Does the State Sponsor of Terrorism list mean anything anymore? The list was created almost 45 years ago as a diplomatic tool to identify terrorism sponsors and impose automatic sanctions upon them, but White House and State Department inconsistency and mendacity enable those on the list to dismiss the designation as unjust. Equally important, failure to designate by objective standards encourages other regimes to try to get away with terrorism so long as they spread money around Washington.

The Export Administration Act of 1979 first empowered the State Department to designate state sponsors of terrorism. The State Department initially designated four countries: Syria, Iraq, Libya, and South Yemen. Almost immediately, though, White House and diplomatic ambition enabled some regimes to escape accountability. Today, while the State Department has listed Iran as the greatest state sponsor of terrorism for almost 40 years straight, initially, President Jimmy Carter refused to designate the Islamic Republic for fear that doing so could undermine his efforts to reconcile with Ayatollah Khomeini. Only in 1984 did the Reagan administration designate Iran, by which time Iranian agents had killed hundreds of Americans, from Bethesda to Beirut.