World Trade Center (2001–present)
The buildings are among many created by the World Trade Centers Association. The original World Trade Center featured the landmark Twin Towers, which opened in 1973, and were the tallest buildings in the world at the time of their completion. They were destroyed on the morning of September 11, 2001, when al-Qaeda-affiliated hijackers flew two Boeing 767 jets into the complex in a coordinated act of terrorism. The attacks on the World Trade Center killed 2,753 people. The resulting collapse of the World Trade Center caused structural failure in the surrounding buildings as well. The process of cleaning up and recovery at the World Trade Center site took eight months, after which rebuilding of the site commenced.
September 11 attacks advance-knowledge conspiracy theories
On December 22, 2010, a United States Federal Judge signed a default judgment holding Iran, the Taliban and al-Qaeda liable following an open court hearing in which the evidence was produced by the plaintiffs' attorneys which they said showed that Iran assisted the hijackers. 9/11 commission members and witnesses who claimed they were Iranian defectors and members of Ministry of Intelligence and National Security and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards also testified during the hearing. The suit "Havlish, et al. v. bin Laden, et al" was brought in 2001 by Fiona Havlish whose husband died in the North Tower. Abolghasem Mesbahi, who claimed he was a former Ministry of Intelligence operative in charge of Iran's espionage operations in Western Europe testified that he was part of a task force that designed contingency plans for unconventional warfare against the United States code-named "Shaitan dar Atash"/"Satan in Flames" which included crashing hijacked passenger airliners into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the White House, and that in the summer of 2001 he received three coded messages telling him to activate the plan. An Iranian government memorandum was presented as evidence that Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei had pre knowledge of the attacks. Several days after the ruling a spokesperson for Iran's Foreign ministry said charges that Iran "had a hand in planning the attacks and that one of al-Qaeda's members was present inside the country is baseless" and said "With the repetition of such claims to back its political aims the U.S. is putting the peace and security of the world in jeopardy,".