That argument was from Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney, the retired former vice commander of U.S. Air Forces in Europe, who said of the nuclear accord: What I dont like about this is, the number one leading radical Islamic group in the world is the Iranians. They are purveyors of radical Islam throughout the region and throughout the world. And we are going to enable them to get nuclear weapons.
Thomas L. Friedman
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Sorry, General, but the title greatest purveyors of radical Islam does not belong to the Iranians. Not even close. That belongs to our putative ally Saudi Arabia.
When it comes to Irans involvement in terrorism, I have no illusions: I covered firsthand the 1983 suicide bombings of the U.S. Embassy and the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, both believed to be the handiwork of Irans cats paw, Hezbollah. Irans terrorism, though vis--vis the U.S. has always been of the geopolitical variety: war by other means to push the U.S. out of the region so Iran can dominate it, not us.
I support the Iran nuclear deal because it reduces the chances of Iran building a bomb for 15 years and creates the possibility that Irans radical religious regime can be moderated through more integration with the world.
But if you think Iran is the only source of trouble in the Middle East, you must have slept through 9/11, when 15 of the 19 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia. Nothing has been more corrosive to the stability and modernization of the Arab world, and the Muslim world at large, than the billions and billions of dollars the Saudis have invested since the 1970s into wiping out the pluralism of Islam the Sufi, moderate Sunni and Shiite versions and imposing in its place the puritanical, anti-modern, anti-women, anti-Western, anti-pluralistic Wahhabi Salafist brand of Islam promoted by the Saudi religious establishment.
It is not an accident that several thousand Saudis have joined the Islamic State or that Arab Gulf charities have sent ISIS donations. It is because all these Sunni jihadist groups ISIS, Al Qaeda, the Nusra Front are the ideological offspring of the Wahhabism injected by Saudi Arabia into mosques and madrasas from Morocco to Pakistan to Indonesia.
And we, America, have never called them on that because were addicted to their oil and addicts never tell the truth to their pushers.
Lets avoid hyperbole when describing one enemy or potential enemy as the greatest source of instability, said Husain Haqqani, the former Pakistani ambassador to Washington, who is an expert on Islam at the Hudson Institute.
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It is an oversimplification, he said. While Iran has been a source of terrorism in supporting groups like Hezbollah, many American allies have been a source of terrorism by supporting Wahhabi ideology, which basically destroyed the pluralism that emerged in Islam since the 14th century, ranging from Bektashi Islam in Albania, which believes in living with other religions, to Sufi and Shiite Islam.
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RECENT COMMENTS
Sharon5101 6 hours ago
Tom Friedman says he has no illusions about Iran's involvement with terrorism after their surrogate Hezbollah bombed the US Marine barracks...
Robert Cohen 10 hours ago
I tend to agree with TF. Since 1973 the Saudis have tragically proven ABSOLUTELY how the USA is addicted to Saudi oil. The Saudis AND the US...
Ed 10 hours ago
Just imagine if Saudi Arabia wants to go nuclear.
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The last few decades have seen this attempt to homogenize Islam, claiming there is only one legitimate path to God, Haqqani said. And when there is only one legitimate path, all others are open to being killed. That has been the single most dangerous idea that has emerged in the Muslim world, and it came out of Saudi Arabia and has been embraced by others, including the government in Pakistan.
Consider this July 16, 2014, story in The Times from Beirut: For decades, Saudi Arabia has poured billions of its oil dollars into sympathetic Islamic organizations around the world, quietly practicing checkbook diplomacy to advance its agenda. But a trove of thousands of Saudi documents recently released by WikiLeaks reveals in surprising detail how the governments goal in recent years was not just to spread its strict version of Sunni Islam though that was a priority but also to undermine its primary adversary: Shiite Iran.
Or consider this Dec 5, 2010, report on BBC.com: U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned last year in a leaked classified memo that donors in Saudi Arabia were the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide. She said it was an ongoing challenge to persuade Saudi officials to treat such activity as a strategic priority. The groups funded include al-Qaeda, the Taliban and Lashkar-e-Taiba, she added.
Saudi Arabia has been an American ally on many issues and there are moderates there who detest its religious authorities. But the fact remains that Saudi Arabias export of Wahhabi puritanical Islam has been one of the worst things to happen to Muslim and Arab pluralism pluralism of religious thought, gender and education in the last century.
Irans nuclear ambition is a real threat; it needs to be corralled. But dont buy into the nonsense that its the only source of instability in this region.
This article was written by for The Opinion Pages The New York Times on SEPT. 2, 2015
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