The Lieberman Option

The news from Iran is of a harsh crackdown. The Associated Press yesterday picked up a report from the government controlled news agency there that Iran "has arrested 20 people — including some foreigners — near the border with Iraq and accused them of belonging to a spy network." Also yesterday, the AP reported that "Iranian police and plainclothes security agents broke up a sit-in marking Monday's anniversary of a bloody raid on a Tehran university dormitory, then stormed the offices of the country's main pro-democracy student group, student leaders said. Fifteen students and a mother were beaten and detained, they said."

And it is not only its own people that the Iranian government is attacking. Brigadier General Kevin Bergner of the American forces in Iraq last week charged that groups of up to 60 Iraqis at a time have been taken out of Iraq and brought to Iran for military training at three camps near Tehran, where they have been instructed in the use of mortars, rockets, and improvised explosive devices. He said the Iranian government has also provided up to $3 million a month to fund attacks on American troops in Iraq.

Our Joseph Goldstein reports this morning on court documents indicating possible Iranian involvement in a plot to blow up John F. Kennedy International Airport here in New York City. A judge in Trinidad wrote that evidence, including tape recordings, suggests a Shiite imam, Kareem Ibrahim, spoke of finding backing for the JFK plot in Iran. In those recordings, the judge, Prakash Moosai, wrote, Mr. Ibrahim "refers to an ‘Iranian brother' passing through Trinidad and Tobago, and of sending a ‘trusted brother' to Iran to speak to the top men of the revolutionary movement there about the plan."

The American politician sounding the alarm about the Iranian threat most articulately at the moment is Senator Lieberman, Independent of Connecticut. "The Iranian government by its actions has declared war on us," Mr. Lieberman said in a July 2 press release. "The United States government has a responsibility to use all instruments at its disposal to stop these terrorist attacks against our soldiers and allies in Iraq — including keeping open the possibility of using military force against the terrorist infrastructure inside Iran."