.
At the UN General Assembly two weeks ago, Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani stood before the world and told a big lie that in the global war on terrorism Iran is a firefighter and not an arsonist. As the world’s leading state-sponsor of terrorism it takes an overdose of Persian chutzpah even for the “moderate” Rouhani to utter those words to the world, especially since there is compelling evidence that Iran continues to provide a permissive environment for Al Qaeda to operate from its territory.
With the anniversary of the bombing of the USS Cole on October 12, it’s important to separate fact from fiction.
First, Iran and Al Qaeda were early collaborators. The peculiar marriage of convenience between the great Satan of Shiite terrorism and Bin Laden’s radical Sunni Islamic Al Qaeda harkens back to the early 1990s, when Osama Bin Laden was living in Khartoum. At the time, a religious scholar in Sudan, Ahmed Abdel Rahman Hamadabi, brought an emissary from Iran named Sheikh Nomani to meet the new Al Qaeda leadership. Nomani “had access to the highest echelons of power in Tehran.” The 9/11 Commission found that this led to an “informal agreement to cooperate… for actions carried out primarily against Israel and the United States.”
After the attack on the USS Cole, a U.S. federal judge found Iran, along with Sudan, liable. The judge wrote “in the years leading up to the Cole bombing Iran was directly involved in establishing Al-Qaeda’s Yemen network and supported training and logistics for Al-Qaeda in the Gulf region.”
This covert alliance even continued the eve of the 9/11 attacks. Iranian defectors produced documents that indicate Ali Akbar Nateq Nouri, on behalf of the Supreme Leader, greenlighted contacts between Tehran and al-Qaeda in the months before September 11. In a letter containing orders to Iran’s intelligence ministry, Nateq Nouri wrote of the need to “improve our plans, especially in coordination with fighters of al-Qaeda and Hezbollah to find one objective that is beneficial to both sides.” The 9/11 Commission stated that Iran provided sanctuary and visa-less passage for many of the 9/11 hijackers, as well.
The 2017 declassified CIA documents which Seal Team Six seized from the Bin Laden raid in 2011, are chock full of references to Bin Laden’s secret, symbiotic relationship with the Ayatollahs up to and through 2007.
Second, as in all relationships, the dynamic between Iran and Al Qaeda is complicated. Iran did detain members of the Bin Laden family as bargaining chips to ultimately blackmail Al Qaeda to rein in Abu Musab al Zarqawi—the notorious terrorist/found of the Islamic Republic of Iraq – ISIS’ forerunner. Among the Bin Laden family granted “detention sanctuary” was his son—Hamza—who was secreted by Iran’s Quds Force to the tribal areas of Pakistan, where the young Bin Laden has picked up his father’s mantle as Al Qaeda’s future leader and another Iran terrorist proxy to battle ISIS.
Third, Al Qaeda and Tehran continued their understanding even after the mullahs and the P5+1 inked the JCPOA. Our own discussions with counterterrorism officials reveal that a contingent of Al Qaeda’s clerical and military leaders remained in Iran until April 2012—around the time the Obama Administration had commenced its talks with Iran via the Oman back channel. And even after their departure, a core group of five members of Al Qaeda’s military council remained behind until 2015. These were some of Al Qaeda’s senior operational commanders, including Saif al Adel (responsible for planning the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya & Tanzania) and Abu Mohammed al-Masri (Hamza Bin Laden’s father-in-law and the key operational planner not in U.S. or allied custody).
Indeed, between July 2011 and July 2016, the Obama Administration’s State and Treasury Departments—when sanctioning Al Qaeda operatives INSIDE Iran—referenced the existence of a “core facilitation pipeline” allowing Al Qaeda to operate inside Iran. This so-called core facilitation pipeline (CFP) represents the consensus intelligence of US and allied intelligence agencies implicating Iran in current Al Qaeda operations.
What is this CFP all about? Piecing together the puzzle of unclassified facts as to what this “CFP” command structure means it appears that Iran has enabled Al Qaeda to operate a financial, personnel, and weapons smuggling network under the connivance and overt support of the Supreme Leader and Iran’s Quds Force Commanders to support Al Qaeda operations in Bahrain, Qatar, Pakistan, Afghanistan and into Bangladesh. Yesterday, a new UN report implicated Iran in money laundering on behalf of Al Qaeda affiliates, including Al Shahab, revenues derived from the smuggling of Somali charcoal
Additional substantiation is based on Treasury Department sanctions declarations issued between 2012 and 2016 against Al Qaeda operatives known to be inside Iran. Starting in the Obama Administration, the U.S. government references key Al Qaeda Iranian-based operatives, including Muhsin al Fadhli, who eventually relocated to Syria as part of the notorious Al Qaeda “Khorasan Group,” and Adel Radi Saqr al Wahabi al Harbi. Other Al Qaeda operatives designated as Iran-based terrorists by the Obama Administration included Yasin al Suri, who oversaw Al Qaeda’s Iran network, and Sanafi al Nasr, who served as Al Qaeda’s chief Iran-based money facilitator and launderer until he was killed in Syria by a US drone strike.
U.S. intelligence authorities confirmed to us that Iran took no known steps after the Iran nuclear deal was signed to shut down Al Qaeda operations emanating from its territory. Despite private assurances from Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif to Secretary of State John Kerry during their final negotiations that Iran would facilitate the transfer and removal of Al Qaeda operatives identified by the Obama Administration, unclassified intelligence irrefutably reveals continued Al Qaeda activity with the full blessing of Ayatollah Khamenei and his Quds Force commanders.
And it’s not just US intelligence authorities making such accusations. A few weeks ago, the principal counter-terrorism UN Security Council investigative unit affirmed US accusations that Iran continues to facilitate Al Qaeda operations. It found that “Al Qaida leaders in the Islamic Republic of Iran have grown more prominent, working with Aiman al-Zawahiri… and projecting his authority more effectively than he could previously,” including influencing events on the ground in Syria.
Iran and Al Qaeda to this day have maintained a synergistic relationship—one defined by longevity, labyrinths, and lastingness. The mullahs and the sheikhs represent two sides of the same terror coin. Countless American and other innocent lives have been lost because of Iran’s brazen alliance with Al Qaeda. If there ever was a reason to impose harsher sanctions on Iran and compel Europeans and others to cease coddling the Iran nuclear deal and this outlaw regime its active, ongoing logistical and financial support of Al Qaeda must be paramount.
About the author: Ambassador Marc Ginsberg is Senior Diplomatic Adviser at the Counter Extremism Project.
Photo: President of Iran Addresses General Assembly. UN Photo by Cia Pak.
The views presented in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent the views of any other organization.
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Inside Iran’s Terror Alliance With Al Qaeda
Hassan Rouhani, President, Islamic Republic of Iran
October 12, 2018
At the UN General Assembly two weeks ago, Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani stood before the world and told a big lie that in the global war on terrorism Iran is a firefighter and not an arsonist. As the world’s leading state-sponsor of terrorism it takes an overdose of Persian chutzpah even for the “moderate” Rouhani to utter those words to the world, especially since there is compelling evidence that Iran continues to provide a permissive environment for Al Qaeda to operate from its territory.
With the anniversary of the bombing of the USS Cole on October 12, it’s important to separate fact from fiction.
First, Iran and Al Qaeda were early collaborators. The peculiar marriage of convenience between the great Satan of Shiite terrorism and Bin Laden’s radical Sunni Islamic Al Qaeda harkens back to the early 1990s, when Osama Bin Laden was living in Khartoum. At the time, a religious scholar in Sudan, Ahmed Abdel Rahman Hamadabi, brought an emissary from Iran named Sheikh Nomani to meet the new Al Qaeda leadership. Nomani “had access to the highest echelons of power in Tehran.” The 9/11 Commission found that this led to an “informal agreement to cooperate… for actions carried out primarily against Israel and the United States.”
After the attack on the USS Cole, a U.S. federal judge found Iran, along with Sudan, liable. The judge wrote “in the years leading up to the Cole bombing Iran was directly involved in establishing Al-Qaeda’s Yemen network and supported training and logistics for Al-Qaeda in the Gulf region.”
This covert alliance even continued the eve of the 9/11 attacks. Iranian defectors produced documents that indicate Ali Akbar Nateq Nouri, on behalf of the Supreme Leader, greenlighted contacts between Tehran and al-Qaeda in the months before September 11. In a letter containing orders to Iran’s intelligence ministry, Nateq Nouri wrote of the need to “improve our plans, especially in coordination with fighters of al-Qaeda and Hezbollah to find one objective that is beneficial to both sides.” The 9/11 Commission stated that Iran provided sanctuary and visa-less passage for many of the 9/11 hijackers, as well.
The 2017 declassified CIA documents which Seal Team Six seized from the Bin Laden raid in 2011, are chock full of references to Bin Laden’s secret, symbiotic relationship with the Ayatollahs up to and through 2007.
Second, as in all relationships, the dynamic between Iran and Al Qaeda is complicated. Iran did detain members of the Bin Laden family as bargaining chips to ultimately blackmail Al Qaeda to rein in Abu Musab al Zarqawi—the notorious terrorist/found of the Islamic Republic of Iraq – ISIS’ forerunner. Among the Bin Laden family granted “detention sanctuary” was his son—Hamza—who was secreted by Iran’s Quds Force to the tribal areas of Pakistan, where the young Bin Laden has picked up his father’s mantle as Al Qaeda’s future leader and another Iran terrorist proxy to battle ISIS.
Third, Al Qaeda and Tehran continued their understanding even after the mullahs and the P5+1 inked the JCPOA. Our own discussions with counterterrorism officials reveal that a contingent of Al Qaeda’s clerical and military leaders remained in Iran until April 2012—around the time the Obama Administration had commenced its talks with Iran via the Oman back channel. And even after their departure, a core group of five members of Al Qaeda’s military council remained behind until 2015. These were some of Al Qaeda’s senior operational commanders, including Saif al Adel (responsible for planning the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya & Tanzania) and Abu Mohammed al-Masri (Hamza Bin Laden’s father-in-law and the key operational planner not in U.S. or allied custody).
Indeed, between July 2011 and July 2016, the Obama Administration’s State and Treasury Departments—when sanctioning Al Qaeda operatives INSIDE Iran—referenced the existence of a “core facilitation pipeline” allowing Al Qaeda to operate inside Iran. This so-called core facilitation pipeline (CFP) represents the consensus intelligence of US and allied intelligence agencies implicating Iran in current Al Qaeda operations.
What is this CFP all about? Piecing together the puzzle of unclassified facts as to what this “CFP” command structure means it appears that Iran has enabled Al Qaeda to operate a financial, personnel, and weapons smuggling network under the connivance and overt support of the Supreme Leader and Iran’s Quds Force Commanders to support Al Qaeda operations in Bahrain, Qatar, Pakistan, Afghanistan and into Bangladesh. Yesterday, a new UN report implicated Iran in money laundering on behalf of Al Qaeda affiliates, including Al Shahab, revenues derived from the smuggling of Somali charcoal
Additional substantiation is based on Treasury Department sanctions declarations issued between 2012 and 2016 against Al Qaeda operatives known to be inside Iran. Starting in the Obama Administration, the U.S. government references key Al Qaeda Iranian-based operatives, including Muhsin al Fadhli, who eventually relocated to Syria as part of the notorious Al Qaeda “Khorasan Group,” and Adel Radi Saqr al Wahabi al Harbi. Other Al Qaeda operatives designated as Iran-based terrorists by the Obama Administration included Yasin al Suri, who oversaw Al Qaeda’s Iran network, and Sanafi al Nasr, who served as Al Qaeda’s chief Iran-based money facilitator and launderer until he was killed in Syria by a US drone strike.
U.S. intelligence authorities confirmed to us that Iran took no known steps after the Iran nuclear deal was signed to shut down Al Qaeda operations emanating from its territory. Despite private assurances from Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif to Secretary of State John Kerry during their final negotiations that Iran would facilitate the transfer and removal of Al Qaeda operatives identified by the Obama Administration, unclassified intelligence irrefutably reveals continued Al Qaeda activity with the full blessing of Ayatollah Khamenei and his Quds Force commanders.
And it’s not just US intelligence authorities making such accusations. A few weeks ago, the principal counter-terrorism UN Security Council investigative unit affirmed US accusations that Iran continues to facilitate Al Qaeda operations. It found that “Al Qaida leaders in the Islamic Republic of Iran have grown more prominent, working with Aiman al-Zawahiri… and projecting his authority more effectively than he could previously,” including influencing events on the ground in Syria.
Iran and Al Qaeda to this day have maintained a synergistic relationship—one defined by longevity, labyrinths, and lastingness. The mullahs and the sheikhs represent two sides of the same terror coin. Countless American and other innocent lives have been lost because of Iran’s brazen alliance with Al Qaeda. If there ever was a reason to impose harsher sanctions on Iran and compel Europeans and others to cease coddling the Iran nuclear deal and this outlaw regime its active, ongoing logistical and financial support of Al Qaeda must be paramount.
About the author: Ambassador Marc Ginsberg is Senior Diplomatic Adviser at the Counter Extremism Project.
Photo: President of Iran Addresses General Assembly. UN Photo by Cia Pak.
The views presented in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent the views of any other organization.
