Global Alert: The Rationality of Modern Islamist Terrorism and the Challenge to the Liberal Democratic World

FOR MANY YEARS, various states have often made use of proxy organizations to carry out political violence and terrorism in order to promote their goals and interests. However, the extent of these states’ involvement in terrorism, as well as their identity, has changed over the years. Beginning in the mid-twentieth century, as the cost of war between states increased, and the risk of deterioration into a possible nuclear war between the superpowers grew, the use of terrorist organizations became a relatively attractive and cheap alternative for various states that became involved in terrorism, including the Soviet Union, Libya, Iran, and Syria. As former KGB spy General Aleksandr Sakharovsky noted, “In today’s world, when nuclear arms have made military force obsolete, terrorism should become our main weapon.”¹

It is important to note that even the recent rise of global jihadist terrorism, which some scholars and practitioners see as indicative of a decline in the significance of state-sponsored terrorism,² has not stemmed this phenomenon. Moreover, the persistence of state-sponsored terrorism, even among global jihadist groups like al-Qaeda, makes an understanding of it crucial to an understanding of international terrorism as a whole. Al-Qaeda is, however, less hierarchical and much more amorphous than other terrorist groups, and seemed to disintegrate following the watershed events of 9/11 and, more recently, the 2011 killing of its leader, Osama bin Laden. However, its continuing evolution has largely been dependent on the operational, financial, and ideological support of states such as Sudan, Afghanistan, and Iran. Daniel Byman has argued that the attacks of 9/11 prove that state sponsorship of terrorist organizations has not become less important over the years; in fact, its importance has increased.³ Many local and global terrorist organizations, such as Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), have long relied heavily on state support.⁴ As the United States Counter-Terrorism Coordinator’s Office stressed in its 2009 annual report: “Without state sponsors, terrorist groups would have greater difficulty obtaining the funds, weapons, materials, and the secure areas that they need for planning and conducting operations.”⁵

In order to understand the phenomenon of state-sponsored terrorism, it is first important to understand the nature of the relationship between “patron” states and terrorist organization “beneficiaries.”

The patron-beneficiary relationship between a state that supports terrorism and the terrorist organization that the state supports usually adheres to one of three models. The first of these is a top-down model, in which the sponsoring state creates a terrorist organization to promote its interests and camouflage its activities. This sort of relationship is illustrated by al-Saiqa and the Arab Liberation Front (ALF), ostensible Palestinian terrorist organizations created by Syria in 1966 and Iraq in 1969, respectively. The second model is also one of a top-down relationship, in which a sponsoring or patron state identifies an existing terrorist organization and begins supporting it, while subordinating its goals to state interests. This model is illustrated by the relationship between Syria and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine/General Command (PFLP/GC). At the start of the Lebanese civil war in 1976, Syria compelled the PFLP/GC to support the Christians in their fight against the PFLP/GC’s natural Palestinian allies—clearly, a Syrian and not a Palestinian interest.⁶ The third model is one of a bottom-up relationship, in which a terrorist organization seeks a state’s patronage. This last model is the most ubiquitous—an outgrowth of terrorist organizations’ financial and operational needs.

Regardless of the specific nature of the patron-beneficiary relationship, states that become involved in terrorism “by proxy” succeed in influencing events and actors far beyond their borders, and at a fraction of the cost associated with developing conventional military capabilities. Furthermore, by being involved in terrorism in a discreet or covert manner, a patron state can wield influence and advance its objectives without appearing to be an aggressor and without facing retaliation from the target group or country.⁷

Classification of the cooperation between a patron state and its terrorist beneficiaries, as determined by the terrorist attacks perpetrated, elucidates state involvement in terrorism.⁸ State “involvement” in terrorism can manifest itself in different ways and to differing degrees. It may include general assistance to the terrorist organization, financial support, operational aid, or any combination thereof, or it may simply entail hosting the organization on state territory. It may include the initiation of terrorist attacks, or even their perpetration by official state agencies.

In an effort to understand state involvement in terrorism, we can classify states into four categories according to the type and level of their support. For example, a state’s supporting terrorism signals more limited involvement than a state’s perpetrating terrorism, which is the highest level of state involvement. It is also important to assess the scope of this phenomenon, including the relative likelihood of an organization’s enjoying a heightened level of state support. The greater the degree of state involvement, the smaller the number of states likely to engage in it. Following is an explanation of how a state can sponsor or support an organization.

Ideological support constitutes a state’s most basic level of support for terrorism. Terrorist organizations are sometimes used to spread a state’s ideology or doctrines, especially revolutionary ones. For example, the former Soviet Union and Iran chose to spread their revolutionary ideology (communism and Islamic fundamentalism, respectively) by founding terrorist organizations that fomented ideological revolutions in various countries. The relationship between the Islamic Republic of Iran and Hezbollah exemplifies this.⁹ In other cases, terrorist organizations were founded by extremists who were inspired by a state’s radical ideology. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), for example, was a product of Soviet ideology. In still other cases, a terrorist organization may adopt the radical ideology of a potential sponsor state in an effort to obtain material assistance. This was the case with Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and Iran. Regardless of how the link is made between the patron and the beneficiary, however, the terrorist organization always receives political, ideological, or religious indoctrination from agents of the supporting state.

Financial assistance to terrorist organizations constitutes the next level of state support for terrorism. Terrorist organizations need large sums of money to survive and thrive: to pay salaries, fund training, purchase weapons and ammunition, support operations, perpetrate attacks, spread their message through indoctrination and the provision of educational, religious, and welfare services (da’wa) to “buy the hearts and minds” of their constituency, and recruit activists and supporters. Many terrorist organizations are unable to raise such funds independently and are therefore dependent on the generous support of sponsoring states, as exemplified by Iran’s support of terrorist organizations such as Hamas, PIJ, and Hezbollah.

It is not possible to overestimate the importance of defining and classifying what is meant by “state involvement in terrorism”; the ability to formulate an approach to countering state sponsorship of terrorism rests on it. At present, all that exists is a very basic distinction between states that support terrorism and those that do not. Every year, the U.S. State Department uses this distinction to decide which states it will list as “state sponsors of terrorism” and which it will not; it claims its policy in this regard is consistent.¹¹ According to the State Department, in order to designate a country as a “State Sponsor of Terrorism,” the secretary of state must determine that the government of said country has repeatedly provided support for acts of international terrorism. Once a country has been so designated, it continues to be a “State Sponsor of Terrorism” until the designation is rescinded in accordance with statutory criteria. A wide range of sanctions is imposed as a result of this designation, including a ban on arms-related exports and sales; control of the export of dual-use items, requiring thirty-day congressional notification for goods or services that could significantly enhance the terrorist-list country’s military capability or ability to support terrorism; prohibitions on economic assistance; and the imposition of miscellaneous financial and other restrictions.¹²

The United States has made more progress than other countries toward understanding the crucial need to define what it means by “states that sponsor terrorism,” to monitor their actions, and to impose sanctions on them. Nevertheless, it appears that the U.S. government has yet to recognize the need to categorize these states according to the degree and nature of their involvement in terrorism, and to formulate policy appropriate to the relative severity of this involvement.

For the past three decades, Iran has served as a classic example of a state involved in all levels of support for terrorism. Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Iranian regime has striven to export that revolution to other Islamic territories, the most important of which have large Shi’ite populations. In order to promote this fundamental goal, Iran has established terrorist organizations, supported the organizations it has created as well as additional organizations, encouraged and initiated terrorist attacks launched by these organizations, dictated its proxies’ terrorism policies, and even used its own security agencies to launch direct terrorist attacks.

In other words, since 1979, Iran has been a state that supports terrorism. As such, it has provided all types of support for terrorist organizations, as described below.

Military support. Hasan Salama, a senior Hamas member who was involved in planning suicide attacks in Israel until he was caught in 1996, confessed after his arrest that he had been trained in Iran in preparation for attacking Israeli targets. His confession adds to the many reports that terrorists and extremists from around the world receive military and operational training at camps and facilities inside Iran. Iran has also provided terrorist groups with missiles and rockets: For example, it has supplied Hamas with Fajr-5 rockets.¹⁵

Operational assistance. Iranian embassies around the world play a central role in planning and perpetrating terrorist attacks. Sometimes Iran’s embassies provide terrorist cells with weaponry (sent via diplomatic mail), money, counterfeit passports and entry visas. Iran has also been known to recruit collaborators from within the Islamic community in the target country to help the cell carrying out the attack.¹⁶

All of these activities reflect Iran’s continuous, overarching support of terrorism—illustrative of the kind of assistance that “states sponsoring terrorism” provide terrorist organizations so as to ensure their continued activity and expansion.

Iran has made regular use of terrorist activity to target Iranian dissidents and exiles active beyond the borders of the Islamic Republic. In doing so, Iran acts both as a state “wielding” terrorism—that is, using proxies and contractors—and as a state perpetrating terrorism—that is, using its apparatuses to actually carry out attacks. In several cases, Iran has used Hezbollah activists to assassinate Iranian dissidents in Europe, “proxy assassinations” that have exposed Iran’s direct involvement in terrorism. For example, in May 1996 an Iranian intelligence official was arrested in Germany on suspicion of murdering Raza Mazluman in Paris.¹⁷ In September 1992 four Kurds who were leaders of the Iranian opposition were murdered at the Mykonos Restaurant in Berlin. Five suspects were brought to trial on charges of murder in that case. Abulhassan Banisadr, a former president of Iran, testified at their trial, accusing then-Iranian leader Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani of being personally involved in the murders. Banisadr stated that he had received information from a senior Iranian intelligence agent who had defected from Iran, indicating that Rafsanjani had been involved in the planning of the murders as early as three months prior to them.¹⁸ In his testimony, Banisadr stated that Iran’s Joint Committee for Special Operations had determined whom to assassinate. The committee was composed of five Khomeini loyalists: Ali Falhin, head of Iranian espionage; Muhsan Razai, head of the Revolutionary Guards; Muhamed Iraqi, responsible for propaganda and ties with Hezbollah; Rashir, Falhin’s predecessor; and Hagish, Khomeini’s bureau chief. Banisadr also testified that a decision to carry out an assassination required the written consent of Khomeini and Rafsanjani, after which it was implemented by the committee headed by Razai.¹⁹

Iran’s involvement in terrorism at all levels classifies it as a state that simultaneously supports, initiates, operates, and perpetrates terrorism. As former prime minister and current president of Israel Shimon Peres has said, “It should be clear: Iran is the one financing, training, guiding and pressuring Hezbollah to commit terrorist acts, and to harm innocent people…. We know that Iran is pushing to attack targets inside Israel, as well as Jewish and Israeli targets overseas.”²⁰

This chapter has stressed the importance to counter-terrorism efforts of parsing out, and understanding, what is meant by “state involvement in terrorism.” Chapter 5 discusses a unique type of terrorist organization that has evolved in recent decades and that often benefits from state sponsorship: the hybrid terrorist organization. It also offers a case study of the organization that is all but a paradigm of this new type of terrorist organization: Hezbollah.