Iran recently held a so-called "anti terrorism" conference in Tehran in which representatives from several countries, including Pakistan, Iraq and Afghanistan, attended.
U.S. State Department spokesman Victoria Nuland noted how ironic it was for Iran, the world's most active state sponsor of terror, to host an anti-terrorism conference:
"Iran's financial, material and logistical support for terrorist and militant groups throughout the Middle East and Central Asia flies in the face of efforts to promote peace, threatens economic stability, and undermines the growth of democracy throughout the region. So instead of engaging constructively in the region with the international community, the Iranian government continues to engage unhelpfully."
During the two-day conference, Iran's Supreme leader Ali Khamenei took the opportunity to excoriate western nations for "terrorist behaviors," and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad expressed his doubts about the September 2001 terrorist attacks on America – outrageously claiming that the U.S has benefited from those attacks, as it has, he added, from the Holocaust.
The Iranian government's unfounded diatribes against the United States and its allies on the subject of terrorism, while it continues to fund and train terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, send weapons to the Taliban in Afghanistan, and provide logistical support to Syria to suppress unarmed civilians, are cynical attempts to disguise its own abysmal record.
The United States will continue to maintain strong ties with its allies in the region and throughout the world to combat the scourge of terrorism with cooperative action, and not false statements and empty words.
