Some fair points, but you assume that Iran would be treated like a defendant in an American criminal court if that happened. Al Qaeda and groups like them cannot really function without the support of sponsor states. It’s a fair bet that the US would lash out wildly against every major Islamic state sponsor of terrorism.

What most Paul haters don’t seem to understand is that this is uncharted territory. No state has ever been hit with a genuine WMD terrorist attack of any significance (gas attacks like the Aum Shinryoko attack don’t count). If that happens, no one knows how our government reacts. Depending on the severity of the attack, our own military might retaliate without political authority if the political authority acts too weakly against suspect states.