U.S. officials in the Pentagon and intelligence services are now convinced Iran is actively undermining the occupation of Iraq – and doing so through direct collaboration with al-Qaida forces.
FM
Iran is covertly supporting al-Qaida-aligned terrorists in Iraq, not
just anti-American Shiite insurgents, U.S. defense and intelligence
sources say with certainty.
The acknowledgment of the long-held suspicion as certainty raises the
stakes in Iraq and the Persian Gulf as President Bush begins his
second term and Iran, with its nuclear aspirations, moves to the
front burner as an international crisis in the making.
...al-Qaida-linked terrorists have been observed moving supplies and
new recruits from Iran to Iraq, say the sources. While it has long
been known Iran was backing the uprising led by Moqtada al-Sadr in
the southern Shiite region of Iraq, the Iranian ties to Sunni
Islamist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a terrorist leader who has pledged his
allegiance to Osama bin Laden, has not been certain.
The development is potentially explosive given the standoff between
Iran and the West over its nuclear program and the mullah regime's
desire to build nuclear weapons. It was Iraq's flirtation with
weapons of mass destruction and support of terrorism that provided
the impetus for the U.S.-led invasion and the overthrow of Saddam
Hussein's regime.
Iran no longer even denies that elements of Ansar al-Islam, an
affiliate of al-Qaida, entered the country from Afghanistan following
the U.S.-led invasion of that nation in 2001. Iran claims it offered
no assistance to the group.
But some senior al-Qaida operatives who were among those fleeing to
Iran after the Afghanistan war may have developed a working
relationship with the Revolutionary Guards, a special military unit
in Iran linked to Tehran's mullah government, say U.S. military and
intelligence sources.
The 9-11 commission also found contacts between Iranian security
officials and senior al-Qaida figures and found evidence that eight
to 10 of the Sept. 11 hijackers passed through Iranian territory.
Iraq and Iran share an 800-mile border. U.S. officials say terrorists
who cross over into Iraq from Iran most often head for Mosul, the
largest Arab Sunni Muslim city in the north and an area where Islamic
extremist groups are powerful. Others have been tracked going to
Fallujah, now surrounded and sealed off by U.S. Marines who are
expected to storm the city at any moment.
Links between Iran and al-Qaida are nothing new, however, the fact
that the connections are now being taken seriously by U.S. senior
officials who recognize the impact they are having on the ground in
Iraq is explosive.
Back in June, former CIA analyst Douglas MacEachin, a member of the 9-
11 commission staff, said Iran and its terrorist group ally Hezbollah
were linked to the al-Qaida terrorist group.
Other U.S. intelligence officials said there is also evidence Iran is
linked to the Sept. 11 attacks. According to the officials, two of
the hijackers, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, who were aboard
the aircraft that hit the Pentagon, had stayed at the Iranian
ambassador's residence in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, before entering the
United States in January 2001.
MacEachin disclosed that the Iran-al-Qaida ties were revealed in the
1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers residence complex that housed U.S.
military personnel in Saudi Arabia. The bombing killed 19 Americans.
U.S. intelligence agencies mistakenly assumed then that, since a
Shiite group was involved, rival Sunnis were not, he said. That's a
mistake senior defense and intelligence officials are no longer
making.
Iran's links with al-Qaida go back to at least 1995 when an Egyptian
members of bin Laden's group, Mustafa Hamid, visited Tehran. He is
believed to have met with representatives of the Iranian
Revolutionary Guards to discuss cooperation – cooperation that now
appears to be a matter of fact.
Between the middle of 1996 and the end of 1998, 10 percent of all of
bin Laden's outgoing satellite phone calls were to Iran, say U.S.
sources.
In October 2000, Ali Muhammad, in testimony before the Southern
District for New York federal court, described setting up meetings in
the early 1990s between bin Laden and Imad Mughniyeh of Hezbollah, an
Iranian-backed terrorist group.
Bin Laden's No. 2 in al-Qaida, Ayman al-Zawahiri, was the long-time
leader of Egypt's Islamic Jihad, which had extensive ties to Iran. Al-
Zawahiri traveled frequently to Iran in the 1990s, and he is believed
to have been one of the masterminds of the Sept. 11 attacks.
According to a European intelligence official, Mughniyeh, who reports
directly to Iranian intelligence, met in Mashad, Iran, with a senior
Iranian intelligence official and a "top deputy to Saddam Hussein in
charge of intelligence matters," to discuss cooperation with bin
Laden. This meeting reportedly took place the month after the Sept.
11 terror attacks on the U.S.
President Bush warned that any nation cooperating with al-Qaida would
become an enemy of the U.S. In fact, in 2002, he singled out Iran for
special attention.
"(Iran) must be with us or against us in the war against terrorism
and make no attempt to destabilize the interim Afghan government," he
said. "Iran must be a contributor in the war against terror; our
nation and our fight against terror will uphold the doctrine, either
you're with us or against us; and any nation that thwarts our ability
to rout terror out where it exists will be held to account, one way
or the other. ... If they (Iranians) are trying – if they in any way,
shape or form – try to destabilize the government (of Afghanistan),
the coalition ... we'll deal with them, in diplomatic ways,
initially."
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