In 2003, Ambassador Ryan Crocker and National Security Council official Zalmay Khalilzad travelled to Switzerland to meet secretly with Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran’s former UN ambassador (and future foreign minister). British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook held a similar meeting with his Iranian counterpart Kamal Kharrazi.
The message they conveyed to their Iranian counterparts was straightforward: War was imminent with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, but Iran was not a target.
They sought—and received—Iranian assurances that the Islamic Republic would not interfere in Iraq nor would it molest any American pilots who might make emergency landings inside Iran.
Don’t Forget What Iran Did
In Iraq alone, Iranian-backed insurgents, both Shi’ite and Sunni, killed hundreds of Americans.
Simply put, the Iranian officials either purposely lied to their American and British counterparts or they did not have the influence to know the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ plans. Either way, the results were the same: As soon as Operation Iraqi Freedom began, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Qods Force infiltrated en masse into Iran with two goals: spark insurgency and kill Americans.
In Iraq alone, Iranian-backed insurgents, both Shi’ite and Sunni, killed hundreds of Americans. Most of the explosive-formed projectiles that devastated American armored vehicles originated in Iran.
For too long, the perpetrators of those murders have escaped justice. Successive U.S. administrations—from Barack Obama’s to Donald Trump’s—turned a blind eye to those Iranians who killed Americans in the name of diplomacy. While successive Secretaries of State may have counseled such moves, they were a mistake.
Iranian leaders were never sincere about diplomacy, but rather saw it as an asymmetric warfare strategy to tie their opponents hands while Tehran continued its agenda either directly or by proxy. Such diplomacy came at tremendous cost, not only making today’s attack inevitable, but also undercutting U.S. deterrence. In essence, the lesson Tehran learned in Beirut in 1983, at Khobar in 1996 and in Iraq beginning in 2003 is that it could escape accountability for killing Americans.
What Trump Must Do If Iran Falls
Should Israel decapitate the Iranian leadership and should the regime fall, the Trump administration must send in investigator to track down, detain, and interrogate those responsible for killing Americans and funding the insurgency.
Some should be extradited to the United States to serve the rest of their lives in prison; others can be offered the opportunity to turn state’s evidence.
Either way, just as the United States made clear it would not stop hunting down Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden, so too should it not rest until Hassan Kazemi Qomi, the former Quds Force commander, or Quds Force chief Esmail Qaani, are in chains or in coffins.
Just as Israel stole Iran’s nuclear archive, so too should the United States seize the Quds Force archive.
Just as Israel stole Iran’s nuclear archive, so too should the United States seize the Quds Force archive to uncover not only Iranians who helped the terrorist group, but the identity of Arabs, Europeans, and even Americans who knowingly or unknowingly helped the group.
American citizenship should not be a get-out-of-jail-free card if any U.S. officials or think tank personnel knowingly acted as unregistered foreign agents on behalf of the Islamic Republic.
Israel may have launched this attack based on calculations of its national interests, but that does not mean the United States needs to sit aside and leave its own interests unaddressed.
Justice may have been delayed by decades in some cases, but if U.S. authorities can take advantage of Israeli actions to bring justice to American victims of Iranian terror, they should not hesitate.
