Royce Statement on Iran's Support for Terrorism
Iran: the 'most active state sponsor of terrorism,' according to the State Department
WASHINGTON, D.C.-Today, the House Subcommittees on International Terrorism and Nonproliferation (ITN) and Middle East and Central Asia held a joint hearing to examine Iran's sponsorship of terrorism for the past 25 years. The following is the opening statement of ITN Subcommittee Chairman Ed Royce:
"The 9/11 Commission and others have warned against fighting 'terrorism' in the abstract, treating it as some generic evil. This vagueness, this useful report noted, blurs any counter-terrorism strategy. The current threat, the Commission report noted, is Islamist terrorism. Even more clarity is brought about when we focus on state sponsors of terrorism. The State Department calls Iran the 'most active state sponsor of terrorism.' This recognition allows for a different set of policy tools to be used. When this state sponsor of terrorism is striving for nuclear weapons, we have the need for a laser focus.
"The U.S. faced terrorism well before 9/11. The Iranian takeover of our embassy in Tehran and Iranian-sponsored Hezbollah's attacks took a great human toll. But for many reasons, terrorism was a focus for only a few in the White House and Congress. After 9/11, it was a scramble to understand al Qaeda, Wahhabism and other previously largely ignored threats. It its now our responsibility to focus on these challenges as never before, while resisting easy answers and solutions. Just as this problem has been a long time in the making, we are going to be at this, seeking solutions, for a long, long time.
"We do have a pretty good sense of the severity of the Iranian terrorist threat we face. A few years ago, Deputy Secretary of State Armitage said, 'Hezbollah may be the A-team of terrorists and maybe al-Qaeda is actually the B-team.' Our former director of central intelligence shared this assessment in 2003, calling Hezbollah a notch above al-Qaeda organizationally, in part because of its deadly ties with Iran. This challenge has not lessened since.
"The 9/11 Commission and others have advocated a multifaceted approach to combating terrorism. This definitely applies to state sponsors of terrorism. The Iranian regime should feel our pressure, military and otherwise. But the Iranian people, fortunately, are not our enemies, as much as Iranian militants would like them to hate what they call the Great Satan. We need to reach out even more to Iranians, doing a better job with public diplomacy efforts. Radio Farda, for one, is under-funded. It is frustrating that reform has not come along very far in Iran, it has been actively repressed, but that should not reflect badly on the great majority of frustrated Iranians, whom I suspect have little interest in backing Hezbollah and other terrorists."
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