Iran's Terror Toolbox

>> Abbas Milani: In a sense, this regime, from the moment it came to power, it began to create, sometimes create and other times support radical terrorist groups.

Every Western country that I know of has at one time or another dealt with the Iranian regime's use of terrorism by making a compromise, by freeing hostages.

The Iranians sent terrorists to kill opponents in Europe and in the US, they have been less successful in the US, so far as we know, they have successfully only killed one person, they have attempted several others. But in Europe, they have killed over 100 dissidents. And in every case, in every case, once the terrorists were arrested, the Iranian regime picked up a few of their citizens in Tehran or in other parts of Iran, held them virtually as hostage and exchanged them.

Every US administration from Carter to Ronald Reagan, who based his ideology that we will never negotiate with terrorists, they negotiated with terrorists. When they picked up US citizens in Beirut, they were willing to give up arms to Iran. And if you want to understand how complicated the Middle east at that time, the country that was pressuring the US to help Iran was Israel.

Israel wanted Iran to survive the war with Saddam Hussein because they thought Saddam Hussein was a worse bully than the Iranian regime, at least in the short run. But they negotiated with them, they released some funds to them, they gave them some arms, and the process has continued.

In Europe just in Sweden, just recently, a person who is credibly responsible for the death of 4,000 innocent political prisoners, who were innocent in a sense that they were serving time on another accusation, Khomeini issued a Fatwa. Khomeini issue the Fatwa that anyone who at this moment is still an opponent of the regime, you can kill him.

And sometimes these trials took a few minutes. 4,000 people about were killed. Two people were most responsible for this of the groups that were responsible, one of them was called Mr. Raisi, who was the president of Iran, till an accident, and nobody knows what caused the accident, died.

The other one was arrested in Sweden, he had gone there. There are different versions of why he went there. The Swedish government picked him up immediately, the Iranian regime picked up a few Swedish citizens and eventually, after the gentleman was found guilty in a court, they exchanged them.

In France, the same thing. Germany, the same thing. Italy, the same thing. In France, the two parties competed with one another, secretly dealt with Iran to get a better deal for releasing these hostages. Out of that constellation, out of this kind of a history, you shouldn't be surprised if the regime continues its terrorist activities.

If you can kill 120 people outside Iran and virtually pay no price, no political price, then you are likely to continue. Now, if you look at Khomeini and Khomeini as the two supreme leaders, both of them, long before they became prominent figures, were involved with Islamic terrorism. In modern Iran, there is no terrorist group that has been more successful than a group called Fadaiyan-e Islam, the devotees of Islam.

If you look at most scholarship on, for example, the history of terrorism in Iran or the history of what they call guerrilla warfare in Iran, whatever you wanna call it, you would be very, very hard put to find one single study of Fadaiyan-e Islam. There are dozens of books written about Marxist guerrilla groups or terrorist groups about the MEK, but not a single book yet still about Fadaiyan-e Islam.

And they are the most successful group. They began in 1942, and they began by essentially a directive by Khomeini. Khomeini wrote a book and said, where are Muslim men? And of course, Muslim men? Where are Muslim men who are not killing these people who are saying nasty things about Islam?

And he mentioned some names. One of the names he mentioned was called Ahmad Kasravi. Ahmad Kasravi is arguably the best scholar of Iranian constitutional revolution, one of the most prolific, one of the most respected, and one of the most daring. Kasravi has written a book about Shi'ism. There's an English translation of it available.

It is still 70 years after its writing the most radical, the most daring critique of Shiism. And Khomeini said, why doesn't somebody kill him? It's incumbent on you to kill him. And a young cleric, literally a young cleric by the name of Navvab Safavi, said, I'll go kill him.

And he traveled to Iran, back from Karbala and Najaf, where he was a seminarian and arranged for the execution of one of Iran's most prominent public intellectuals, Ahmad Kasravi. They went into the Ministry of Justice and chopped him to pieces, literally, not complete pieces, but they chopped him up.

And then they issued a Fatwa. They issued them a statement. They said, anyone who attacks Islam is going to face the same future. Neither the Iranian regime at the time, the Shah's regime, nor anyone in the Iranian opposition from the center to the right to the left, ever came up and said, we should stand up to this act of brutality.

We should stand up to this vigilantism. The same gentleman who issued that fatwa against Kasravi 60 years later issued a fatwa against another writer, this time not Iranian. His name was, does anybody know who did Khomeini issue a fatwa against? Salman Rushdie, he issued a fatwa. Salman Rushdie, Indian, Pakistani citizens of England published a book by a publisher in England and the United States that Khomeini thought was critical of Islam.

He issued a fatwa, it says, whoever kills him gets $5 million award from us. That fatwa is still in force, and the man who went after Salman Rushdie and blinded him clearly was following that edict. If people had stood up to Khomeini, if the Iranian regime at the time had stood up to Khomeini, if Iranian intellectuals.

I stood up to Khomeini and said, this is vigilantism, this is terrorism. You can't go and kill an intellectual simply because it's critical. That fatwa 70 years later might not have happened, but the regime began this activity. Khomeini was the most important supporter of Navvab Safavi. At that time, there was a young cleric in the city of Mashat who went to a sermon by this young clergy and was so taken by it that said, I must follow his path.

The name of that young clergy is Khamenei. He is today Iran's supreme leader and has been Iran's Supreme Leader for 35 years. And he absolutely believes that Iran and the world is about to have a very important turn, a historic turn, a turn towards Islam. He believes that the west and communism he thinks, is ended.

They have collapsed, they have no answer for the future. The only answer for the future, I'm almost verbatim quoting him. The problem with much of the writing about Iran is many of the people who are commenting about Iran don't read Farsi, don't read Arabic, don't read his writings.

Khamenei has written many books, has translated many books. Who knows the name of Sayyid Al Qutb or Qutb? How many of you know who that is? Was the theorist of the Muslim Brotherhood, the most important Islamic radical group in the world. Sayyid Qutb was killed in 1965 after spending many years in prison.

Many people say he is the grandfather of Islamic terrorism. There's a whole book about him talking about how essentially all of these radical groups came from his writing. Khamenei, although he is a Shiite, do all of you know what Shiites are? What are they? Yeah.

Yes, when the Prophet died, that's very accurate.

When the Prophet died, a very, very small minority said the Prophet had chosen his successor. And his successor was his son in law. His name was Ali. And supporters of Ali became partisans of Ali. Arabic word for partisan is Shiite. Iran is predominantly shiite society. Some 70% of Iranians are Shiite, some 25% are Sunnis, 5% are Armenians, Jews, Baha'is and other faith.

So the great majority of the world are Sunnis. And Sunni Arabic word is Sunnah, which means tradition. They said at the time the Prophet's death that Muhammad hadn't chosen a successor, we have a way of choosing successors. We have a tradition and we'll go to that tradition. And what was the tradition at the time?

Rich old men got together and decided who the next successor was. And they decided the Prophet's father-in-law was the successor. So you will hear much in the commentary in the world, in political commentary about Islam today, about the great schism between Shiites and Sunnis. Khamenei clearly now is the most powerful leader of the Shiite world.

And Sayyid Qutb no doubt is the most influential theorist. If you think about radical Islam, Muslim Brotherhood is by far the most influential all the way from Morocco to Erdogan in Turkey. In Pakistan, they are one way or Egypt, they're one way or another followers of Sayyid Qutb, Khamenei, though a Shiite has translated four of Sayyid Qutb's books.

And they're all essentially radical critiques of the west. And radical suggestion for jihad. Radical suggestion for jihad means once you accept, then it is incumbent on you to fight the infidels, to fight the opposition. In a sense, Iran, this regime, from the moment it came to power, it began to create, sometimes created and other times support radical terrorist groups.

The first group it created was in Lebanon under direct orders of Khomeini, Iranian Revolutionary Guards, IRGC went to Lebanon and began to create Hezbollah. But Iranian regime doesn't just support Shiite radicals. It can also support Sunni radicals if it thinks it can use them instrumentally against Israel and against the United States.

That's why they're a great supporter of the Hamas. That's why they are very big supporters of Assad in Syria. That's why they're great supporters of the Houthis in Yemen. That's why they have created radical groups in Shiites that act as their proxies. And in that sense they have created a network for themselves that they claim is their most important source of security.

Let me end because I want to give some time so we can have a dialogue. The word assassin, does anybody know where the word assassin comes from? Yeah, the Assassin comes from Hashshashin, which means those who use hash, hashsashi now legal, I think in California and in many states, it used to be illegal.

This is a group that were the radical Islamist Shiites of 800 years ago. They were fierce followers. They were mythically fierce followers. There are more operas, poems, stories written about these assassins than any other group. And they began in Iran, and they began using terror. The scene in Godfather where the issue of getting a contract for Frank Sinatra is being debated comes from one of the mythological accounts of how the assassins dealt with their opponents.

In that case, they didn't kill their opponent, they put a knife right next to his pillow with a note saying, next time it can be you. In Godfather, they killed his horse. So there is a long history, and there is a long contemporary history of this regime using terrorism against its own people, against its dissidents around the world, and against anyone.

I think they have been extremely, extremely, in their own mind, successful in instrumentalizing terrorism as a tool of foreign policy.