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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...

Kuwait's interior minister urged Iran in remarks published on Saturday not to provide a safe haven for "terrorists" but said there was no proof of claims that Tehran has sleeper cells in his country. "Iran should not serve as a haven for, or bankroller of, terror," Sheikh Jaber Khaled al-Sabah was quoted as telling the Saudi daily Okaz. It said Sheikh Jaber called on Iran "not to harbour terrorists from Al-Qaeda and not to serve as a launchpad or safe passage for terrorists."

This has been bugging me for some time. I have my own opinions, but I'd like to hear others. With respect to Israel, I believe AQ realizes that a major terrorist act would lead to the Israeli military opening up a major can of whoop-ass on a few neighboring countries. As for Iran, there's certainly reason for them to be hit. There's just about as much anti-Iranian rants as there are anti "Zionist" ones on the jihadi forums. My best guess is that the Iranians are holding some high-level AQ members hostage.

TTPers (To The Point News) have known for many moons now that the American military is winning a tremendous victory in Iraq. This week, Tony Blankley and Jack Kelly provide updates in Declaring Victory and Declaring Defeat. The media is finally and begrudgingly acknowledging the reality of victory. So far, however, the focus has been entirely on the defeat of Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). Yet this has been a two-front war, a war to terrorize and destabilize Iraq waged not just by AQI, but by Iran. Now we learn that not only is terrorist violence vanishing in Sunni regions...

Iran harbors top Al Qaida leaders in safe houses, at base near Teheran WASHINGTON — The U.S. intelligence community has determined that Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has been working with Al Qaida leaders in Iran to plan attacks against the United States. They said that from virtual house arrest in 2004, Iran has enabled the son of Al Qaida chief Osama Bin Laden and other top agents to plan operations and policy. Al Qaida's leadership has been coopted by Iran and constitutes an option for a major strike either in the Middle East or even the United States, an...

One of two known Al Qaeda leadership councils meets regularly in eastern Iran, where the American intelligence community believes dozens of senior Al Qaeda leaders have reconstituted a good part of the terror conglomerate's senior leadership structure. That is a consensus judgment from a final working draft of a new National Intelligence Estimate, titled "The Terrorist Threat to the U.S. Homeland," on the organization that attacked the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. The estimate, which represents the opinion of America's intelligence agencies, is now finished, and unclassified conclusions will be shared today with the public. The classified document...

Evidence that Iranian territory is being used as a base by al-Qaeda to help in terrorist operations in Iraq and elsewhere is growing, say western officials. It is not clear how much the al-Qaeda operation, described by one official as a money and communications hub, is being tolerated or encouraged by the Iranian government, they said. The group’s operatives, who link the al-Qaeda leadership in Pakistan with their disciples in Iraq, the Levant and North Africa, move with relative freedom in the country, they said. The officials said the creation of some kind of al-Qaeda hub in Iran appears to...

WASHINGTON — With America warming to new negotiations with Iran, a recent report by counterterrorism experts at West Point suggests that, between 2001 and 2005, Iran harbored Al Qaeda's third-ranking official and director of military operations, and that he could still be operating there today. The disclosures in last month's report, " Al Qaeda's (mis)Adventures in the Horn of Africa," from the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, are the first official government documents to acknowledge that Saif al-Adel, who is one of the FBI's most wanted terrorists, was inside Iran. Based in part on captured documents that were funneled...

WASHINGTON [MENL] -- The U.S. intelligence community has briefed Congress on the increasing cooperation between Iran and Al Qaida. Congressional sources said congressional committees have been told that Teheran has sought to use Al Qaida in any Iranian war with the United States. The sources said Iran has harbored leading Al Qaida operatives and enabled them to plan major attacks that would be launched upon Teheran's approval. "Teheran has been seeking a range of terrorist options against the United States in case it strikes Iran's nuclear weapons facilities," a congressional source said. "Al Qaida has played a role in these...

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...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - US Vice President Dick Cheney has said he does not believe there are close relations between Iran and Al-Qaeda, seeming to distance himself from some earlier US administration charges. "I think you've got to remember that the Al-Qaeda organization is primarily made up of radical Sunni Islamists, of course, and the Iranian regime is Shia-dominated -- Shia. So there's not a natural fit there," Cheney said in a telephone interview with the Hugh Hewitt Show, released by the White House. "That doesn't mean that there haven't been relationships over the years, but I don't believe it's close....

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...

At least 25 high-ranking al Qaeda members — including three of Osama bin Laden's sons — are reportedly living free in Iran and beyond the grasp of the U.S. military, it was reported yesterday. "This is not incarceration or house arrest," a Western intelligence agent was quoted as saying by the German monthly Cicero. "They can move around as they please." Saad bin Laden, who is said to be his father's successor, has been reported to be living in Iran. The Cicero report claims two other sons — Mohammad and Othman — are also harbored there...

Dec 6, 2004 — TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran's judiciary has tried a number of arrested al Qaeda members and verdicts have been issued, a senior judiciary official was quoted as saying on Monday. Tehran Justice Department head Abbasali Alizadeh told the semi-official Fars news agency Iran's "high-ranking officials are satisfied with the issued verdicts," but did not elaborate on what the verdicts had been. News of the trials is likely to anger Washington, which has repeatedly called on Iran to hand over all al Qaeda suspects it is holding. Guilty verdicts sentencing them to long jail terms would make that...

"Hundreds" of al Qaida operatives based in Afghanistan gained sanctuary in Iraq and Iran after the Taliban fell in Dec. 2001, according to legendary New York City detective-turned-international security expert Bo Dietl. Dietl first revealed the startling tidbit on Don Imus's Monday morning radio broadcast, sourcing an active duty Navy Seal who told him that U.S. Special Forces had tracked "hundreds of al Qaida who had fled to Iraq." We tracked Dietl down a few hours later and he elaborated on what the unnamed Navy Seal said. "He starts to tell me about how, right after 9/11, they took them...

PARIS — Despite its periodic crackdowns on the terror network, Iran has served as a refuge for al-Qaida operatives suspected of plotting attacks in Europe and the Middle East and of playing a central role in the Iraqi insurgency, European anti-terror investigators say. Investigations in France, Italy, Spain and other countries since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks point to an increasing presence in Iran of al-Qaida figures, including the suspected masterminds of this year's train bombings in Madrid and last year's car bombings of expatriate compounds in Saudi Arabia. But Iran's complex politics and secretive policies have made it difficult...

(USA) Al Qaeda is able to avoid US intelligence efforts to monitor their electronic communications with the help of Iran. The UK online news site, Telegraph.co.uk, in an interview with a Jamil Yousif, a former Pakistani police investigator, has learned that Al Qaeda and associated terrorists “are hiding near the Pakistan-Afghan border. They have sophisticated satellite phones which enable them to use Iranian land phone lines to log on to the internet. "They are using land lines in one country and hiding in another, which enables them to dodge the security agencies." Iran has long admitted to having an Al...

More Evidence of an Iran-Al Qaeda Connection A top terror operative made a Tehran visit while planning the 9/11 attacks, NEWSWEEK has learned. By Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball Newsweek Updated: 6:23 p.m. ET July 23, 2004 July 21 - Just eight months before the September 11 terror attacks, top conspirator Ramzi bin al-Shibh received a four-week visa to Iran and then flew to Tehran—an apparent stop-off point on his way to meet with Al Qaeda chiefs in Afghanistan, according to law-enforcement documents obtained by NEWSWEEK. German government documents showing the previously undisclosed trip by bin al-Shibh, a captured Al...

The final report by the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, concludes that al-Qaeda’s relationship with Iran and its client, the Hezbollah militant group, was far deeper and more long-standing than its links with Iraq, which never established operational ties with the terrorist group, Dan Eggen and Mike Allen write in the Washington Post,” quoting officials familiar with the report, which is expected to be announced on Thursday. “Among the newest findings is evidence, disclosed in media reports this week, that as many as 10 of the Sept. 11 hijackers transited through Iran before the hijackings,” they add.

GEORGE Bush, the United States president, turned up the heat on Iran yesterday, accusing the country’s government of harbouring al-Qaeda leaders. Mr Bush also said the US would continue to investigate whether Iran had been involved in the 11 September plot although, he said, no evidence had yet been found. "We want to know all of the facts," Mr Bush said when asked about reports that at least eight of the 19 hijackers passed through Iran before attacking the US. If the country’s government was to improve ties with Washington, the president said, it must hand over any al-Qaeda members...