VIDEO: Al Qaeda’s new leader is safeguarded in Iran: what to know about the strange terrorist and Tehran relationship
Al Qaeda, the notorious and longstanding terrorist team responsible for the September 11 attacks, has a new leader following the U.S. assassination of Ayman al-Zawahiri in Kabul last July. According to a recent United Nations intelligence report confirmed by the United States government, Egyptian-born head honcho Saif al-Adel receives a haven in the strange bedfellow that is Iran.
Adel was initially indicted and charged by the U.S. government in November 1998 for his role in killing hundreds and wounding thousands in attacks on American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Previously, Adel was allegedly involved in the “Black Hawk Down” ambush in Mogadishu in 1993. Iran placed the wanted terrorist and several other high-ranking operatives on house arrest by the weeks after the U.S. invaded neighboring Iraq. However, Tehran released the terrorists in a trade for an Iranian diplomat abducted in Yemen.
Today, the State Department’s Rewards for Justice Program has a $10 million bounty on the terrorist leader’s head.
Nevertheless, the re-illumination of al-Qaeda and Iran begs deeper questioning of the odd alliance. After all, Iranian proxies and allies are routinely in conflict with al-Qaeda associates worldwide – but simultaneously, the regime accommodates the top brass of the terrorist outfit. Moreover, as Sunni extremists, al-Qaeda and Shiite Iran are not natural partners.
But even though the relationship doesn’t gel on a strategic level, it has emerged as a marriage of convenience to undermine U.S. interests – and it is nothing new.
In the early 1990s, al Qaeda and Iranian operatives in Sudan – then a hub for Osama bin Laden – unofficially agreed to join forces to train and carry out attacks on the United States and Israel. Top al Qaeda figures then ventured to Iran and Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley for extensive explosives training.
Tehran proved a key lifeline for the terrorist establishment, later facilitating travel into Afghanistan via Iran for AQ operatives – some of whom became 9/11 hijackers.
Indeed, al Qaeda did plenty of grimy work at the behest of the Ayatollahs throughout the twenty-year U.S. occupation. Iran is said to have initially backed the American overthrow of the Taliban government, even arresting numerous al Qaeda operatives in its country, including Adel. However, as the NATO presence spread in the ensuing months and years, the Iranian government maneuvered more into the “enemy of my enemy is my friend” line of thinking.
By 2007, Tehran began to loosen constraints on senior AQ leaders and provide a critical artery for communication, funds, personnel and travel documents, passports and convenient covers. Yet the religious regime continued to play a dirty double game – supporting the Taliban to fight the U.S.-backed government in Kabul while forging diplomatic ties with the Karzai and later Ghani administrations. In 2010, reports surfaced that Tehran paid Taliban fighters an equivalent of $1000 for every U.S. service member killed – all while AQ could remain in its country and continue to run deadly operations worldwide as a de facto regional headquarters beyond its mainstay in Pakistan.
And even as the U.S. entered negotiations in Doha with the Taliban in 2019, a Tehran-controlled spin-off group called Hezb-e Walayat e-Islami, or Party of Islamic Guardianship, waged war in Afghanistan at its western neighbors’ request to further its footprint and gain influence.
So what does Tehran get out of it rubbing elbows with AQ? Domination, control and assurances that the Shia-majority nation is not subject to Sunni extremism attacks.
Of course, Tehran denies the presence of Adel and other AQ members in its borders, with Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian accusing the White House of playing a failing “Iranophobia” game and calling the Tehran-al Qaeda connection “baseless.”
Nevertheless, it is an important space to watch. Even if al Qaeda no longer has a sanctuary and influence in Afghanistan, as it did twenty-one years ago, its ability to menace everywhere, from Africa and the Middle East to South Asia and beyond, presents an undeniable danger to U.S. personnel and our interests.
Furthermore, the U.S. has far less capacity to keep tabs on al-Qaeda’s movements entrenched in Iran than in the ragged ridges of the Afghanistan and Pakistan hinterland.
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