I can’t blame the Iranian government for protecting its citizens by keeping people like bin-Laden’s son as hostages. We can see from the ISIS attack on Tehran that Wahhabi-Shia enmity is real.
Iran wasn’t “protecting its citizens.” The last thing the regime in Iran is concerned about is protecting its citizens.
The ISIS attack on Iran is a new thing. Up until that very recent attack, Iran was magically immune and Iran provided “clean” passports to fighters to facilitate their movements.
ISIS/ISIL is just a recent name for Zarqawi’s terror group assumed some time after after Saddam Hussein’s General al Duri and sons swore bayat to Zarqawi in 2004, before Zarqawi took a dirt nap and Baghdadi took over. Zarqawi was the guy who had 2 - 3 terror cells established in Iraq before the US invasion, one of them in Baghdad, composed of Egyptian Islamic Jihad fighters. Another was along the Iraq-Iran border at the end of a smuggling route through Iran back towards Pakistan controlled for years by Zarqawi... that one was partly composed of men brought in from Afghanistan and Krekar’s Ansar group and operated in the no-fly zone, and contained some of Saddam’s intel people.
The Zarqawi Baghdad cell is interesting because it had so many EIJ members in it. al Qaeda’s #2, Zawahiri, leads the EIJ as a whole, and they are a component of the umbrella group known for the more famous bin Laden. The EIJ received financial support from Iran and al Qaeda as a whole leaned a great deal from Hazbollah.
The old canard that Shiite and Sunni cannot cooperate is possibly one of the most ridiculous myths held by Americans. Iran has supported the Sunni organization Hamas for years and years, for example. Iran supported Sudan’s al Turabi, a Sunni who is connected to al Arian’s folks in Florida and spoke here at one of their events.