Posted on 07/24/2005 4:25:31 PM PDT by DoctorZIn
Top News Story
The Washington Post ignores Al Qaeda Leaders Iran connection
An Excerpt:
Craig Whitlock, Washington Post: Experts Say Radicals In London, Egypt May Have Followed OrdersThe back-to-back nature of the deadly attacks in Egypt and London, as well as similarities in the methods used, suggests that the al Qaeda leadership may have given the orders for both operations and is a clear sign that Osama bin Laden and his deputies remain in control of the network, according to interviews with counterterrorism analysts and government officials in Europe and the Middle East. READ MORE
DoctorZin:
The Washington Post fails to mention the role Iran is playing as the base of operations for al Qaeda's leadership.
MSNBC, in an updated report provided the location of al Qaeda's management team. Robert Windrem, Investigative producer forNBC News said:
Radio Free Europe connected the dots back in December when it reported the al Qaeda leadership's located in Iran played a role in the Madrid bombing.Somewhere north of Tehran, living perhaps in villas near the town of Chalous on the Caspian Sea coast, are between 20 and 25 of al-Qaida’s former leaders, along with two of Osama bin Laden’s sons.
Men such as Saif al-Adel, the former military commander of al-Qaida, and Suleiman Abu Ghaith, the bespectacled bin Laden spokesman, are not in hiding but rather in the care — or custody — of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. ...
“We believe that they're holding members of al-Qaida's management council,” Fran Townsend, President Bush’s counterterrorism czar, said of Iran. ...
The management council went west, to northern Iran, where the United States had little sway and the Iranians had little interest in pushing for their arrests. ...
But Iran was either unable or uninterested in taking the al-Qaida members into custody. ...
There was also evidence that critical meetings regarding the future of al-Qaida were being held in the relative safety of Iran. But al-Qaida decided at a meeting in Iran in November 2002 that the pressure on it was so great that it could no longer exist as a hierarchy. ...
Publicly, all CIA Director Porter Goss will say is that Iran has “detained” al-Qaida elements.
“I don't have all of the information I would like to have,” he told Tom Brokaw. “But I think your understanding is that there is a group of leadership of al-Qaida under some type of detention — I don't know exactly what type, necessarily — in Iran is probably accurate. But I don't think I want to go too far into that — if you don't mind.” ....
...one former senior U.S. intelligence official .... “The Iranians will not give you specific names, or at least they would never give us specific names. They would always duck the question,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Reports nonetheless persist that hundreds of Al-Qaeda operatives along with some 18 senior leaders -- including Saif Adel, Al-Qaeda's military commander, and Osama Bin Laden's son, Saad, are living in Iran. Spain's top counterterrorism judge has dubbed this Al-Qaeda's "board of managers," according to the 1 August "Los Angeles Times." A French counterterrorism official says that these leaders have "controlled freedom of movement" inside Iran, AFP reported on 15 July, and the London-based Arabic daily "Al-Sharq al-Awsat" reports that some are even living in villas near the Caspian Sea coast town of Chalus, AFP reported on 28 June. Other accounts of their activities are far more disturbing. U.S. communications intercepts indicate that the 12 May 2003 attacks on the expatriate compounds in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, were orchestrated from Iran, according to the 1 August "Los Angeles Times," and though others may be involved, European government officials reportedly point to Adel as the primary suspect. ...The same report suggested that there are divisions within the Iranian leadership with regard to al Qaeda:
Spanish investigators believe that even the 11 March commuter train bombings in Madrid were at least partially planned from the Al-Qaeda base in Iran. Mustafa Setmariam Nasar, named by Spanish police as a primary suspect, is suspected of having operated from Iran, as is another suspect, Amer Azizi, who is believed to have spent time in Iran before returning to Spain to carry out the attacks, according to Spanish communications intercepts cited in the "Los Angeles Times." ...In August, the Iranian Intelligence Ministry foiled a series of assassinations allegedly being planned by Al-Qaeda's Adel along with a high-ranking leader of the IRGC...But in the battle between the reformists and the hard-liners, the hard-liners won.
it furthermore shows the deep divisions between the hard-line and reformist factions in determining Iranian foreign policy.
So is there evidence of an al Qaeda connection with the bombing in Sharm el-Sheikh?
The Middle East Newsline reminds us of Iran's involvement in past attacks in Eqypt and Saudi Arabia.
Iran has helped plan and finance attacks on both Egypt and Saudi Arabia over the last year. They said an Iranian diplomat planned the strike on a petrochemical facility in Yanbu, Saudi Arabia in May 2004. The attack resulted in the killing of five Western engineers.Recently, Asharq Alawsat provided a short bio on Seif Al-Adl, the Egyptian military leader of Al-Qaeda. It provides a peek into the al Qaeda operation.
The Iranian diplomat has escaped Egypt but would be tried in absentia. Officials said the diplomat employed an Egyptian national who has been captured and would be charged with espionage and terrorist offenses.
Egyptian public prosecutor Maher Abdul Wahed identified the Iranian diplomat as Mohammad Reza Hosseindoust. Abdul Wahed said Hosseindoust paid the Egyptian detainee, identified as Mohammed Eid Mohammed Dabbous, who supplied information that facilitated the attack on Yanbu.
In the article they state, Adl discussed an agreement with Al-Zarqawi:It seems they had decided to set up a central leadership command circle in Iran, from which further sub-circles would branch off. ...
He accused Bin Laden's closest ally, Al-Zawhri, of being an agent, having:
... received money from the Iranians, implicating the ranks of the organisation in failed and unstudied operations. ...after we were trapped in Iran, after being forced out of Afghanistan, it became inevitable that we would plan to enter Iraq through the north, which was free from American control. It was then that we moved south to join our Sunni brothers".
Al-Adl then moved to the question of Iran, and said "The steps taken by Iran against us shook us and caused the failure of 75 percent of our plan. Approximately 80 percent of Abu Musab’s [Al-Zarqawi] group were arrested. It was important to create a plan for Abu Musab to follow with those left with him. Where were they to go? The destination was Iraq, via the Northern Iran/Iraq border. The aim was to reach the Sunni areas in the center of Iraq and then to start preparations to combat the American invasion. It was not a random choice; it was a well studied one."
The connections between Iran and al Qaeda are many, the relationship sometime tenuous. But remember, the group responsible for overseeing al Qaeda in Iran is the elite Quds force which the new President of Iran, Ahmadinejad, was a founder.
So if al Qaeda's management team is in Iran, where is Bin Laden?
CIA director Porter Goss recently stated that he had an "excellent idea" where Bin Laden is. He said:"...when you go to the very difficult question of dealing with sanctuaries in sovereign states, you're dealing with a problem of our sense of international obligation, fair play. "We have to find a way to work in a conventional world in unconventional ways that are acceptable to the international community."In conclusion, we cannot expect to win the war on terror as long as the present regime in Iran remains in power. The least costly means to ending their rule is to support the pro-democracy forces there. But time is running out.
- Reuters reported that Iran told the European foreign ministers in London last week, telling them not to try to solve a nuclear dispute by asking Tehran to surrender atomic technology.
- Reuters reported that an unprecedented report from Iran's conservative judiciary acknowledged that human rights violations were widespread in prisons.
- The Washington Post reported that gunmen opened fire at the Iranian Embassy in Baghdad.
- Kurdish Media reported that demonstrations in Mahabad have resulted in the spread of the demonstrations to other cities in Iranian Kurdistan.
- The Globe and Mail reported that the Iranian capital, Tehran, has a street named after Bobby Sands, the Irish Republican Army militant who starved himself to death in a British prison in 1981. When hunger strikes are turned against Tehran, though, it seems the regime feels rather differently.
- And finally, Khaleej Times Online reported that Germany accused Teheran of impertinence on Wednesday for presuming to lecture it on democracy.
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On Al-Qaeda and Iran by Dan Darling
http://www.windsofchange.net/archives/007224.php
Somewhere north of Tehran, living perhaps in villas near the town of Chalous on the Caspian Sea coast, are between 20 and 25 of al-Qaida’s former leaders, along with two of Osama bin Laden’s sons.
Shadow War: The Untold Story of How Bush Is Winning the War on Terror (Hardcover)
by Richard Miniter
http://www.regnery.com/regnery/040929_shadowwar.html
The three vital, unanswered questions of the War on Terror are:
Where is Osama bin Laden?
Why hasn’t there been another terrorist strike inside America since September 11, 2001?
Is President Bush winning the war?
Shadow War answers these questions. It unfolds during the first nine hundred eleven days of President Bush’s War on Terror, from the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York and Washington, D.C., to the March 11, 2004 bomb blasts in Madrid, Spain. It is a story of sleeper cells and patient plots, phone intercepts and covert operations, boldly triumphant captures and heartbreakingly close escapes.
There have been many clandestine victories against al Qaeda. More than 3,000 al Qaeda operatives have been seized or slain in 102 countries since September 11, 2001.
In Shadow War, Richard Miniter, author of the New York Times bestseller Losing bin Laden, files from the front lines in Baghdad, Bangkok, Singapore, Manila, Hong Kong, Khartoum, Cairo, Paris, London, Frankfurt, Hamburg, New York, and Washington, D.C.—uncovering the triumphs and tragedies the media establishment refuses to report.
Inside Shadow War, you’ll discover:
New intelligence about Osama bin Laden’s secret refuge. The location will surprise you—and has shocking implications for national security.
The Bush administration’s secret plan to hit al Qaeda before September 11, 2001.
A never before reported plot to assassinate President Bush in 2002—and the embarrassing intelligence failure it revealed.
How the 2000 election fiasco left our nation open to terror attacks.
How America captured the “al Qaeda admiral” and stopped his fifteen-ship fleet from being used as floating bombs.
Why Iran is financing attacks against American and allied forces in Afghanistan and Iraq
Why al Qaeda has been sending operatives to scuba school to learn how to dive—but not to resurface
The major media has missed some of the biggest developments in the War on Terror—we get only headlines, sound bites, and snapshots. No record of victories, defeats, or draws. No big picture. Shadow War brings the big picture to life: The unreported story of the War on Terror is that we can win it, and that victories are being won every single day.
That location has always been a matter of controversy...
It is known as "Ali Ebn Abitaleb" IRGC Camp which might had been used to train Lebanese and Palestinian terrorists in early 1990s!
There is also a boot camp in North of Tehran by the former Shah's palaces belonging to "Hazrat Ali" Brigade (IRGC).
There is also a boot camp in North of Tehran by the former Shah's palaces belonging to "Hazrat Ali" Brigade (IRGC).
Learn something new every day!
I don't necessarily agree with Miniter, just that he makes a good argument.
There are many of these training bases in Iran!
In fact, it is very surprising that OBL hasn't seen the value of publisizing these connections to discredit the US government. His thrust would be, "Why are you picking on us Muslims terrorists now when the President encouraged us and took our gifts and support all through the 90s?" Maybe, OBL is too dumb or drunk to see the value of trying to cash in on his vig with the President. I'm sure Bush would honor any pledge that his predessor made!
I'm shocked! But then I am so easily shocked. :-)
pong
I've been very concerned about that latest Iranian election. Yes, I realize that the candidates were mullah-cherry picked. But putting that aside, what percentage of Iranians actually did vote for that man?
If you prefer, you can private-message me.
FRegards....
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