Debunked: Allegation of Iranian Govt. Backing Terror Group Untrue

One of last week’s Iran delusions centered on the claims of a security researcher that a document of Iranian government-approved X.25 leased lines included lines allocated to a terrorist organization called Ansar al-Mujahideen.

X.25 lines are a common form of packet-switching communication, once popular with banks and cash machines but now mostly considered obsolete in the US. In Iran, they remain in use for several industries which have not moved to TCP/IP communication. Like banks.

Terrorists, not so much. It turns out that the hysteria was entirely the result of a mistranslation and the leased line actually belonged not to Ansar al-Mujahideen, but Ansar al-Mojadhedin, an Iranian bank.

The bank, which has since changed its name to Bank of Ansar, was founded in 1987 and has over 600 branches inside Iran. It was initially a credit union and is now a bank, but was never a terrorist organization.