For decades Iran has been synonymous with terrorism. Americans had been its target since the ouster of the Shah and the rise of Islamist fundamentalism. In 1979 the exiled Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returned to head the Iranian fundamentalist revolution. Many Americans still recall the taking of 52 of our citizens from our embassy in Tehran – held for 444 days, coincidentally released as Ronald Reagan took office.
After Khomeini became supreme leader in Iran the direct attacks on American facilities overseas seemed to come one after another, starting in April of 1983, with the bombing of the U.S. embassy in Beirut Lebanon. Soon after, in October, was the infamous U.S. Marine barracks bombing which killed 241. In December that same year was yet another U.S. embassy bombing – this time in Kuwait. 1984 saw the bombing of the U.S. embassy annex in Beirut and in 1985, the highly televised hijacking of TWA flight 847, where a U.S. Navy diver was shot and tossed out of the plane onto the tarmac for the whole world to see.
The last major attack by Iran or it’s number one surrogate, Hezbollah, came in 1996 with the bombing of the Kobar Towers, a U.S. military housing complex in Saudi Arabia, which left nineteen Americans dead and 372 injured.
Since then it seems Iran has concentrating their hatred and terrorist efforts more toward Israel and others in the Middle East.
So it’s plain to see that Iran can surely dish out the terror. But it evidently can’t take it.
“Iranian intelligence officials have broken up ‘the biggest terrorist plot’ ever planned to target Tehran and other provinces in the Islamic republic, the country’s state television reported on Monday,” writes Gulf News.
The plot was apparently to be carried out by what Iranian officials are calling a takfiri-Wahhabi group of extremist Sunni jihadis. Jihadis? Haven’t we been told for years by Muslim clerics that jihad is a misunderstood term, that we who attribute it to ruthless
Beefed Up Security
For those interested, “takfiri” means Muslims who accuse others of being “nonbelievers.”
Are the Iranians preventing these Wahhabists from striving to better themselves by blowing up Shia Muslims? I guess so.
Both the Iranian Fars and ISNA news agencies “quoted Ali Shamkhani, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, as saying the attack was timed to hit during Ramadan.” Wow – Ramadan does seem to be a popular time to carry out the struggle of bettering oneself by killing a bunch of innocents.
The Iranian Intelligence Ministry said “the attack was supposed to come on the anniversary of the death of the Prophet Mohammad’s (PBUH) wife, Khadija, which was commemorated in small ceremonies across Iran on Thursday.” Some people just put fresh flowers on a gravestone to mark an anniversary, but who are we to judge the customs of the religion of peace.
These planned attacks may have been payback for the ransacking of a Saudi mission in Iran by a Shiite mob – which was evidently payback for the execution in Saudi Arabia of the Shiite cleric Nimr al Nimr.
The Iranians claimed to have caught the perpetrators, or at least some of them, and are busy “interrogating” them. I wouldn’t want to be those guys! I going to go out on a limb and say the Iranian “interrogators” aren’t much concerned with the Geneva Convention or international law regarding what can and cannot be done to “extract” information from the Wahhabists.
I find it interesting that for the first time since the 1979 revolution, Iran is being threatened by other militant groups. It’s as if, for whatever reason, the Sunnis and the Kurds appear to see a crack in the Iranian armor. For the past several months Iranian police have been on increased alert, “with armed security forces guarding subway stations and other public areas in Tehran.” Iran has also had clashes with Sunni militants in the southeast and with the Party of Free Life of Kurdistan, an Iranian Kurdish group in the west.
This is unfamiliar territory for the Iranian regime. The Iranian regime is used to dishing it out – not taking it. But hey – at least they can now afford that additional security, thanks to Barack Obama and John Kerry’s gift of $150 billion – and the additional $1.4 billion paid to Iran to get our sailors back.
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