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Remember Iran's Role in 9/11
(Wall Street Journal) Joseph I. Lieberman - A key al-Qaeda partner, Iran, has never been held responsible for its enabling role in the worst terror attack on American soil - even though the 9/11 Commission found that "there is strong evidence that Iran facilitated the transit of al-Qaeda members into and out of Afghanistan before 9/11, and that some of these were future 9/11 hijackers." As the Washington Institute's Matthew Levitt and Michael Jacobson have concluded, "Iran and al-Qaeda reached an informal agreement to cooperate, with Iran providing critical explosives, intelligence, and security training to bin Laden's organization." Because the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) already supported Hizbullah operationally and financially, a vehicle was in place through which Iran could support and influence al-Qaeda. Operating through Hizbullah gave Iran immense freedom to funnel money and weaponry and to train al-Qaeda operatives in deadly tactics that would be employed around the world, including against the U.S. The coordinated 1998 truck bombings targeting the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were a direct result of the Iranian terror training, according to a finding by Judge John D. Bates of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in a 2011 case. After 9/11, Iran became a more important haven for al-Qaeda fighters who fled from Afghanistan as the Taliban collapsed. From their safe base in Iran, al-Qaeda members planned terrorist operations, including the 2003 attack in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, that killed 26 people, including eight Americans, and the 2008 attack on the American Embassy in Yemen. In 2011, the Treasury Department officially accused Iran, as a Wall Street Journal report put it, "of forging an alliance with al-Qaeda in a pact that allows the terrorist group to use Iranian soil as a transit point for moving money, arms and fighters to its bases in Pakistan and Afghanistan." Newly declassified letters captured in the May 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden reveal that in a 2007 letter, bin Laden directed al-Qaeda not to target Iran because "Iran is our main artery for funds, personnel, and communication." The writer, a former U.S. senator from Connecticut, is chairman of United Against Nuclear Iran. -