The Al Qaeda-Iran Nexus

[TomSea]

"New America" as mentioned in the article is a somewhat progressive liberal foreign policy think tank.

The Al Qaeda-Iran Nexus
by KYLE ORTON   OCTOBER 26, 2018
Despite being ideologically opposed on many levels, Iran and al Qaeda have a long – and long overlooked – history of tacit cooperation that makes them the best of enemies, writes Kyle Orton
 
 
At the beginning of September, New America published a paper, based on recovered al Qaeda documents, which concluded that there was “no evidence of cooperation” between the terrorist group and the Islamic Republic of Iran. New America’s study lauds itself for taking an approach that “avoids much of the challenge of politicization” in the discussion of Iran’s relationship with al Qaeda. This is, to put it mildly, questionable.

A narrative gained currency in certain parts of the foreign policy community during the days of the Iraq war, and gained traction since the rise of the Islamic State (IS) in 2014, that Iran can be a partner in the region, at least against (Sunni) terrorism, since Tehran shares this goal with the West. Under President Barack Obama, this notion became policy: the US moved to bring Iran’s revolutionary government in from the cold, to integrate it into the international system.
The primary instrument in re-aligning the Iran policy was the nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). But that was only one aspect; the more important developments were on the ground in the region. In Iraq, Iran’s proxies were given air support by the American-led anti-IS Coalition, helping Tehran shape the political settlement in that country in the aftermath of the “caliphate”. In Syria, the Coalition informed Iran that its proxy regime would not be harmed, and the anti-IS airstrikes allowed Bashar al Assad to concentrate resources on destroying the mainstream rebellion that was the real threat to his rule.

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The final report of the 9/11 Commission mentions in passing the connections Iran had with al Qaeda in Sudan (p. 61) and with Khalid Sheikh Muhammad (KSM), the architect of the 9/11 “planes operation” (pp. 145-149), and then includes a section in chapter 7 (pp. 240-241) entitled, “Assistance from Hezbollah and Iran to al Qaeda”. As Shenon later noted, this section, based on the NSA findings, is presented “with limited context” and has clearly been shoe-horned in at the last minute. To make up for this, the Commission concludes by saying that “this topic requires further investigation by the US government”. Of course, the Commission then shut down and nobody in officialdom seems to have been interested ever since.

Read more at: https://the-brief.co/the-alqaeda-iran-nexus/