Iran -- 'world's leading sponsor of terror'?

So commented the president of the most powerful state in history during his first, and certainly his last, visit as US president to the Middle East. But anyone with a correct perception of history would hesitate to accept the US president's characterisation of Iran.
Mr. Bush has repeated the same allegations made by a predecessor of his twenty years ago, exactly under similar circumstances, while launching the first war on terror, and terming Iran in very similar language. Iran was then termed as belonging to an evil empire along with several other Middle East and Latin American countries, against which precisely the war against terror in 1987 was directed.
George W also dispensed homilies to the Iranian people, telling them that they had the right to live under a government that listened to their wishes. The broad hint was not lost upon the observers. The Iranians could resort to any means to remove that government; suggesting that they need not necessarily conform to a normal political process to get a government that, according to the US president, would be amenable to their demands. And when that happens, he assured the Iranians, they will have no greater friend than the US.
Human memory is short, but not that short as to allow the Iranians to forget the US hands of friendship extended to the Shah and Savak, which had come to be recognised as one of the most feared coercive state organisations at the disposal of one of the most repressive regimes in the world.
The US president's comments conform to the same pattern that had been used by successive US administrations to castigate those nationalist regimes all over the world that refused to share the US perception of the world. It was to give those a bad name and then hang it, as they did with Iraq and, literally, with Saddam, having given him all their support against a common enemy, Iran, for almost quarter of a century.
And what are the charges that the US administration levels against Iran?
According to Bush, Iran is the leading state sponsor of terror in the world and, with al-Qaeda, the main threat to the region's stability. Iran's action, he stated further, "threatened the security of nations everywhere. It seeks to threaten its neighbours with missiles and bellicose rhetoric."
If one were to supplant "US" with "Iran" the depiction would be a true description of what the US had been following as a part of its foreign policy since very soon after the end of the second World War. It is a pity that the US president lacks a sense of history, or chooses to deliberately ignore it while painting countries as evil and terrorist sponsors.
All the accusations levelled by the current US administration against Iran -- state sponsoring of terrorism, destabilising its neighbour by supporting a particular faction of the contestants, flaunting its weapon arsenal to intimidate, exporting its own ideology, disregarding UN resolutions and so on -- is more applicable to his own administration.
For now, let us take the issue of terrorism or, more specifically, state sponsored terrorism only, and look at the US record in this regard.
Interestingly, history shows that terrorism as a coercive weapon of powerful states to advance national interest is not a recent phenomenon. And since we are yet to agree on a universal definition of terrorism, many suggest that terrorism is what the US defines it to be. And its use has been fairly well recorded in history.
According to another scholar: "The United States and other great power allies, like Britain, have been the most ardent, and destructive, practitioners of terrorism. But because Western governments present their acts of terrorism as legitimate, necessary and sometimes even humanitarian, we don't see that the greatest terrorist acts of all haven't been incubated in Afghan caves, or refugee camps in the West Bank, but in richly appointed government offices in places like Washington, Tel Aviv and London. And this is what a memorandum drafted by Winston Churchill to his chiefs of staff during WWII read: "The moment has come when the question of bombing of German cities simply for the sake of increasing the terror, though under other pretexts, should be reviewed."
While many American writers take pride in claiming victory in the "first war against terror," many wonder how that victory was achieved. It was achieved by sheer ruthless support of Latin American dictators and covert action against nationalist forces, beginning in the 1950s and '60s right up to recent times. There is Guatemala and Nicaragua, and Chile for whom 9/11 holds a different significance.
So profound was the effect of US supported state terror in Guatemala that it moved one journalist to say, on his return to his native land which he fled after his newspaper office was blown up by the government terrorists, "some people in the White House worship Aztec Gods -- with the offering of Central American blood."
And the US role in the Middle East in support of Israel has surpassed all records of state sponsored terrorism, which has witnessed the ruthless victimisation of the Arabs in the occupied territories and in Lebanon.
Regrettably, the US policy had been, and continues to be, motivated, according to an eminent US scholar, entirely by its "intention to maintain hegemony through the threat or use of force, the dimension of power in which it reigns supreme." In the case of Iran, it is a matter of survival, of self-preservation from a giant power that has the capability to subsume it within its fold without the world even twitching so much of an eyelid.
And this feeling is quite real, given the fact that the standoff distance between Iran and the US has been significantly reduced by the physical presence of the US across the immediate Iranian borders; added to it is the location and military clout of Israeli. Therefore, if Iran resorts to measures to protect its national interest the reasons are not far to seek -- Iran has been put under a great geo-strategic disadvantage since the US occupation of Iraq that will not end in the near future.
Unfortunately for the US, it has become the victim of its own security policy, which seeks to execute a grand strategy that would prevent an adversary surpassing, or to being equal to, its own. According to specialists in international affairs, this has set a dangerous trend, which has rendered international norms of self-defense and international laws and institutions meaningless.
Consequently, in a situation where the US's running of the international order becomes a fait accomplii for other states, they seek their own way of countering it. What the US fails to realise is that not only does this situation divide the world, it also leaves the US and its surrogates less secure.

The author is, Editor Defense & Strategic Affairs, The Daily Star.