One of the never ending myths perpetrated during during the Iraq War was the whole nonsense that Shiite and Sunni Muslims are inveterate enemies. When the Bush administration accused Iran of sheltering senior al Qaeda figures, they were met by howls of “Shia hate al-Qaeda as much as we do” or similar nonsense. The fact is that, yes, when left to their own devices, Shia and Sunni will gleefully slaughter one another. But they have much more in common than they do with us, the kaffir, and the enemy of my enemy is my friend (for the time being).

This is from al-Arabiya:

Mohammad-Javad Larijani, the international affairs assistant in the Iranian judiciary, confessed in unprecedented remarks that Iran facilitated the passage of al-Qaeda members who carried out the September 11, 2001 terror attacks in New York.

In an interview with the Iranian state TV broadcast on May 30 and circulated by activists on social media networks, Larijani narrated the details of the Iranian regime’s relations with al-Qaeda and how the Iranian intelligence supervised the passage and relocation of al-Qaeda members in Iran.

In the interview, which Al Arabiya translated a part of, Larijani said: “The lengthy report of the 9/11 commission which was headed by figures like Lee Hamilton and others mentioned in pages 240 and 241, i.e. in two or three pages, queries Iran’s role in the issue (and said that) a group of reports stated that al-Qaeda members who wanted to go to Saudi Arabia and other countries like Afghanistan or others and who entered Iranian territories by land or by air asked the Iranian authorities not to stamp their passports (and told them) that if the Saudi government knows they’ve come to Iran, it will prosecute them.”

“Our government agreed not to stamp the passports of some of them because they were on transit flights for two hours, and they were resuming their flights without having their passports stamped. However their movements were under the complete supervision of the Iranian intelligence,” he added.

Larijani said the US took this as evidence of Iran’s involvement in the 9/11 terror attacks and fined Iran billions of dollars.

No. Tell me it ain’t so. Why would we ever think that Iranian intelligence facilitating the passage of al-Qaeda terrorists was “involvement” in anything? Must be our national islamophobia at work again.

“The Americans took this as evidence of Iran’s cooperation with al-Qaeda and viewed the passage of an airplane through Iran’s airspace, which had one of the pilots who carried out the attacks and a Hezbollah military leader sitting (next to) him on board, as evidence of direct cooperation with al-Qaeda through the Lebanese Hezbollah,” he said.

Despite that, Larijani, who is the secretary of the judiciary’s so-called High Council for Human Rights, which is accused by international human rights organizations of violations and cover-ups, in Iran, confirmed that al-Qaeda members were in permanent contact with Iran’s intelligence ministry and that they used Iran in their flights to Afghanistan and other countries.

To underscore this interview, the US State Department’s Arabic service tweeted out the video of the interview.

#شاهد | اعتراف معاون السلطة القضائية الإيرانية، محمد جواد لاريجاني، في تصريحات غير مسبوقة، أن #إيران سهلت مرور عناصر #القاعدة الذين نفذوا هجمات 11 سبتمبر/أيلول 2001 في #الولايات_المتحدة، مؤكدا ما ورد في تقرير اللجنة الخاصة بالهجمات في هذا الصدد. pic.twitter.com/7sOl4dWisk

— فريق التواصل DOS (@DOTArabic) June 8, 2018

This is the machine translation (with some help from Google Translate):

Watch in an unprecedented statement, the associate of the Iranian judiciary, Mohammad Jawad Larijani, admitted that it Iran had facilitated al-Qaeda the passage of the elements who had implemented the Sept. 11, September 2001 attacks United States, confirming the report of the Special Commission on attacks in this regard.

Even though the 9/11 Commission hypothesized that Iran had helped the 9/11 attackers as have a few congressional hearings, it is always good to remind anyone who might still be getting nostalgic for the Iran nuclear deal of who, exactly, we’re dealing with.

(h/t to Adam Kredo at Free Beacon)

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