The Muslim Brotherhood’s spiritual leader is the BLind Sheikh Omar Abdulrahman. Omar abdulrahman is also the spiritual leader of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad. The head of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad is bin Laden’s second in command, the Egyptian doctor Ayman al Zawahiri.
After bin Laden assumed room temperature, Dr. Ayman al Zawahiri took control of al Qaeda.
Dr. Ayman al Zawahiri is related by marriage to at least one of the mullahs on the ruling council of Iran.
As we already know, Iran served as a sanctuary for al Qaeda personnel escaping from Afghanistan in 2001. Some remained in Iran while others passed through Iran to join up with Jordanian Palestinian Abu Musab alZarqawi’s [not Zawahiri] terrorist cells in Iraq- one on the border with Iran in northern Iraq and the other in Baghdad.
Egyptian Dr. Ayman al Zawahiri has a brother in Egypt named Mohammad al Zawahiri.
Mohammad al Zawahiri, a salafist, heads the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and led demonstrations during the Arab Spring alongside western leftists; he also led the rioting around the US embassy in Cairo as an apparent diversion for the attack on our stations in Benghazi, Libya.
Salafists, while “technically” a branch of the Sunnis, is more friendly to the Iranian regime than to Wahhabis, akin to the way American Democrats are more friendly to enemies of the US than to American conservatives. This may be because the Salafists share the Mahdi cult with the regime in Iran.
The al Qaeda that were allowed to pass through Iran to join Jordanian Palestinian Abu Musab al Zarawi’s terrorist group, which in turn fused into Mullah Krekar’s group, and were provided funds and weapons courtesy the “Secular-Sunni” Iraqi president Saddam Hussein’s intelligence agency to carry out assassinations of Kurdish leaders the Iraqi regime thought would work with the US should the US invade.
Saddam’s intelligence was headed by red-headed Sunni-Salfist General Al Dhouri.
Al Dhouri was responsible for Saddam’s cultivation of islamists in the 1990s after al Qaeda started making a nuisance of itself. Saddam’s speeches and state newspapers soon filled up with Islamic extremist rhetoric, he imposed elements of sharia law, and began construction of the huge mosque with the scud-missile minarets.
Some of al Dhouri’s intel underlings were already part of Krekar’s group, such as Abu Wael.
At one point Zarqawi finally swore the Islamic oath of fealty ,bayat [sp?], to bin Laden.
After the US invasion, al Dhouri and Zarqawi joined their groups together as “al Qaeda in Iraq.” Gen al Dhouri after Saddam Hussein’s death also swore an oath to Zarqawi and al Dhouri’s Baath Party followers merged into al Qaeda though still under al Dhouri.
AQI later became ISIS. There were reports of dissent between al Dhouri’s Baath group and the rest of ISIS later but the two elements still coordinated attacks... it may be that al Dhouri was happy to work with ISIS as a matter of convenience to get Iraq back but ultimately intended to come out on top once that was done.