Authored by Eric Zuesse,

On March 14th, Iran announced that it will never pay the $10.5B that a U.S. court demanded it pay for the 9/11 attacks.

The same Bill-Clinton-appointed judge who had ruled, on 29 September 2015, that Saudi Arabia has sovereign immunity for 9/11 and so can’t be sued for it, ruled recently, on March 9th that Iran doesn’t have sovereign immunity and fined Iran $10.5 billion to be paid to 9/11 victims and insurers; but, on March 14, Iran’s Foreign Ministry said Iran won’t pay, because, as the Ministry’s spokesman Hossein Jaberi Ansari put it, "The ruling is ludicrous and absurd to the point that it makes a mockery of the principle of justice while [it] further tarnishes the US judiciary’s reputation.”

The United States is allied with Iran’s enemy Saudi Arabia, the largest purchaser of U.S.-made weapons, and also the top influence in the Gulf Cooperation Council of Arabic oil royal families regarding where they buy their weapons. Those purchases, which are crucial to the stockholders in Lockheed Martin and other U.S. weapons-makers, are determined basically by the Saud family, the owners of Saudi Arabia.

The Sauds, as the owners of the leading fundamentalist-Sunni country, including sole ownership of the world’s largest oil company Aramco, also own Islam’s two holiest sites, Mecca and Medina, and are therefore the leaders of Islam worldwide, because all Muslims (not only fundamentalist Sunnis) are required to bow down in prayer five times every day facing Mecca — facing the Saud family and the clergy that authorize continued ownership of Saudi Arabia by the Saud family: the Wahhabist clergy. Back in 1744, the founder of Wahhabism, Muhammad Ibn Wahhab, and the founder of Saudi Arabia, Muhammad Ibn Saud, jointly swore an eternal oath that Saud’s descendants would own the country, and that Wahhab’s clergymen would grant them God’s approval of their ownership and of their right to conquer other lands to expand the faith. (Religions throughout history have mainly been spread by conquest.)

Part of that oath was also that the Sauds would exterminate Shia Muslims, so as to unify Islam worldwide as fundamentalist Sunnis, in order to enable a unified (100% Sunni) faith to take over the entire world. Iran is the center of Shia Islam, and so is especially the target of the Sauds to conquer and ‘convert’ the world to Wahhabism — which is called “Salafism” outside Saudi Arabia, and which is known outside Islam as simply fundamentalist Sunni Islam. Al Qaeda, ISIS, and other global-jihadist groups, all are Salafists; they’re all Sunni fundamentalists. Shia Islam has no real equivalent to this “global Caliphate” idea, the goal of conquering the world to ‘convert’ all lands someday to Islam. Jihadism, in that sense, doesn’t exist, except in the Sunni variant of Islam. Perhaps this is what Mr. Ansari meant by calling that judge’s verdict “ludicrous and absurd.” (However, Shia Islam tends to be more anti-Israeli than does Sunni Islam; but, again, that’s no sort of global aspiration; it’s strictly Middle-Eastern.) (And, of course, historians, and the U.S. government, know these things, even if the U.S. public don’t — especially because it would be inconvenient for the U.S. government if the U.S. public knew what’s actually driving this nation’s foreign policies.)

According to the evidence (or alleged evidence) that the judge in this case, George B. Daniels, cited in his “Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law” — in this case called “Fiona Havlish v. Usama Bin Laden”:

Iran has been waging virtually an undeclared war against both the United States and Israel for thirty years. ... Iran wages this undeclared war through asymetrical, or unconventional strategies and terrorism, often through proxies such as Hizballah, Hamas [which is actually “a Palestinian Sunni-Islamic fundamentalist organization” and as such is devoted to the destruction of Shiite Iran as well as Jewish Israel], Al Qaeda [which is likewise Salafist], and others [all of which are Salafist]. ... For more than two decades, the IRGC [Islamic Republican Guard Corps, run by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khameni] has provided funding and/or training for terrorism operations targeting American citizens, including Hizballah and Al Qaeda. [Hizballah has targeted American citizens who are serving in the U.S. military in Lebanon, because Hizballah is anti-Israeli, not because they are anti-American; and the U.S. military protect Israel. However, Al Qaeda targets non-Sunnis everywhere, and this also means that Al Qaeda is anti-Shia and aims to conquer Iran too: Al Qaeda is Salafist, dedicated to the conquest of all non-Sunni nations. Iran doesn’t fund or train its own enemies, such as Al Qaeda and ISIS.] … The factual reality — as found by the 9/11 Report — is that ’the relationship between Al Qaeda and Iran demonstrated that Sunni-Shia divisions did not necessarily pose an insurmountable barrier to cooperation between terrorist organizations.' ... While Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda were headquartered in Sudan in the early 1990s, Hassan al-Turabi fostered the creation of a foundation and alliance for combined Sunni and Shi’a opposition to the United States and the West, an effort that was agreed to and joined by Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, leaders of Al Qaeda, and by the leadership of Iran. … Thereafter, senior Al Qaeda operatives and trainers traveled to Iran to receive training in explosives. … In 1993, in a meeting in Khartoum, Sudan, arranged by Ali Mohamed, a confessed Al Qaeda terrorist and trainer now in a U.S. prison, … Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri met directly with Iran’s master terrorist Imad Mughniyah and Iranian officials. [Wikipedia’s article on that witness, Ali Mohamed, says: "Ali Abdul Saoud Mohamed, is a double agent who worked for both the CIA and Egyptian Islamic Jihad simultaneously, reporting on the workings of each for the benefit of the other.” He would tell U.S. interrogators whatever they wanted to hear — such as that Iran was significantly involved in the 9/11 plot.]

Iran’s news-report on March 14th summarizes that U.S. court decision by saying:

The court ruling is based on the 9/11 Commission Report which stated that some attackers moved through Iran and did not have their passports stamped. The verdict comes as none of the 19 hijackers on September 11 were Iranian citizens. Fifteen were from Saudi Arabia, while two from the United Arab Emirates [another Salafist-run country] and one each from Egypt and Lebanon [Salafists from each].