As the war drums are banging again at the behest of the dual military-industrial complex and Israeli lobby, Vice President Pence has now falsely claimed that Soleimani was tied to the September 11th terrorist attacks.
Mr. Pence said on Twitter that General Soleimani “assisted in the clandestine travel to Afghanistan of 10 of the 12 terrorists who carried out the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States.”
This lacks evidence. How Mr. Pence arrived at this number and this account is unclear. From what is commonly known about General Suleimani and the group of men who carried out the Sept. 11 attacks, their paths did not cross.
To start, many observers were quick to point out that 19 terrorists, not 12, were involved in the attacks. Katie Waldman, a spokeswoman for Mr. Pence, clarified that he was referring to a subset of 12 of the attackers who are known to have traveled through Afghanistan. She did not provide any evidence supporting the claim that General Suleimani chose to assist only 10 of them.
The notion that General Suleimani abetted the attackers at all also appears dubious.
By 2001, General Suleimani had already been named the head of the Quds Force, the powerful security branch that often coordinates with other terrorist groups worldwide. Yet General Suleimani was not named at any point in the “9/11 Commission Report.”
In fact, the report states in no uncertain terms that neither the Iranian government nor Hezbollah, a group that General Suleimani worked closely with, ever knew anything about the attacks or helped facilitate them:
We have found no evidence that Iran or Hezbollah was aware of the planning for what later became the 9/11 attack.At the time of their travel through Iran, the Al Qaeda operatives themselves were probably not aware of the specific details of their future operation.
Why General Suleimani, the leader of a hard-line Shiite Muslim military apparatus, would have come to the aid of members of Al Qaeda, a Sunni extremist group with strong ties to Saudi Arabia, is also unclear.
General Suleimani spent much of his career undermining Saudi Arabia, and once even plotted to have the Saudi ambassador to the United States assassinated. At various points, he was also said to have helped facilitate the capture of Qaeda militants on behalf of the United States. (source)
It is an outright lie to say that Soleimani was involved in 9/11, just as it is to say that Iran was involved in it.
I began studying Islam over twenty years ago, and I remember when 9/11 happened. I remember saying before it was officially announced who did the attacks that it was likely the Taliban because I had studied about the Taliban as a part of my regular readings on Islam, as well as the ties of terrorism to Saudi Arabia.
There is no evidence whatsoever that Iran was involved in 9/11 or any serious attack on US interests, and the reason is because the US has made very clear, at the insistence of Israel, that anything Iran does can and will be used against her to attempt to justify a war.
Let us recall that the 9/11 report directly linked Saudi Arabia to the 9/11 attacks, all the way up to some of the highest echelons of the Royal Saud Family. Yet while people have called for the US to retaliate against Saudi Arabia, nothing has been done to her save for the US to establish closer ties, such as with Trump’s arms deals to the country which he and those in his administration know are going to be used to further the Saudi genocide of Yemen in her conflict with the southern Arabian nation.
The fact that the US refuses to attack Saudi Arabia, a nation who has been directly tied to the attacks, yet has been attempting for almost two decades now to connect Iran by direct evidence or deceit to the 9/11 attacks in order to justify conflict with her tells one what the true priorities of the US are. She is not interested in justice for the victims or an honest response, but she is rather attempting to re-frame the perception of the event in order to justify her own geopolitical programs, even if it means making bald-faced lies and covering up open evidence and serious questions that many people and journalists have asked, such as the five “dancing Israelis” at the site of the attacks who have confirmed tied to Israeli intelligence.
The saddest part of the constant push to blame Iran for the attacks is the complicit stupidity of the American public by their refusal to look out for their own interests and to continually submit to the plain words of the government or those of Israeli public relations officers while ignoring real evidence about what may have truly happened. This kind of willful naivete is inexcusable for most people in a day when information is easily available to anybody at any time in any place, and when it has never been so possible to obtain multiple views about a subject before settling into any particular opinion.
For many years, I gave speeches and events about Islam because of my genuine concern over the religion. Many of these speeches were given to audiences of American Christians. Something I always did was to present what Islam teaches in her sacred scripture (the Koran), and then to explain that in the words of Islamic sacred tradition (the Hadith, Tarikh, Tabaqat literature, and other work in Shariah law throughout history) so that one could see what certain teachings are, how they are understood, and what the effects yield.
What I found is that that people were willing to listen to the teachings about Islam, but when I would speak to the same audiences about the Catholic Faith and using the exact same procession of logic- for the error of Islam is not uncovered by using a different standard of reasoning, but the exact same process since the object of study is the pursuit of objective truth -the same people would not listen to me. I found this interesting and frustrating, and I soon realized that many of my speeches, while I gave them for the evangelical good of people, were not serving this purpose, since those who came to hear them did so to confirm their own prejudices rather than learn something new, and were not inclined to truth but rather to accept a narrative that was as illogical as that proposed by Islam, except that said narrative was one which they preferred.
A similar problem exists with the Iran situation, for those in power are attempting to force a war with Iran and so are attempting to shape public prejudices by any means possible to their favor when reality is not so, and unfortunately there are many who are willing to support this. However, thankfully, there are many people who are also opposed to this because the social idea that Iran and Islam are the greatest dangers facing the US is weakening in the public consciousness.
This is a reason I fear that another 9/11 type situation, and one worse than 9/11, is imminent because from the perspective of one attempting to shape a social narrative, and given the increased desensitization that has taken place in the US to violence, one would likely need a heinous event to motivate people to support a war and inspire recruitment to the armed forces.
This may or may not involve Iran, but whatever the form, there is a strong chance in the next decade we will witness a similar event, and we should be ready to consider it as we have 9/11 or similar events that have been confirmed to be government-sponsored acts of terrorism in order to justify policy ends, which is to see them in the context of the geopolitical zeitgeist and those who stand to benefit the most in terms of power and money, which will likely be the Israeli lobby and the military-industrial complex.