Brian M Downing
Secretary of State Pompeo, in the last days of the Trump administration, has accused Iran of harboring al Qaeda. The allegation is far more serious than past ones. Pompeo asserts that al Qaeda has a large. above-ground presence in the Islamic Republic and it has the protection of the ruling mullahs and generals.
US intelligence figures have called Pompeo’s statement an opinion rather than a finding. However, it comes on the heels of a Mossad assassination of an al Qaeda figure on the streets of Tehran and clearly AQ personnel were in Iran in 2002. What is the relationship between Iran and al Qaeda? And what of al Qaeda’s connections to Pakistan, a US ally?
Shia, Sunni, Jihadi
A large AQ presence supported by the Islamic Republic is, on first glance, implausible. The ideological orientations of Sunni jihadism and Shiism are incompatible and hostile. Jihadis deem the Shia loathsome heretics whose extirpation is essential to purifying the Islamic world and restoring the caliphate.
ISIL and AQ groups place high importance on killing Shia and inciting sectarian warfare. Fighters show disdain for and superiority to existing norms on violence by grisly displays of barbarism. They are Islamic Uber Men paving the way for the caliphate. Shia are killed by car bombs in markets. Pilgrims are massacred on their way to holy sites. One of al Qaeda’s first operations in post-Saddam Iraq was a bombing of a bazaar in Najaf and a few years later the revered Karbala mosque. Internecine sectarian warfare ensued for years.
Shia are routinely attacked by jihadis in Afghanistan and Pakistan. ISIL and al Qaeda hit Shia targets in northern Yemen. Iran itself is occasionally struck by ISIL.
Bargaining chip
Cooperation between Iran and an al Qaeda franchise is unlikely. But Iran may have found usefulness for al Qaeda personnel after the 9/11 attacks, if only as a bargaining chip rather than as an instrument for attacking enemies.
When the Taliban were driven out of Afghanistan, scores of al Qaeda fighters serving with the Taliban (and Pakistani Frontier Corps troops) scrambled for safety across borders. Most found their way south to havens in Pakistan. A handful made it west into Iran. Tehran weighed what to do with them.
Two years later, when the US occupied Iraq, Iran offered to hand them over to the US in exchange for MEK personnel who’d been protected by Saddam Hussein. The MEK was then on the US’s list of terrorist outfits as it had struck Americans, so the deal wasn’t farfetched. The White House declined as it had regime change in Iran on its mind.
Since then, the US has taken the MEK off its terror list and relocated it to a compound in Albania. The MEK is used by Mossad to assassinate Iranian nuclear scientists. Pompeo offered no evidence that Iran has used al Qaeda figures to strike anywhere.
Iran may still be holding al Qaeda personnel as bargaining chips with the Biden administration.
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Secretary Pompeo should use his last few days in office to search, without the blinders of ideology and loyalty, for states with longstanding, robust ties with al Qaeda. He would soon enough come upon Pakistan. Its generals have, with Saudi help, nurtured a virulent form of Islam that overlaps with jihadism. They support a mountain redoubt in eastern Afghanistan where al Qaeda trains guerrillas to fight India. And Osama bin Laden was found outside a Pakistani army base – one that has benefited from American largesse over the years.
© 2021 Brian M Downing
Brian M Downing is a national security analyst who’s written for outlets across the political spectrum. He studied at Georgetown University and the University of Chicago, and did post-graduate work at Harvard’s Center for International Affairs. Thanks as ever to Susan Ganosellis.