Hooman Majd explains why most Iranians don't view Hezbollah and Hamas as terrorist groups. Iran created Hezbollah and funds both organizations, which many in the Muslim world see as resistance movements rather than terror groups. Majd notes Iran has signaled willingness to negotiate its support if the U.S. enters talks.
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[Speaker:Hooman Majd] Well, as far as the Iranians are concerned, it's not. And when I say that, I don't mean just the government of Iran. I think most of the Iranian people, most of them, including those who are very against Ahmadinejad in particular or even the Islamic Republic as a system, would not agree with that characterization. Iran specifically supports two organizations that in the United States we have deemed terrorist organizations. One is Hezbollah and the other is Hamas. Those are the two specific organizations that Iran has actively supported. They claim not militarily, the United States claims militarily, but certainly morally and certainly financially has supported and they make no bones about it. They say they do not characterize either of those groups as a terrorist organization. Hamas, even though the Israelis and the United States consider it a terrorist organization, the Western Europeans consider it a terrorist organization, most of the Muslim world do not. They consider them a resistance group. They consider them a democratically elected political party in the Palestinian territories that is also a resistance group that is fighting the Israeli occupation. That's an argument we can have for hours. If I were to take one position, you would take the other. Hezbollah is actually an even simpler thing because as far as the Iranians are concerned, it's a group that was formed to get rid of the Israeli occupation of Lebanon, was successful in getting rid of the Israeli occupation of Lebanon, and has actually really not really attacked Israel and doesn't even have as its charter, for example, as Hamas does, the destruction of Israel. It's a Lebanese group. It's a political party. It's going to be in parliament. It's going to be, you know, have have politicians in government, and it's there to protect the Lebanese people, and that includes a very large population of Shiites who Iran has very close relations with. And in fact, Iran created Hezbollah. So they don't consider that a terrorist group. I mean, by and large, it's not just the Iranian people who don't consider it a terrorist group. The vast majority of the Muslim world don't. So we're— I wouldn't say we're on a different side than the Muslim world or even the Third World to a large degree. On the issue of whether Hamas and Hezbollah are terrorist organizations. The fact of the matter is that even Hamas and Hezbollah, Iran's support of Hamas and Hezbollah, is up for debate and up for negotiations. They've made that clear once before, that they would be willing to bring that to the table if the United States wanted to talk about it. So far we haven't taken them up on that.
