(American Enterprise Institute) Danielle Pletka - In a New York Times op-ed Tuesday, Iranian Foreign Minister Muhammad Javad Zarif is right to note that Wahhabism is indeed a danger to the world, a scourge of extremist Salafi ideology that successive Saudi regimes have inflicted upon the Muslim (and Christian and Jewish) world. The Saudis helped created al-Qaeda and have systematically used their oil riches to crowd out moderate Islam through the funding of mosques, imams, and textbooks. Saudi funded schools and madrasas have taught intolerance, anti-Semitism and extremism to susceptible young minds for decades. Zarif is only concerned with Sunni terrorism, but Iran is the veritable godfather of modern terrorism. Unlike the Saudi government, which has actually begun to grapple with its legacy, Iran has merely doubled and tripled down on its terror model. It was the Islamic Republic of Iran that created Hizbullah and sponsored the groups that kidnapped and murdered Americans through Lebanon's long civil war. It is Iran that funds Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. It is Iran that props up the murderous Assad regime that has repeatedly gassed its own people. It is Iran that has assassinated its enemies the world over, and it is Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps that was responsible, during the Iraq war, for the deaths of hundreds of U.S. servicemen. It is Iran that helped arm and support Hugo Chavez's dictatorship in Venezuela; Iran that has been in attendance at at least one of North Korea's nuclear tests; Iran that has long hosted al-Qaeda and facilitated the movement of its people before and after 9/11. The notion that somehow the Islamic Republic of Iran can be a leader against terrorism is macabre humor. The writer is senior vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at AEI.
2016-09-15 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive