November 10, 2017
The CIA last week released an immense trove of documents seized during the 2011 raid that killed Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, and one of them provides more details about the Islamic Republic’s ties to the group.
US intelligence officials have long said Iran formed loose ties to the terror organization from 1991 on. And those ties are documented in a 19-page Al-Qaeda report in Arabic that was included among the 470,000 documents released.
Iran has long denied any involvement with Al-Qaeda. However, the Al-Qaeda report shows how bin Laden could look across the Muslim world’s religious divide to partner with the Mideast’s Shiite power to target his ultimate enemy, the United States.
“Anyone who wants to strike America, Iran is ready to support him and help him with their frank and clear rhetoric,” the Al-Qaeda report reads.
The Associated Press examined a copy of the report released by the Long War Journal, a publication backed by the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a think tank fiercely critical of Iran and skeptical of its nuclear deal with world powers. The CIA gave the Long War Journal early access to the material.
The 19-page report was available online last Wednesday. The CIA later issued a warning about the files on its website, saying that since the material “was seized from a terrorist organization … there is no absolute guarantee that all malware has been removed.” The CIA then took down the files entirely early last Thursday, saying they were “temporarily unavailable pending resolution of a technical issue.” As of Tuesday, when the Iran Times was going ro press, they had not yet been posted again.
No author is given for the 19-page report. It is dated in the Islamic lunar year 1428 — 2007 — and offers a history of Al-Qaeda’s relationship with Iran. It says Iran offered Al-Qaeda fighters “money and arms and everything they need, and offered them training in Hezbollah camps in Lebanon, in return for striking American interests in Saudi Arabia.”
This coincides with an account offered by the US government’s 9/11 Commission, which said Iranian officials met with Al-Qaeda leaders in Sudan in either 1991 or early 1992. The commission said Al-Qaeda militants later received training in Lebanon from Hezbollah.
Al-Qaeda’s apparent siding with Iran may seem surprising today, given the enmity Sunni extremists like those of the Islamic State group have for Shiites.
But bin Laden had run out of options by 1991. The one-time fighter against the Soviets in Afghanistan had fallen out with Saudi Arabia over his opposition to the ultraconservative kingdom hosting US troops during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Meanwhile, Iran had become increasingly nervous about America’s growing military expansion in the Mideast during that war.
“The relationship between Al-Qaeda and Iran demonstrated that the Sunni-Shiite divisions did not necessarily pose an insurmountable barrier to cooperation in terrorist operations,” the 9/11 Commission report said.
Before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Iran would allow Al-Qaeda militants to pass through its borders without receiving stamps in their passports or with visas gotten ahead of time at its consulate in Karachi, Pakistan, according to the 19-page report. That helped the organization’s Saudi members avoid suspicion. They also had contact with Iranian intelligence agents, according to the report.
This also matches with US data. Eight of the 10 so-called “muscle” hijackers on Sept. 11 — those who kept passengers under control on the hijacked flights — passed through Iran before arriving in the United States, according to the 9/11 Commission.
However, the commission “found no evidence that Iran or Hezbollah was aware of the planning for what later became the 9/11 attack.” And the Al-Qaeda report released last week does not contradict that.
Last Thursday, Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency, which is close to the Pasdaran, dismissed the CIA-released documents as “a project against Tehran.”
The 19-page Al-Qaeda report describes Iranians later putting Al-Qaeda leaders and members under house arrest sometime after the Sept. 11 attacks. It mentions the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, saying it put increasing pressure on Iran, especially with the rise of Al-Qaeda in Iraq.
“They decided to keep our brothers as a card,” the report said.
That would come true in 2015 as Iran reportedly exchanged some Al-Qaeda leaders for one of its diplomats held in Yemen by the terror group’s local branch. While Yemen described it as a captive exchange, Tehran instead called it a “difficult and complicated” special operation to secure the Iranian diplomat’s freedom from the “hands of terrorists.”
“The repercussions … of the Sept. 11 attacks were undoubtedly very large and perhaps above [our] imagination,” the Al-Qaeda report said.
