As the Trump Administration continues with a solid week of escalating rhetoric surrounding Iran, sparked by a single missile test last weekend, Defense Secretary James Mattis joined in, condemning Iran as “the single biggest state sponsor of terrorism in the world.”
At the same time, Mattis seemed to downplay the near-term chances of a US attack on Iran, insisting that he saw no need to immediately increase the number of US ground troops deployed in the region surrounding Iran “at this time,” insisting that the US “always have the capability” to do so later.
While the US initially responded to Iran’s missile test by saying it might technically violate a UN ban on nuclear missile tests (Iran denies this, insisting it was a conventional missile), it very quickly escalated, mostly on Trump’s Twitter account, and irrespective of Iran not actually having done anything new. By Thursday, Trump was refusing to rule out attacking Iran militarily.
The “biggest state sponsor of terrorism” claim is a popular one among hawks, but very misleading. Under US law, only three nations can be state sponsors of terrorism at all: Iran, Syria, and Sudan. Given how poor Sudan is, and that Syria is in the middle of a civil war, Iran is pretty much guaranteed to be at the top of the official list every year by default, ensuring this talking point remains intact.
The US federal government is the largest state sponsor of terror.
” Under US law, only three nations can be state sponsors of terrorism at all: Iran, Syria, and Sudan.” What is that supposed to mean? The thing to be very worried about is that all it takes for the President to get us into a war(since Congress has sheepishly abandoned its exclusive right to make a declaration of war, and further, to hold the pursestrings) is to declare that a country “sponsors terrorism.” It has been several years since Iran’s Revolutionary Guards were named a “terrorist organization”, so there is already a pretext for doing so, and the doberman-like response to their missile testing has only reinforced this, on top of repeated mention in the MSM that anything Yemen does to oppose Saudi Arabia is also “terroristic”, and they are supported by “terrorist-sponsoring leaders” of Iran.
Then why this brouhaha over nothing. Just posturing to get into or remain in good books of Netanyahu?