IRAN AND TERRORISTS

Iran and Terrorists

Iran and Terrorists

Introduction Charges of terrorist activities have plagued Iran from the earliest days of the Islamic revolution to the present. More than any other factor, they have interfered with Iran's ability to establish a responsible foreign policy image. Yet, terrorism is murky and highly ambiguous. As penalties for terrorism escalate, terrorists try to mask their identities; determining who planned and executed an act of terror is extremely difficult, and it is often virtually impossible to establish with any certainty the policy motives behind such acts. Iran is a particularly complex case. Iran has a split personality. Some parts of its government—the presidency, the Majlis (parliament), and the functional ministries—though far from a fully functioning democracy, are held accountable for their policies and actions through public review and frequent elections.

A second set of government institutions, including the Supreme Leader (velayat-e faqih), oversight committees such as the Guardian Council and the Expediency Council, and the security services, are dominated by a conservative clergy who are officially above reproach, essentially accountable only to themselves. These institutions have veto power over government policies and command a shadowy but potent network of influence and protection that grew out of the revolution, permeating Iran's national security structure and economy. The tension between these two unevenly balanced power centers affects Iranian policy at all levels so that, at times, Iran appears to be pursuing different or even contradictory objectives. Since at least the mid-1990s, the main objectives of the elected government have been to attract foreign political and economic support. Especially since President Muhammad Khatami's election in 1997, Iran has played a significant and constructive role at the United Nations, normalized its relations with its neighbors in the Persian Gulf region, and moved much closer toward mutually respectful relations with the European Union.

At the same time, some unaccountable elements of Iran's power structure have seemed unwilling to accept this normalization process and have clung to a very different agenda of destabilization, revolutionary vengeance, and violent intimidation, including terrorist acts. The two sets of policies, often directly contradictory, reflect the struggle that lies at the very heart of the Iranian revolutionary experience. The triumph of the Iranian revolution in February 1979 kindled a burst of radical actions by Iran that deserve to be called terrorism.1 These include kidnappings sanctioned and sponsored by the government itself, such as the taking of American hostages in the first years of the revolution, and reputed Iranian support for and suspected direct involvement in Hizballah operations in Lebanon, including the bombings of U.S. installations and hostage-taking throughout the 1980s. During the Iran-Iraq War, Iran pursued a strategy of maritime terror, using unmarked gunboats and floating mines to attack noncombatant shipping. Numerous assassinations of enemies abroad in the late 1980s and 1990s were widely and persuasively attributed to Iranian official sponsorship, and Iran was accused of sponsoring operations by other militant organizations, such as the Argentinean bombings of 1992 and 1994 and the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing, attributed ...