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t wasn’t just any terrorist message that triggered U.S. terror alerts and embassy closures—but a conference call of more than 20 far-flung al Qaeda operatives, Eli Lake and Josh Rogin report. The crucial intercept that prompted the U.S. government to close embassies in 22 countries was a conference call between al Qaeda’s senior leaders and representatives of several of the group’s affiliates throughout the region. snip Several news outlets reported Monday on an intercepted communication last week between Zawahiri and Nasser al-Wuhayshi, the leader of al Qaeda’s affiliate based in Yemen. But The Daily Beast has learned that the discussion...

The crucial intercept that prompted the U.S. government to close embassies in 22 countries was a conference call between al Qaeda’s senior leaders and representatives of several of the group’s affiliates throughout the region. The intercept provided the U.S. intelligence community with a rare glimpse into how al Qaeda’s leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, manages a global organization that includes affiliates in Africa, the Middle East, and southwest and southeast Asia. Several news outlets reported Monday on an intercepted communication last week between Zawahiri and Nasser al-Wuhayshi, the leader of al Qaeda’s affiliate based in Yemen. But The Daily Beast has learned...

Nigeria: 50 Female Suicide Bombers on the Prowl By Kingsley Omonobi and Ndahi Marama A female suicide bomber, who was arrested by the vigilante group also known as civilian JTF, revealed, yesterday, that 50 other female suicide bombers have been let loose in Maiduguri, the Borno State capital with a mandate to kill 100,000 persons before the end of December 2014. The arrested female bomber disclosed this on a day the Chief of Army Staff, Lt. General Kenneth Minimah vowed that Boko Haram will be defeated. This came as former Head of State, General Yakubu Gowon charged the army chief...

Al-Qaeda’s Network: Iran to the Balkans, via Turkey

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report – Parts 1 and II on the morning after an terrorist bombing rampage at three idyllic Sinai desert resorts – with two dozen known dead and scores still missing – the first clues have been found to the identities of the hands behind the massacre and their targets. DEBKAfile’s intelligence and counter-terror sources report that the explosives used to tear away the entire frontage of the Taba Hilton and hit the Nueiba oasis campside further south on the Red Sea coast were of Iranian manufacture; the same make as the bombs used in the 1996 Khobar Towers...

Al-Qaeda in Iraq is believed to be operating Strela missile teams, courtesy of Iran An AH-64 Apache. Click photo to view. The past three weeks has seen a dramatic increase in the downing of U.S. helicopters operating in central Iraq. Five helos have been shot down since January 20th, four U.S. Army helos and a civilian Blackwater helo. Twenty-six Americans have been killed in the five shoot-downs. The five helicopters lost represents ten percent of all such aircraft lost since Operation Iraqi Freedom began, with fifty total lost. The timing and increase in downed helos is no accident, American military...

Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, has long been hard for the central government to control because of its combustible mix of Arabs and Kurds. The first time I visited Mosul was in August 2003 when a tenuous calm was maintained by the 101st Airborne Division. Its commander, a then-obscure two-star general named David Petraeus, had on his own initiative opened the Syrian border to trade, struck deals with Syria and Turkey to provide badly needed electricity, restored telephone service, and held elections to elect local leaders. Along the way he also managed to kill Saddam Hussein’s poisonous offspring Uday and Qusay.

US forces battle al-Qaeda, Iran revolutionary guard in Baghdad, Mosul Military and Security 9/1/2007 BAGHDAD, Sept 1 (KUNA) -- Coalition forces have conducted two separate raids to capture or kill suspected Special Groups operatives in Baghdad before dawn on Saturday, the Multi-National Force (MNF) said in a statement. The statement said coalition forces detained eight suspected Special Groups terrorists during the raids. Coalition forces conducted two deliberate ground assaults to raid what were believed to be the residences of two high-level Special Groups leaders. The targeted individuals are believed to be leaders of Special Groups responsible for logistical facilitation of...

In a blockbuster ruling, Federal Judge George Daniels in the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of New York issued an order stating that Iran and its Lebanese Shi’ite terror proxy, Hizballah, are jointly responsible together with al-Qa’eda for the attacks of September 11, 2001. The long-awaited ruling came in the cases of Havlish, et al. v. Islamic Republic of Iran, et al., and Bingham, et al. v. Islamic Republic of Iran, et al., lawsuits filed by families of 9/11 victims. The cases provided clear and compelling evidence that Iranian officials at the top levels of the Tehran regime...

n an unusual last-minute act before the new administration takes over the reins, acting Treasury Secretary Stuart A. Levy’s former office issued a stunning report on Friday, laying out long-standing ties between Iran and the top leadership of al-Qaida. As undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence since that job was created in July 2004, Levy spearheaded the Treasury Department’s efforts to take the war on international terrorists to the financial battlefield, by denying individual terrorists and terrorist-support states such as Iran access to international financial markets. Less known, until last Friday, was Levy’s involvement in tracking down fugitive al-Qaida members...

Al-Qaida's Links to Iranian Security Services Yael Shahar ICT Researcher Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, terrorism has served the regime of the ayatollahs as a tool of both domestic and foreign policy. This policy was directed against Iranian citizens inside Iran, as well as against advocates of opposition views in exile. Iran's sponsorship of terrorism has bridged ideological gaps and political divides; Teheran has provided arms and training to such groups as the Gama’a al-Islamiyah, the Egyptian al-Jihad, and the Algerian G.I.A. Al-Qaida too, has benefited from Iranian support and expertise for more than a decade. More recently,...

The Houthis, Iranian backed rebels have taken control of Yemen’s capital, Sanaa. The comparison to Hezbollah is apt as Reuters is reporting that the Houthi are blocking the appointment of Yemen’s president. So what’s Iran’s interest in Yemen? It was spelled out by Michael Segall of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs two and a half years ago. A couple of Segall’s observations are sobering: "Iran regards Yemen in general, and its Shia northern part in particular, as a springboard for subversion and for creating a tangible threat to Saudi Arabia, its main religious-political rival in the region. Iran also...

AMERICAN intelligence officials, already focused on Iran's potential for building nuclear weapons, are struggling to solve a more immediate mystery: the relationship between the Tehran leadership and a contingent of al-Qaeda leaders living in the country. Some officials, citing highly classified electronic eavesdropping, believe Iran is hosting much of al-Qaeda's remaining brains trust and allowing the senior operatives freedom to communicate and help plan the terrorist network's operations. They suggest the President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, may be forging an alliance with al-Qaeda operatives as a way to expand Iran's influence or, at least, that he is looking the other way as...

JUBA — 3 July, 2013 … The Washington-based think-tank The International Strategic Studies Association has devoted the latest issue of Global Information System (GIS) Special Analysis, a confidential newsletter used by the Western governments and select subscribers, to the latest Sudanese-Iranian designs for the entire west Africa. “The governments of Iran and Sudan are preparing for a major strategic surge into western Africa, into both the Sahel and the shores of the Gulf of Guinea,” the report warns. “The ultimate objective of this surge is to consolidate control and/or influence over this extensive region and its considerable oil, gas, uranium,...

His name is Abdelhakim Belhaj. Some in the Middle East might have, but few in the West and across the world would have heard of him. Time to catch up. Because the story of how an al-Qaeda asset turned out to be the top Libyan military commander in still war-torn Tripoli is bound to shatter - once again - that wilderness of mirrors that is the "war on terror", as well as deeply compromising the carefully constructed propaganda of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's (NATO's) "humanitarian" intervention in Libya. Muammar Gaddafi's fortress of Bab-al-Aziziyah was essentially invaded and conquered last...

The first clues appeared in Kenya, Uganda and what is now South Sudan. A British arms researcher surveying ammunition used by government forces and civilian militias in 2006 found Kalashnikov rifle cartridges he had not seen before. The ammunition bore no factory code, suggesting that its manufacturer hoped to avoid detection. Within two years other researchers were finding identical cartridges circulating through the ethnic violence in Darfur. Similar ammunition then turned up in 2009 in a stadium in Conakry, Guinea, where soldiers had fired on antigovernment protesters, killing more than 150. For six years, a group of independent arms-trafficking researchers...

Police in Canada said Monday that two men suspected of plotting to derail a passenger train were guided by Al Qaeda elements in Iran, but the statement surprised many experts who study terrorism in the Middle East and Iran. “It frankly doesn’t compute for me,” said Barbara Slavin, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. "If there is any link, I would think it was extremely tangential." Iran and Al Qaeda have frequently had chilly relations, according to Slavin and other experts. Iran is majority Shiite, while Al Qaeda is firmly Sunni. In Syria, Al Qaeda has jumped into the...

Obama’s Al Qaeda Jayvees Announce Caliphate, 5 Year Plan to Take Over Africa and IndiaPosted By Daniel Greenfield On June 29, 2014 @ 11:09 pm In The Point | 4 Comments This was Obama in January. Obama compared Al-Qaeda-linked militants in Iraq and Syria to junior varsity basketball players, downplaying their threat as small-league.New Yorker editor David Remnick pointed out to the president that the Al Qaeda flag is now seen flying in Falluja in Iraq and in certain locations in Syria, and thus the terrorist group has not been “decimated” as Obama had said during his 2012 reelection...

More evidence is emerging of the cooperation between Iran and al Qaeda. Last June, the Obama Treasury Department named six al Qaeda facilitators operating in Iran under a "secret deal" between al Qaeda and the Iranian regime. Then, in December, a federal court found that Iran had "aided, abetted and conspired with" al Qaeda in the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Now, RAND scholar Seth Jones has published an important new essay in Foreign Affairs detailing the evolution of the Iran-al Qaeda relationship. Jones spent much of the past year at West Point culling through hundreds of...

The most immediate threat Iran poses to American national security isn't its nuclear (weapons) program. It's the safe haven Tehran is giving al Qaeda terrorists, who are planning and directing jihad across the globe.If the United States and its allies in the War on Terror don't take firm action against Iranian support to al Qaeda, the price in blood and treasure attributable to Osama bin Laden's killers — in Iraq and elsewhere — will continue to soar.Shockingly, it's been long forgotten that Iran became home to some of al Qaeda's most wanted after the fall 2001 invasion of Afghanistan. Tehran...