Speaking of the Axis of Evil speech, one of my best friends (a Chinese guy who lives in Beijing now) told me how many people in Asia groaned when Bush applied the term to North Korea. Needless to say, it was a setback to progress. Stupid, silly, unnecessary rhetoric that accomplished nothing positive other than to throw red meat to his constituency. At least our pathetic president reversed course later and we are seeing some fruits as a result. Thinking about how the Iraq catastrophe has affected Iran makes me want to throw something through the wall. But on the nuke issue, I personally believe watching Pakistan and India get away with developing them (along with watching North Korea flaunt) sealed the fact Iran would go that direction. The Iraq invasion obviously raised to their urgency to another level.
In 1966 Israel's borders were the pre-67 borders and Nasser and King Abdullah and friends were still planning Israel's distruction. People today still talk about kicking all the Jews out of the Levant and a Palestine "from the river to the sea". Google the phrase and you will not just come up with a bunch of 20 year old references. If this were not true, I wouldn't know the phrase "Ithbah al-Yahud".
No it never started with Iran. If anything, the formation of Al Qaeda came from radical Egyptian groups. Bin Laden's #2 man Al-Zawahiri is Egyptian and the original groups of Al Qaeda were Egyptian radicals who went to Afghanistan to fight the Soviets. Bin Laden just bankrolled a bunch of Egyptian radicals and became the face of the organization. But in reality, he was a minority in his own organization. Al Qaeda was almost entirely Egyptian until after the Afghan-Soviet War. In fact, there was a lot of tension and distrust of Bin Laden because he wasn't Egyptian but people had to go along with him because he was the only one with money. Iran's influence is relatively new. Up until the Iranian Revolution, it didn't have anything to do with terrorism and even afterward, it was fairly limited in what it could do since the entire Middle East was Sunni dominated. Even Israeli terrorism didn't start with Iran. That started with smaller groups like Hamas that were funded by the surrounding countries (Egypt, Syria and Jordan) to function as proxy organizations. None of the other Middle Eastern countries were particularly concerned with Palestine as it was really just an Arab backwater state at the time with no particular value. Iran's funding is limited to a select few groups because the Muslim world is still Sunni dominated and hence others are much less tolerant of Iranian money then say Saudi money which funds more terror groups. You'll notice a lot more Islamic countries tend to cooperate on terrorism investigations with Iran (and thus the freezing of Iranian money) then say Saudi Arabia.
Why am I not surprised that NewYorker doesn't know the history of modern Islamic militancy? And yet, with the level of certainty with which he posts, you would never know it. Iran?!! I bet you also think that Al-Qaeda and 99% of all terrorism in the world is nothing but Iranian-sponsored terror, don't you? You're blaming the wrong player, playa... Anyways, the National Iranian American Council has come out with their own response: http://www.niacouncil.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=880&Itemid=2
