The one thing that gives me pause about this is that when Zarqawi went down all his data was with him, resulting in the very productive operations now going on against the terrorists networks.
If someone did turn him over for some strategic reason they would have known that along with him they were also giving up many others as well. In my mind that eliminates Al Qaeda because they would have had to know they would harm the entire organization. I also don't see how Iran benefits from this because they have to know that with Al Qaeda wounded and on the run that the coalition will turn their attention to the armed shia militias. I don't see how that would help Iran.
The people who had the most to gain and the least to lose where the Jordanians or someone within the Baathist insurgency in need of the 25 million. Personally I think it was Jordan alone who turned him in by telling them to watch the so called spiritual advisor.
As the article said somewhere, Iran has much bigger fish to fry that a limited Iraq person, who can be replaced and remove the threat he had also become to Iran by fomenting (or planning to foment) anti-Iran and anti-Shia disinformation, while taking Shia students and the like off a bus and slaughtering them.
Thus getting lots of Iraqi Shia protest as to what in hell Iran was going to do about it and also sickening Iraqi Sunnis, who were not as happy at the murder of their own countrymen - regardless of creed - by someone who was not an Iraqi to start with. And so staunchly supported by Iran. Gave Iran an increasingly bad reputation among those they wanted to recruit against the US and coalition.
Lots of swirling, roiling undercurrents here. Zarghawi had outlived his usefuelness. Iran operates separately from Al Qaeda and on occasion have conflicting purposes. Specially in Iraq where Iran floated a "let's work together" balloon toward the USA.
Take a close look at the various cross currents before sloughing off factual reporting.
Yes, it does seem like the smart thing to do vis a vis Zarqawi would have been for al Qaida and/or Iran to take him out themselves rather than giving up his location to Hamas, Jordan, and the U.S., and thus they could have sanitized the death and guarded the intel from capture.
BUT, it may be that the people al Qaida and.or Iran entrusted with taking him out quietly and cleanly may have decided on their own to turn in Zarqawi for the reward money.
Didn't we just see Palestinian government workers rioting about not being paid?
Maybe Hamas doesn't give 2 cents about the safety of al Qaida and insurgents in Iraq when they are losing their credibility with the Palestinians.
Maybe Iran wanted to take out the Zarqawi's network in Iraq so their 40,000 agents wouldn't continue to be dragged down while the new government and the U.S. coalition continued to hunt for him.
It's all very interesting speculation.