the marriage between al Qaeda and Zarqawi. To believe otherwise, you’d have to believe that Zarqawi and top al Qaeda officials were operating freely and independently of the Iranian regime. I don’t think any serious person would buy that one.
But the notion that radical Sunni terrorists like Zarqawi and bin Laden and Zawahiri were working hand in glove with the radical Shiite regime in Tehran was an impossible hypothesis for most of our analysts, who believed that strategic cooperation between Sunnis and Shiites was not possible (even though, for example, the Sunnis of Arafat’s Fatah-trained Khomeni’s Shiites — the embryonic Revolutionary Guards — in the Bekaa Valley as early as 1972.”
Steve Emerson noted a relationship between alqaeda (bin Laden) and Iran back in 1998. He gave testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee back then on terrorists/ terrorism within & coming out of Iran.
ANother Michael Ledeen piece from Fe. 2004, noting the connection between Zarqawi/Tehran (this was after the Madrid bombings)
“As memories are short, let’s review the bidding on Zarqawi. I first wrote about him here on December 12, 2002, when I came across an article in the German newspaper Die Zeit. That article cited court documents drawn from the depositions of a Palestinian terrorist who was cooperating with German authorities. The terrorist revealed that Zarqawi wore several hats: He was a top officer of al Qaeda, and the leader of a terrorist group known as al Tawhid, and he lived and worked in Tehran. He noted that Zarqawi was a key figure in the “reorganized al Qaeda” (reorganized after the debacle in Afghanistan) and was “one of the major coordinators of Iranian-sponsored terrorism in Europe.”
Al Qaeda’s Iranian connection led German investigators to another important discovery: Al Qaeda and Hezbollah — arguably the world’s most dangerous terrorist organizations — were working hand in glove. Die Zeit said that German intelligence had become aware of meetings between Osama bin Laden and Hezbollah’s chief of operations, Imad Mughniyah.
A few months after I wrote that article, documents surfaced in Italian court cases that showed Zarqawi’s involvement in terrorist networks in Milan and other northern Italian cities. And just last week, the Corriere della Sera reported that Zarqawi’s name had surfaced in recent investigations into al Qaeda’s efforts to recruit radical Muslims in Italy for guerrilla and suicide attacks in Iraq. And, like the German documents, the Italian evidence led straight back to Tehran, whence Zarqawi had issued orders to his agents in Italy.”