The Verity Courier
Iran Role
By Ron Estes
12 October 2023
Lurking in the shadows of the Hamas attack against Israel has been decades of Israeli and United States accusations of Iranian support of international terrorism, particularly against Israel. According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, Iran helped in plotting the ongoing Hamas attack on Israel, and approved the attack at a meeting in Beirut a week before the attack was initiated. Officials of Hamas and Hezbollah told the newspaper that officers of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard reportedly have been planning the attack with Hamas since August.
Trump was the last of a long list of U.S. presidents who have mimicked Israel’s repeated charges that Iran was the world’s leading sponsor of international terrorism.
Accusers claim Iran supports terrorist organizations like the Lebanese Shia group, Hezbollah, the Palestinian “terrorist group,” Hamas, Iranian militia units in Syria and Iraq and the Houthis in Yemen. Iran doesn’t consider those organizations and activities to be terrorist.
Here is why:
Hezbollah—the Party of God—is a Shia Islamist political, military and social organization which controls southern Lebanon. Iran supports Hezbollah because of its Shia religion, and its opposition to Israeli occupations of Lebanese and Palestinian territory. Israel is the mid-wife of Hezbollah. Hezbollah was founded with the express objective of driving Israel from Lebanese territory.
Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 to eliminate the Palestinian Liberation Organization, PLO, which had sought asylum in Southern Lebanon. Israel consequently occupied Southern Lebanon for 15 years and, according to Lebanese estimates, killed between 15-20 thousand Lebanese civilians, most of them Shias. The Israeli killings, and occupation, created one of the most highly motivated, bitterly anti-Israel organizations in the world. Israel still occupies a small swath of land in Lebanon, the Shebaa Farms, on the Lebanese Syrian border.
Only nine countries of the 195 nations in the international community have designated Hezbollah a terrorist organization. The European Union and New Zealand have proscribed Hezbollah's military wing, but do not list Hezbollah as a terrorist organization.
To support the terrorist charge, the Trump Administration maintained Hezbollah was responsible for the 1983 bombings of the U.S. Embassy, and the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut. Those charges ignored the fact that Hezbollah wasn’t founded until 1985. Actually, the bombings were carried out by a group called Islamic Jihad.
Iranian militia units in Syria and Iraq have nothing to do with terrorism . They are in both countries at the invitation of the Shia Governments to support the Governments against insurrections.
The Houthi in Yemen are not terrorists. They have mounted an insurgency against the Yemeni government demanding fairer parliamentary representation and more equal distribution of government funding. They turned to Iran for support because they are Shia Muslims, and Iran is the only Shia governed nation in the world.
Iran does not consider its support of Hamas as contributing to terrorism. The Palestinian right to resist the Israeli occupation of its territory and population with violence is protected by international law. Iran supports Hamas, and Palestinian resistance pursuing the same ideological objectives the United States pursued when it supported resistance movements in Axis occupied Europe in World War II.
Iran is number one on Israel’s long list of enemies in the Middle East for a very simple reason. It is the most effective supporter of Palestinian resistance to the 56-year Israeli occupation, and its struggle to achieve freedom and independence as a sovereign nation.
The Islamic Republic of Iran is a nation with a population of 83.9 million, the progeny of the Persian Empire, which from 559 to 331 B.C. was a vast, culturally diverse empire that stretched from northern Libya to the Caspian Sea. It was the largest Empire that had ever been established, overshadowing Mesopotamia, Babylonia, the Assyrian and Phoenician empires. It has an educated population, with an 86.6% literacy rate, which is higher than that of the United States. 60% of its population is under the age of 30, and is one of the most pro-America in the region. 3/4 of a million of their relatives are in the United States.
With a land mass of over 630,000 square miles, a military establishment of over 500,000, 12% of the world’s crude oil reserve, and potential control over the Arabian Gulf, Iran has a role to play in its region.
The country has no history of attacking its neighbors, nor attempting to dominate anyone. It is a bitter foe of radical Islamic terrorist groups like Al Qaeda, which attacked the United States on 911, Al Nusra and ISIS, and is fighting them all by proxy in Syria, Iraq and Yemen.
The Biden Administration has contacted Iran about returning to the JCPOA, the agreement between the P5+1+EU and Iran on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) which was designed to limit Iran’s refinement off uranium. An agreement between the P5+1 powers and Iran was agreed to on 24 November 2013 in Geneva. President Trump withdrew the U.S. from the agreement in 2018, thus abrogating those efforts. The international community fervently supports the Biden effort and the hopes of bringing Iran back into the international community of nations.
Ron Estes served 25 years as an Operations Officer in the CIA Clandestine Service
