Is US Sponsor Of Terrorism As Iran Claims? – OpEd

The White House officials and their allies in Europe are used to accusing independent countries such as Iran of sponsoring terrorism and backing terrorist activities.

The latest episode in the Washington’s dramatic farce of mudslinging against Iran was the accusation leveled by the US officials that Iran had hired a Mexican drug gang to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to Washington, Adel Al-Jubeir.

Even the most optimistic apologists of the US government failed to justify this ludicrous claim and many political pundits around the world embraced it with contempt.

However, it seems that the White House’s gambit has backfired and the table has turned as Iran is presenting documents and evidence which show that the US has been actively involved in terrorist activities around the world and unreservedly funded and upheld terrorist gangs and groups, even those which are now the target of America’s drone attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Last day, during a speech delivered on the anniversary of Iranian students’ takeover of the US embassy in Tehran on November 4, 1979, the Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council Saeed Jalili displayed two sets of documents which revealed the involvement of the US in terrorist acts and its ties with notorious terrorist gangs and elements around the world.

The US has perpetually directed accusations against countries like Iran and charged them with backing terrorism; however, even the American officials who make such claims are themselves well aware of the fact that their accusations are tempest in teapot and devoid of any reliability and truthfulness.

By tracing the footsteps of almost every terrorist group in the world, one can find signs which indicate America’s connection with those groups and a clear example is CIA’s sponsorship of Al-Qaeda under the leadership of Osama Bin Laden during the 1990s that aimed at helping the Afghan Mujahideen fight the Soviet forces in Afghan-Soviet war.

In an article published in the November – December 2001 issue of “International Socialist Review,” Phil Gasper unveiled the surreptitious connections of CIA and the US government with Bin Laden and the combatants affiliated with him.

After the Soviet forces invaded Afghanistan, President Jimmy Carter immediately declared that the invasion jeopardized vital US interests, because the Persian Gulf area was threatened by Soviet troops in Afghanistan. “But the Carter administration’s public outrage at Russian intervention in Afghanistan was doubly duplicitous. Not only was it used as an excuse for a program of increased military expenditure that had in fact already begun, but the US had in fact been aiding the Mujahideen for at least the previous six months, with precisely the hope of provoking a Soviet response. Former CIA director Robert Gates later admitted in his memoirs that aid to the rebels began in June 1979. In a candid 1998 interview, Zbigniew Brezinski, Carter’s national security adviser, confirmed that U.S. aid to the rebels began before the invasion,” wrote Gasper.

Phil Gasper further explains that when Bin Laden joined the Afghan Mujahideen, he had already recruited some 4,000 volunteers from Saudi Arabia and developed close ties with the most radical Mujahideen leaders. “He also worked closely with the CIA, raising money from private Saudi citizens.”

According to Boston Globe, “since September 11, CIA officials have been claiming they had no direct link to Bin Laden. These denials lack credibility. Earlier this year, the trial of defendants accused of the 1998 U.S. embassy bombing in Kenya disclosed that the CIA shipped high-powered sniper rifles directly to Bin Laden’s operation in 1989. Even the Tennessee-based manufacturer of the rifles confirmed this.”

In a 2006, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation published that “Bin Laden has apparently received training from the CIA, which was backing the Afghan holy warriors – the Mujahedeen – who were tying down Soviet forces in Afghanistan.”

In an article published in Der Spiegel in 2007, “Arming the Middle East,” Siegesmund von Ilsemann called Bin Laden “one of the CIA’s best weapons customers.”

But the connection of the US to the terrorist groups is not confined to its clandestine ties with Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda. The US is proved to have closely worked with, supported and financed Jundallah, a dangerous, extremist terrorist group based in Pakistan’s Balochistan. The terrorist group has so far killed more than 400 Iranian soldiers and even made failed attempts at assassinating high-ranking Iranian officials.

A report by Brian Ross and Christopher Isham of ABC News in April 2007 revealed that Jundallah “has been secretly encouraged and advised by American officials” to destabilize the government in Iran, citing the US and Pakistani tribal and intelligence sources. The report said that US Vice President Dick Cheney had discussed the activity of the group against Iran during his visit to Pakistan in 2007.

On February 23, 2010, the Jundallah leader Abdolmalek Rigi was arrested by the Iranian officials while he was onboard a plane heading toward Kyrgyzstan from Dubai. At a later time, Bishkek airport confirmed that Kyrgyzstan Airways flight QH454 from Dubai had arrived several hours late after being intercepted by Iranian fighter jets over the Persian Gulf.

The shocking confessions of Rigi after being captured, which were broadcast by Iranian TV channels and flagrantly shunned by the Western mainstream media, showed that he had been closely working with the US and receiving enormous financial and military support from them. “The Americans said Iran was going its own way and they said our problem at the present is Iran… not Al-Qaeda and not the Taliban, but the main problem is Iran. We don’t have a military plan against Iran. Attacking Iran is very difficult for us (the US). They [Americans] promised to help us and they said that they would co-operate with us, free our prisoners and would give us [Jundallah] military equipment, bombs, machine guns, and they would give us a base.”

In an interview with Press TV, Rigi stated that the Americans under NATO or the Israelis had approached him to take Jundallah’s conflict from the Baluchi regions into the capital Tehran. The interview was broadcast by Press TV on May 19, 2010.

But establishing the connections with terrorist groups simply constitutes a small part of the United States’ terrorist acts. The US has directly waged numerous destructive wars which have taken the lives of millions of people. In an article published on “Insight Magazine” by Philip Bradbury in November 2001, it was revealed that “since 1952, the United States of America has promoted, financed and participated in over 20 separate wars” which killed over 8,000,000 people.

For example, only between 1954 and 1975, 4,000,000 Vietnamese and Cambodians were killed at the hands of the American soldiers.

What’s clear is that the US is an all-out and absolute sponsor of terrorism and its role in the suffering and pains of nations around the world cannot be neglected. The terrorist actions and policies of the US government defy description and are beyond the pale. Even if they accuse Iran or Cuba of sponsoring terrorism, the US officials cannot deny that they’re the world’s first and foremost promoter and sponsor of state terrorism.