Historian and political commentator Brian Feeney has been a columnist with The Irish News for three decades. He is a former SDLP councillor in Belfast and co-author of the award-winning book Lost Lives

THE cataclysmic events of September 11 2001, known everywhere by the American dating convention as 9/11, still reverberate today in both the US and in the Middle East, in Iran, and indeed in the wider Muslim world.

The most arresting images are of course the photographs of the vast conflagrations when planes loaded with tons of aviation fuel exploded as they hit the twin towers of the World Trade Center.

Many people forget that there were four planes involved in what was a carefully coordinated attack on symbols of American power.

Shortly after the explosions in New York, another plane crashed into the Pentagon, near Washington DC, and later a fourth plane nose-dived into a field in Pennsylvania.

It is widely believed the intention was for it to strike the White House or perhaps the US Senate, but the passengers tackled the hijackers and frustrated their plan, resulting in the crash with the loss of everyone on board.

Shockwaves at this, the first attack on the American mainland since 1812, travelled around the world.

Governments hurried to express sympathy at the enormous loss of life – over 3,000 – and horror at the ruthless, premeditated suicides of the terrorists who had carried out the onslaughts.

Those sentiments weren’t universal, however. There was dancing in the streets of some Arab countries and rejoicing in Palestine and Iran that “the great Satan” had been struck such deadly blows.

Not many paused to consider the motives of the hijackers or their ideology or indeed why the coordinated attacks had happened.