Bin Laden's files show Iran had al-Qaida ties
The CIA’s release of documents seized during the 2011 raid that killed al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden appears to bolster U.S. claims that Iran supported the extremist network leading up to the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
U.S. intelligence offifficials and prosecutors have long said Iran formed loose ties to the terror organization from 1991 on, something noted in a 19-page al-Qaida report in Arabic that was included in the release of some 47,000 other documents by the CIA.
For its part, Iran has long denied any involvement with al-Qaida. However, the report included in the CIA document dump shows how bin Laden, a Sun ni extremist from Iran’s arch-rival Saudi Arabia, 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 report reads.
The report was released by the Long War Journal, a publication backed by the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies, which is 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 material also included never-before-seen video of bin Laden’s son Hamza, who may be groomed to take over al- Qaida, getting married. It offers the fifirst public look at Hamza bin Laden as an adult. Until now, the pub- lic has only seen childhood pictures of him.
The release comes as President Donald Trump has refused to recertify Iran’s nuclear deal with world powers and faces domestic pressure at home over investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
The 19- page report included in the CIA release was available online 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 Thursday, saying they were “temporarily unavailable pending resolution of a technical issue.”
“We are working to make the material available again as soon as possible,” the CIA said.
The unsigned 19-page report is dated in the Islamic calendar year 1428 — equivalent to 2007 — and offers what appears to be a history of al-Qaida’s relationship with Iran. It says Iran offered red al-Qaida fighters “money and arms an d everything they need, and offered them training in Hezbollah camps in Lebanon, in return for striking American interests in Saudi Arabia.”
Th is coincides with an account offered by the U.S. government’s 9/11 Commission, which said Iranian officials met with al-Qaida leaders in Sudan in either 1991 or early 1992. The commission said al-Qaida militants later received training in Lebanon from the Shiite militant group Hezbollah, which Iran backs to this day.
U.S. prosecutors also said al-Qaida had the backing of Iran and Hezbollah in their 1998 indictment of bin Laden following the al-Qaida truck bombings of the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 people.
Al-Qaida’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 ultra conservative kingdom hosting U.S. troops during the Gulf War. Meanwhile, Iran had become increasingly nervous about America’s growing military expansion in the Mideast.
Before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York’s World Trade Center and the Pentagon in Washington, Iran would allow al -Qaida 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.
On Thursday, Iran’ s semi- official Fars news agency, which is close to the hard-line Revolutionary Guard, dismissed the CIA documents as “a project against Tehran.”