brief - Iran 911 Case

predictable occurrence.‖ Ex. 6, Lopez-Tefft Affid. 176 (emphasis omitted). (WitnessesX, Y, and Z all provide additional information about the Iranian regime‘s use ofassassination and murder, internationally and domestically, to further its policy goals.)Importantly, every attack, car-bombing, kidnapping, hijacking, and assassinationcarried out by Iran‟s proxies, such as Hizballah, the IJO, and the PFLP-GC, wasapproved by the IRGC and Iran‟s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, or, after hisdeath, his successor, Ayatollah Khamenei. Baer, The Devil We Know, pp. 64-65, andSee No Evil, p. 264; see Ex. 8, Clawson Affid. 36, 58; Ex. 6, Lopez-Tefft Affid. 30;Ex. 32. (Witness X testifies regarding his personal knowledge of the Supreme Leaderblessing the perpetrators of such crimes before they carried them out.)D. Bridging the Sunni-Shi’a Divide: The Iran-Hizballah-al QaedaTerrorist AllianceSome Western analysts continue to believe in the now-outdated conventionalwisdom that the centuries-old historical religious rift between Sunnis (such as al Qaeda)and Shi‘a (such as Iran and Hizballah) somehow precludes their working together, evenin areas of common interest. 39 Although common Sunnis and Shi‘a may hold suchgrudges based on religious differences, 40 the public myth that a historical religious-basedenmity precludes all cooperation between Shi‘a and Sunni terrorists is simply mistaken,an old school analysis that has not kept pace with current knowledge and realities. Baer,The Devil We Know, pp. 68-71; Ex. 3, Byman Affid. 41-43; Ex. 6, Lopez-Tefft Affid.39 Some members of the U.S. intelligence community are belatedly reassessing the conventional wisdom.As stated by former State Department Counterterrorism official Larry Johnson, ―‗when you seesomeone like Mughniyah meeting with bin Laden, and Mughniyah moves freely back and forthbetween the Bekaa Valley and Iran – and the Bekaa Valley is where the explosives come out . . . , allof a sudden, you need to step back and say, ‗okay, maybe this is not quite as we pictured it.‘‖ Ex. 6,Lopez-Tefft Affid. 186.40 The existence of the historic rift may be one reason Iran kept its terrorist training camps segregatedalong sectarian, and even nationality, lines. See Ex. 2, Timmerman 2nd Affid. 62-66, 112, and n. 37.52