Clicking on banner ads keeps JWR alive
Jewish World Review Dec. 23, 2003 / 28 Kislev 5764

Bill Tammeus

Bill Tammeus
JWR's Pundits
World Editorial
Cartoon Showcase

Mallard Fillmore

Michael Barone
Mona Charen
Linda Chavez
Ann Coulter
Greg Crosby
Larry Elder
Don Feder
Suzanne Fields
Paul Greenberg
Bob Greene
Betsy Hart
Nat Hentoff
David Horowitz
Marianne Jennings
Michael Kelly
Mort Kondracke
Ch. Krauthammer
Lawrence Kudlow
Dr. Laura
John Leo
David Limbaugh
Michelle Malkin
Chris Matthews
Michael Medved
MUGGER
Kathleen Parker
Wes Pruden
Sam Schulman
Amity Shlaes
Tony Snow
Thomas Sowell
Cal Thomas
Jonathan S. Tobin
Ben Wattenberg
George Will
Bruce Williams
Walter Williams
Mort Zuckerman

Consumer Reports

Next we must figure out Iran

http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com | ADELPHI, Md. Matthew Levitt, an expert in how terrorism is funded, looked pained when I asked him about Iran.

What, I asked, should America do about Iran's habit of paying for global terrorism _especially given that its people are among the friendliest toward Americans and that its government is split between unelected Islamic extremists and elected moderates trying to introduce some reforms?

Levitt sighed, then offered this: "Iran is complicated beyond belief."

A senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Levitt was speaking to a recent seminar on terrorism organized by the Knight Center for Specialized Journalism at the University of Maryland.

He's right. Iran is a terrible problem. Its leaders have paid for and encouraged terrorism for a long time. Its radical mullahs spew hate, doing violence to the long and creative traditions of the Persian people.

But if Americans have suffered because of Iran - and they have - it's also true that America's hands are not clean when it comes to Iranian history. For instance, no serious scholar now doubts that the Central Intelligence Agency, along with British intelligence services, played a big role in the 1953 coup that re-installed Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi as the country's authoritarian ruler. Then American governments supported this corrupt man's long reign.

When the exiled Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returned to Iran and took power in 1979, his extremist followers ran amok, finally seizing the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and holding hundreds of Americans captive for more than a year.

There is much more to America's disquieting involvement in Iran, but that doesn't change the truth that since the Khomeini revolution, Iran's religious leaders have fomented global terrorism.

"Iran is the driving force behind international terrorism," Michael A. Ledeen writes in his recently updated book, ``The War Against the Terror Masters.'' The fall of Iran, he says, "would be the current equivalent of the fall of the Soviet Union."

Iran supports such terrorist organizations as Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah and al-Qaeda. Ledeen says the terrorist attacks on Saudi Arabia earlier this year were planned in Iran by al-Qaeda leaders, including one of Osama bin Laden's sons. And Levitt says many al-Qaeda members have been under "house arrest" in Iran in the last year or so, but are free enough there to plan attacks around the globe.

Revolutionaries, says Levitt, "control every critical aspect of government" in Iran, despite the presence of such reformers as President Muhammad Khatami. As Gary Sick, director of the Middle East Institute at Columbia University, says, "Iran has a split personality."

Levitt maintains that split does not extend to policies on development of nuclear weapons or sponsorship of terrorism. On those matters, he says, Iran's divided leadership thinks, speaks and acts as one.

And yet the Iranian people show broad support for democratic ideas. That was quite visible earlier this year when an Iranian woman, Shirin Ebadi, won the Nobel Peace Prize and thousands of people demonstrated in support of her in the streets. Iranian authorities have imprisoned her many times to silence her, but her reformist ideas nonetheless have much popular support.

"The Middle Eastern state where we (Americans) have the most support on the ground is Iran," Levitt says.

Some people have proposed trying to organize a massive strike by Iranians against their government. But it's unclear whether that would succeed in bringing it down or simply making things worse. And it's crucial that any revolution come from Iranians, not from America or the West.

Iran has made recent gestures toward complying with U.N. demands to curb its nuclear program, but as Levitt notes, the question is not whether but when the country will be able to build such weapons.

If Iran is pushed into a corner, says Levitt, "the most effective way for it to lash out would be through (terrorism by) Hezbollah," which, he says, has financing and cells through the world.

"There is," as Levitt notes, "no easy answer to Iran." But if we are really fighting terrorism and trying to help people live in freedom, we must be aware of - and do what we can change - the cancer that Iran has become.

Enjoy this writer's work? Why not sign-up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.


JWR contributor Bill Tammeus' latest book is "A Gift of Meaning." To order it, please click on title. To comment on his column, please click here.


12/16/03: Military protects a gentle, necessary freedom: Art
12/09/03: Connections echo through our lives
11/18/03: Remembering an era as it ends
09/18/03: Rock music appeals to fans' yearnings for mindlessness
09/11/03: The changes were not what the terrorists had in mind
08/14/03: Balancing fear and recklessness
08/07/03: Flatter-y will get you, uh, to Kansas
07/11/03: A desert saturated with life
07/03/03: America, and its ideals, still enchant
06/18/03: Through a looking glass darkly
06/10/03: Learn how to anticipate while remembering to savor today
05/23/03: Still lost for words at Ground Zero
05/08/03: Mustering robust   — if apathetic   — cheers
04/16/03: Worries of Iraq, illiteracy and the Cubs --- frazzled lives sabotage us
04/09/03: The genome triumph: Though it's laudable, DNA project won't tell life's secrets
03/25/03: In a wounded world, celebrate life's hope
03/20/03: Peace lover ponders the need for war
03/13/03: Science asks us to imagine a world in 11 dimensions
02/27/03: War has long come naturally to humankind
02/22/03: Trying to decipher the vexing French
02/11/03: A worthy crusade for individual worth
01/30/03: Indelible ache of Sept. 11
01/24/03: An issue of great gravity moves forward
01/17/03: Peculiar about being eccentric
01/10/03: Gambling infects with false hope
12/31/02: Quotable and notable in 2002
12/24/02: The faltering war on terrorism
12/11/02: Sky's the limit --- sort of
11/05/02: Thoughtful about uploading
10/29/02: We naively ignore the inevitability of death
10/24/02: Patriotism exceeds nationalism
09/18/02: Misuse of religion is timeless
08/21/02: Where church and state are one How long can Saudi Arabia's puritanical version of Islam survive?
08/13/02: LETTER FROM CAIRO: Meet the Egyptian writer who provided foundation for radical form of Islam
08/08/02: Letter from Riyadh: Moderate Muslims must reassert control over Islam
07/31/02: Journey of discovery starts at Ground Zero
06/07/02: Life rebukes death's power
05/31/02: Reasonable doubts about executions
05/10/02: Business savvy for graduates
05/02/02: Exporting our exclusivity
04/25/02: Life's stories carry messages about values
04/19/02: Our life force's search for fellow life forces
03/27/02: Can corporations behave ethically?
03/19/02: Space Family Robinsons
02/21/02: Lock, stocks and bonds
02/14/02: In space, the dark matters
02/07/02: Train doctors to have caring hands and hearts
01/31/02: A different feel to my life and to my country?
01/24/02: How green is my universe?
01/17/02: The end is near, eventually
01/08/02: Important lessons arrive out of the past
12/19/01: Lost in the cloning debate
12/10/01: It's all in the name: Unraveling the mystery of Osama's whereabouts
11/19/01: Flying with damaged trust
11/02/01: Recent, recognized research is a hard nut to crack
10/31/01: Many paradoxes in life
10/25/01: Newly found planets show the cosmos is still strange
10/19/01: Just getting caught up
10/17/01: It was a time for tea and sympathy
10/08/01: What makes an authentic patriot?
10/04/01: It's OK to twist and shout
09/17/01: One precious life among many
09/13/01: Remember who we are
09/11/01: Sometimes all children need is shelter from the storm
09/05/01: Couldn't run or throw, but a hero just the same
08/28/01: Lesson for the scientific faithful: Some theories come with strings attached
08/27/01: When waste in space is a waste of space
08/21/01: In complex world, we lack tools to carve out understanding
08/09/01: Visited while asleep by gang of magical mischief makers
08/03/01: Recognizing the limits of one's capacity
07/27/01: We are more than the sum of our work days
07/12/01: Some stars, like some people, never shine
07/11/01: Our deeply embedded need for order
07/03/01: Not-so-famous tour explores not-so-rich neighborhoods
06/28/01: Driven to tell the truth about golf and government
06/25/01: When poetry becomes destructive
06/21/01: We interrupt this broadcast to bring you a word from deep space
06/14/01: Theory of revolution explains why some things get lost
06/11/01: Shamanic gewgaws
06/06/01: Charity begins at homes with lemonade stands
05/30/01: When are wars worth dying in?
05/23/01: Cruising along that bumpy highway
05/09/01: If you're in the write mood, wish the U.S. happy birthday
05/07/01: Killing McVeigh will wound us all
05/01/01: Dubya reinforcing negative GOP stereotypes?

Up

Reprinted by permission, The Kansas City Star, Copyright 2002. All rights reserved