Iranian border guards stood watch in 2001 near Zahedan, an Iranian city where many al Qaeda fighters who had been based in Afghanistan had fled after the U.S. toppled the Taliban in Afghanistan
Militant group shared a pragmatic alliance that emerged out of shared hatred of the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, a newly released document shows.
Wall Street Journal, November 2, 2017 - A newly released trove of documents the U.S. found in the compound where Osama bin Laden was killed provides new insights into al Qaeda’s relationship with Iran, suggesting a pragmatic alliance that emerged out of shared hatred of the U.S. and Saudi Arabia.
After the U.S. toppled the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in 2001, members of al Qaeda, which was based there, scrambled to escape. Most of them crossed the border into Pakistan. But others moved to Iran, an al Qaeda official who appeared to be a senior member of the militant group wrote in a lengthy 2007 account in one of the documents.
Both sides were willing to overlook profound ideological and religious differences to combat common enemies. The terror group practices an extreme interpretation of Sunni Islam that considers Shiite Islam—Iran’s state religion—a rejection of the true faith.
“In my experience, the Iranian regime is the best example…of pragmatism in politics,” the al Qaeda official wrote in the document. “Anyone who wants to strike America, Iran is ready to support them and help them with money and arms and all that is required as long as they are not directly and clearly implicated.”
An official at Iran’s United Nations mission didn’t respond to a request for comment.
The release comes as President Donald Trump pursues a hard line on Iran, refusing last month to certify that Tehran was complying with a nuclear deal it reached in 2015 with six world powers including the U.S. The revelation of deeper ties between Iran and al Qaeda than many had believed could further embolden American proponents of tough new sanctions on Iran.
Many of the harshest international sanctions against the country were removed under the nuclear deal, in exchange for Iran’s agreement to scale back its disputed nuclear program. A U.N. monitoring body has repeatedly certified Iran’s compliance with the accord
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“These documents reveal the complexities of al Qaeda’s relationship with Iran in much greater detail than ever before,” said Bruce Riedel, a former career CIA official who is currently a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
Inside Osama Bin Laden's compound in Abottabad, Pakistan, where the al Qaeda militant was killed during a raid by U.S. special forces ordered by President Barack Obama. The CIA this week released new documents recovered in the raid.
Inside Osama Bin Laden's compound in Abottabad, Pakistan, where the al Qaeda militant was killed during a raid by U.S. special forces ordered by President Barack Obama. The CIA this week released new documents recovered in the raid.
The U.S. placed sanctions on three senior al Qaeda figures based in Iran last year. “There is every reason to believe that the two remain in contact today, working collaboratively when it suits mutual interests,” Mr. Riedel added.
Strategic links between Iran and al Qaeda stretch back decades. But nearly 470,000 files released Wednesday by the Central Intelligence Agency reveal the contours of a relationship that was both close but at times fraught.
Iran welcomed al Qaeda fighters as they fled Afghanistan who were mostly based in Zahedan, a city close to the Afghan border. Tehran offered the fighters shelter, money and weapons as well as training in camps run by its proxy Hezbollah in Lebanon. The author said he didn’t know whether any al Qaeda fighters ultimately ended up in Hezbollah training camps. A priority for Iran, according to the author, was to encourage the jihadists to target the U.S., particularly in Saudi Arabia.
“They offered some of our Saudi brothers… money and arms and everything they needed,” the al Qaeda official wrote. “They offered them training in the Hezbollah camps in Lebanon in exchange for striking American interests in Saudi and the Gulf.”
The Iranians gave them strict instructions to keep a low profile, banning them from using phones or gathering in groups, according to the document. But the jihadists broke those rules, angering their Iranian hosts and leading to an unraveling of the relationship.
Iranian authorities rounded up the al Qaeda fighters and told them that the Americans recorded many of their calls and accused Iran of harboring terrorists, the document’s author said.
After that, Iran tightly restricted the movement of the Qaeda fighters, imprisoning some of them and forcing others to leave. Iranian authorities sometimes provided them with forged passports to travel, according to the document.
Allegations that Iran and Hezbollah helped train al Qaeda militants aren’t new. In the early 1990s, when bin Laden was based in Sudan, al Qaeda and Iran informally agreed to cooperate on actions against Israel and the U.S. Al Qaeda operatives subsequently traveled to Iran and Lebanon for training, according to the final report of the 9/11 commission, a government body set up to investigate the circumstances behind the attacks.
After bin Laden relocated to Afghanistan in the late 1990s, the assistance continued, the commission found. Iran trained al Qaeda operatives to forge and alter passports and other documents, allowing them to travel freely around the region and to the U.S., its report said. When they transited through Iran, Iranian border officials didn’t put stamps in their passports.
Bin Laden and many al Qaeda members, including the majority of the 9/11 hijackers, were Saudi citizens. Disrupting the partnership between Saudi Arabia and the U.S. has long been a focus of al Qaeda and other extremist groups such as Islamic State. These groups resent Western influence in the kingdom, the home of Islam’s two holiest sites
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