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THE ROVING
EYE
Iran and al-Qaeda: Odd
bedfellows
By Pepe Escobar
Investigators from a special anti-terrorist cell
in the European Union have expressed doubts over a
Washington Post report this week in which sources
claimed that Saad bin Laden, 24, Osama's eldest son, is
now a top al-Qaeda member and that he runs operations
out of Iran.
The paper reported its sources as
saying that Saad and a close circle of about two dozen
of bin Laden's trusted lieutenants are "protected by an
elite, radical Iranian security force loyal to the
nation's clerics and beyond the control of the central
government".
Asia Times Online (see Iran lines up its al-Qaeda aces
of July 2) has already reported that Iran has admitted
to holding a number of al-Qaeda members in its custody.
But, Asia Times Online's European intelligence
sources caution, "The leaks [to the Post], when put
together, convey the impression that Iran, a Shi'ite
Islamic Republic, is now supporting al-Qaeda, an
Islamist, Wahhabi, terrorist, transnational
organization. That is simply not true."
The
attempt to throw all big cats - "axis of evil" Iran,
"foreign terrorists" in Iraq and al-Qaeda - into one big
bag is seen by European intelligence agencies as a crude
attempt on the part of the Bush administration to
"refocus" the "war on terror" from former "axis of evil"
member Iraq to current member Iran, and from Saddam
Hussein to the ayatollahs in Tehran. This, they say,
bears a strong resemblance to the non-stop campaign in
early 2003 to link Saddam to al-Qaeda, even though the
evidence did not support this.
Anti-terrorist
European intelligence raises several points. First,
there is no proven connection between al-Qaeda and the
Islamic Republic's religious leadership. And Saad is not
the new Osama. According to one special investigator,
"Our main target now is not Osama's son, but Muhamad
Ibrahim Makkawi [aka Saif al-Adil, a former colonel in
the Egyptian army, born in 1960 or 1963]. He is an
explosives expert and most probably the successor of
Khalid Shaikh Mohammed." Khalid Shaikh, widely reputed
to be the mastermind of September 11, was captured in
Pakistan in March.
Saif al-Adil has extensive
combat and covert operation experience: after fighting
alongside the mujahideen in Afghanistan against the
Soviets in the 1980s, he founded the military branch of
bin Laden's deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri's Islamic Jihad,
and is considered to be the top al-Qaeda military
operative still at large. Saif al-Adil has for several
years been in charge of terrestrial operations,
security, military education, intelligence and liaison
with al-Qaeda's special forces, the infamous Brigade
055. The only known photograph of Saif al-Adil is a
passport photo dating from when bin Laden was still in
Sudan, in the mid-1990s.
The Americans, though,
are convinced that Saif al-Adil is in Iran, along with
top al-Qaeda financial expert Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah
and a few dozen others, all of them under the regime's
custody, but still operative.
The Europeans are
not so sure: they insist that al-Qaeda's imprint is
mostly in the Red Sea and the Arabian Gulf regions, not
in Iran. "Most al-Qaeda leaders took refuge in the
Hadramut, between Yemen and Saudi Arabia, where the bin
Laden family comes from. The most influential
ulemas from the Hadramut tribes are Wahhabis, as
well as key officials of the Saudi security forces and
the religious police." says a European intelligence
operative. As for the Islamic Republic's authorities,
they have always vehemently denied supporting al-Qaeda -
although they have not disclosed the identities of their
al-Qaeda detainees.
According to the leaks to
the Post, Saad bin Laden is being protected by the elite
unit among the five branches of Iran's Revolutionary
Guards - the Jerusalem force (al-Quds) - which
completely eludes "control from the central government".
Analysts question this possibility. Such a unit
could well elude President Mohammad Khatami, but
certainly not the Supreme Leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei, to whom all security services are
subordinated. And for all practical purposes, "central
government" means Khamenei, not Khatami.
US
intelligence is persuaded that the Jerusalem force has
trained more than three dozen "foreign Islamic militant
groups in paramilitary, guerrilla and terrorism"
tactics, Sunni and Shi'ite alike, including Hezbollah in
Lebanon and Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Palestine. That
sounds like an Israeli Mossad mish-mash - once again
throwing all cats into the same bag, as the agendas of
Hezbollah and Palestinian liberation groups are totally
different.
Although for some European
intelligence sources the Jerusalem force is "a state
within a state, able to offer protection to al-Qaeda",
there's great skepticism towards its supposed, effective
internationalist role. "Saddam Hussein also had a
Jerusalem Liberation Army. It proved to be invisible,
just a propaganda coup," adds another European
counter-terrorist operative.
European
intelligence agrees that Saif al-Adil and Abdullah Ahmed
Abdullah are indeed the current top deputies to bin
Laden and al-Qaeda's number two, Ayman "the Surgeon"
al-Zawahiri, who now contact their operatives only
through human couriers. But the assumption that Ayman
al-Zawahiri used his decade-old relationship with the
Jerusalem force to negotiate a safe harbor for some of
al-Qaeda's leaders bombed by the Americans in Tora Bora,
in southeast Afghanistan, in December 2001, is also
ludicrous: these al-Qaeda leaders escaped to Pakistan's
tribal areas, where they remained ever since. There's
evidence that only but a few crossed the border from
Pakistan's to Iran's Balochistan desert.
According to the Post, Saudi Arabia has tried to
convince Iran to extradite Saad bin Laden and his
al-Qaeda brothers-in-arms because they are suspected of
masterminding the May 12 Riyadh suicide bombing (35
dead). According to the Saudis and the Americans, they
were in contact with an al-Qaeda cell in Riyadh. The
Saudis have told the Americans that there may be up to
400 al-Qaeda members holed up in Iran. European
intelligence also takes this information with a pinch of
salt, considering the fact that the Saudis are trying to
do everything at the moment to appease America's
discomfort with their role vis-a-vis what is essentially
a Saudi Arabian, hardcore Islamist, terrorist
organization (al-Qaeda).
The authorities in
Tehran have "challenged foreign intelligence services to
come up with evidence" that they are supporting
al-Qaeda, according to government spokesman Abdullah
Ramezanzadeh: "We have announced time and again that we
will not allow these activities to take place in Iran.
This is a decision taken by the highest officials in the
country. The report is an absolute lie."
The
regime blames the leaks that led to the report on the
powerful Israeli lobby in Washington: indeed, for
neo-conservatives from Pentagon number two Paul
Wolfowitz down, closely intertwined with the hardline
Ariel Sharon government in Israel, Iran's ayatollahs are
the next big target. According to a European
counter-terrorist expert, for the neo-cons "an al-Qaeda
free to operate in Iran is a dream ticket in their
agenda. They have already started to prepare American
opinion for an attack on Iran."
Ramezanzadeh,
the Iranian government spokesman, acknowledges that
Iran's porous borders with Iraq, Afghanistan and
Pakistan are difficult to control, so "sometimes some
elements suspected of cooperating with al-Qaeda may
enter the country". Al-Qaeda is supposed to have its
bases along the Afghan border: American satellite photos
could easily provide some evidence. The official Iranian
position was spelled out by Ramezanzadeh: "We are asking
all the world's security services and anyone else who
has any information about these suspects to come forward
with the information. After substantiating the
information, we will arrest them."
Saad bin
Laden is one of at least 11 sons from Osama's first wife
and also first cousin, Najwa Ghanem from Syria. Out of
five marriages, Osama has fathered about 20 children.
Saad arrived in Iran in 2002, from Afghanistan. He is
fluent in English and information technology. European
intelligence operatives somewhat agree that he may now
be a key player in al-Qaeda's logistics. He may have
been close to, and may have learned a lot from Khalid
Shaikh Mohammed. But he is not the new Osama - at least
not yet. And there's still no proof that he is the
Tehran ayatollahs' new lethal weapon.
(Copyright
2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved.
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