Link on current US funding:https://theintercept.com/2019/10/26/syrian-rebels-turkey-kur... As other comments saying, this info always lags a few years. But there's never been any official reckoning when these details come out, so no reason to assume it has stopped. See also US promotion of Elliot Abrams, despite his connection to the EL Mozote massacres.

On your second point, I want to be clear that I'm not defending the Iranian gov't. I disagree with the use of sanctions that disproportionately effect the least powerful in there society, by design. This is compounded by the fact that the reasons for these sanctions are not moral violations, as the US and its allies behave in much the same way, but instead about international power.

Thank you for the link. I think there's an argument that the syrian rebels were fighting terrorism before they were themselves terrorists, but I agree that the US should not be involved in the conflict, and definitely shouldn't fund paramilitary groups with the potential to become terrorists. The U.S. now admitting it was a mistake is important though, because the point of sanctions is to force a government to change its policies.

Geopolitics is messy. In the end I don't see any other strategy besides war that could force Irans hand. If the choices are 1. Show the world that purposefully funding terrorism goes unpunished 2. war, or 3. sanctions I think sanctions are the choice that provides the greatest amount of utility, even if they do harm many.

Purposely funding terrorism does go unpunished, if you're a US ally. This is my point, that our sanctions against Iran have nothing to do with "morality". They are about power.

Yes, that's what being allies is. We do stuff for them they do stuff for us. I don't think that's immoral. Cooperation allows us to accomplish incredible things. Cooperation is built on relationships and trust.

As in the US trust's them to fund terrorists in way that advantages us? Then yes, we agree on the state of the world. I just think it's bad.

"No longer" is doing a lot of work here, because by its nature none of this stuff comes out for a number of years after it occurs. We might also ask whether the "rebel" groups the US arms in e.g. Syria are terrorist organizations from another perspective, where four years ago DoD-funded groups were fighting CIA-funded groups: https://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-fg-cia-pentagon-...

> Afaik the U.S. no longer sponsors terrorists.

I find that very hard to believe, considering the activities of the CIA -- just the ones we know about -- over the last several decades (or, really, since its beginning).

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Side note:

Does selling billions of dollars worth of arms to Saudi Arabia count as sponsoring terrorists?

cf. Jamal Khashoggi, et al.

A state killing a political opponent, however unacceptable, isn't terrorism. The point of terrorism is that it effects unsuspecting bystanders. I already said I think we should sanction the saudis though, because they actually are sponsoring terrorism. See the Yemen war and their funding of al queda as well as their infiltration of twitter.

"unsuspecting bystanders"

What about civilians killed by Saudi Arabia with American-made cluster bombs?[0] Do they count?

[0] https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/05/06/yemen-saudis-using-us-cl...

I literally said that the Saudi's actions in Yemen were terrorism in the comment you're replying to?

Oh, right, haven't read that far :) Sorry)

The US has sponsored terrorists covertly for decades now. Just because they stopped publically sponsoring terrorists doesn't mean much when most of the last century was spent covertly sponsoring them too.

Ok but if Iran stopped publicly sponsoring terrorists and trying to nuke Israel they wouldn't be sanctioned. The public support is an integral part of why they're sanctioned.

This is, basically, naive and your view of the world would likely be greatly expanded by reading Manufacturing Consent or Inventing Reality.

Iran would definitely be sanctioned no matter what. The goal of sanctioning Iran is to suppress the Iranian economy and prevent them from somehow achieving the kind of influence that they would naturally have over the Middle East.

"they've never threatened nuking anyone"

Not quite the same, but anyway.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samson_Option