The Iranian exploitation of the gray area

Terrorism is a destructive industry where humanity pays a heavy price. It is the brainchild of some regimes’ masters.

It operates in the gray areas of international law, where the difference between terror and resistance is not clear and where there are ambiguous interpretations of the texts of the three monotheistic religions.

The terrorism of a militia somewhere may be exploited by the same international law that fights terrorism as if it is authorizing the militia itself to commit the act.

The same ambiguity applies to terrorist organizations. The religious texts that preserve human life and dignity are often interpreted as texts that make the assassination of another human a divine and sacred act, rewarding those who commit it.

In both cases, the gray area is exploiting the environment to manufacture terrorism and breed its elements, laying the foundation to present its product either under the garb of patriotism, or religious interpretations of biblical, evangelical, or Qur’anic texts.

Again, in both cases, they fail to provide clear and explicit explanation or proof of carrying out terrorist tasks.

The matter is not limited to monotheistic religious texts but also non-monotheistic religions, which needs to reconsider bridging the gaps in which this industry grows and flourishes — if there is a sincere desire to stop this bloody sequence that starts in the mind and ends with a dead body.

The Iranian regime is one that is cunningly capable of exploiting the gray areas in civil and religious contexts to manufacture terrorism, which is evident from the events it carried out internationally for which it always finds revolutionary or doctrinal justifications.

Security is a costly industry for peoples and states, but terrorism, on the other hand, is a profitable industry for some regimes and governments.

Yasser El-Shazly

What is even more confusing than making these scenes is that the Iranian regime transcends them with a tragicomedy, trying to find an advanced position for itself in combating these acts, such as making the regime look like the criminal and law on one hand, and the scholar and the misguided on the other.

It is a peculiar situation in which the Iranian regime dances ecstatically for its salvation because of the flaws in law and jurisprudence.

Those who follow the operations of pursuing and assassinating the leaders of terrorist organizations, such as Al-Qaeda chiefs Osama bin Laden and Ayman Al-Zawahiri, may discover part of this reality.

On the one hand, the Iranian regime provided support to these leaders in terms of providing havens, material, and logistical support; and on the other hand, the regime traded information related to them.

Since it is the sponsor and the merchant at the same time, it is natural for the Iranian regime to raise the value of its merchandise, which is the information here, and present it whenever it has the chance to acquire cards that guarantee its victory, ecstasy, and, more dangerously, survival and continuity.

Therefore, it is maybe important to analyze and dismantle terrorist operations of Iranian domestic and international activity to determine its gains or losses with respect to the timing of those operations.

In the case of the assassination of Bin Laden, the main player in revealing his location to American intelligence was his Yemeni wife, as his location was determined by tracing her movements from Iran to where he was staying. And it is very difficult to expose her without the cooperation of those who provided her with care, protection, and planned her movements.

The same applies to the discovery of Al-Zawahiri’s hiding location. He was a target of US intelligence for 21 years, and reports indicate that his location was traced through the movements of his wife and family from Iran to where he was killed.

This is the same scenario that will inevitably be repeated with Saif Al-Adl and Mohammed Al-Masri, who have been nominated to lead the organization, and who reside until this moment in Iran.

Certainly, the Taliban movement also possesses a treasure of information about the Iranian regime’s involvement in the assassinations of both Bin Laden and Al-Zawahiri. They can play the cards to engineer relations between Kabul and Tehran in the next stage.

Security is a costly industry for peoples and states, but terrorism, on the other hand, is a profitable industry for some regimes and governments.

If more realistic intellectual, legal, and jurisprudence frameworks are not found to limit the exploitation of gray areas in international law and the three monotheistic religions’ texts, the danger of these regimes may leap and infiltrate us in more powerful forms in the future.

It is especially so, since the Iranian regime is currently actively collecting and organizing propaganda papers that certainly reflect its future intentions in terms of type, importance, and level of destruction, despite all its arguments of reducing the level of danger or justifying its existence.

• Yasser El-Shazly is an Egyptian journalist.