Good terrorism?

Sandy Levinson

A story in tomorrow's NYTimes details Iranian protests about the alleged origins of some terrorist bombings in the provincial capital of Zahaden, which killed 11 people, in Sunni camps in Pakistan. Most relevant are the following paragraphs:

Iran has accused the United States and Britain of provoking the Sunni insurgents. The authorities have said that the efforts are part of the plot to sow discord among Sunnis and Shiites in the country. Gen. Mohammad Ghaffari, a commander of security forces in the province, told the Fars news agency that a film that was confiscated from the suspects proved that the group was “affiliated to intelligence agencies of some of the foreign countries, such as the U.S. and Britain.”

The news agency also quoted what it called informed sources as saying that the explosives used in the bombings were American.

One might, of course, be inclined to doubt the Iranian accusations, at least where the US is concerned, were it not for the fact that we have an Administration obsessed with destabilizing the Iranian government (and, potentially, going to war with same). What is interesting, incidentally, is that the Iranians didn't include Israel in its list of intelligence agencies, which, to me at least, suggests that they might indeed have some credible evidence about US and British agencies, not to mention the Pakistanis who are accused of giving haven to the terrorists. In any event, would anyone believe US denials of complicity? What, precisely, could the US do prove a negative, i.e., they they are not encouraging what we would otherwise denounce as terrorist attacks on a country with whom we are not, at least formally, at war? If George W. Bush gave us his personal word that we hadn't been involved, would we a) believe him; b) assume that the Vice President decided to leave him out of the loop in order to provided "plausible deniability; c) simply assume he is both knowledgeable and lying? There may be a fourth possibility, which is the existence of free-lance CIA operatives operating on their own, but I find this the least plausible, since by all accounts the CIA has become highly legalistic and wants advance clearance for what it undertakes (thus the Bybee-Yoo torture memo).

I suppose, incidentally, that one can also describe this as a "tit-for-tat" response to amost certain Iranian intervention in Iraq, even if the Administration is less than coherent on ascribing specific responsibility within the Iranian government. They make things difficult for us in Iraq, we make things difficult for them in Iran through energizing an internal Sunni opposition that has taken refuge in Pakistan. But can't one imagine that direct negotiations might be a better option?

Finally, it does seem to me, more than ever, that Congress should spend more of its time debating Iran, passing legislation specifying that the AUMF does not cover Iran, and even explicitly refusing to supply funds for military actions against Iran.

Posted 9:43 PM by Sandy Levinson [link]