(Daily Beast) Bruce Riedel - Al-Qaeda is warning its supporters and sympathizers to prepare for a new war which will pit Israel against Iran. Al-Qaeda's franchise in Yemen, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), issued an audio message this month by its second-in-command, Saeed al-Shehri, who tells jihadists that he expects the Iranian Shia regime to try to take advantage of an Israeli attack on its nuclear facilities by seizing the holy cities of Mecca and Medina after blaming Saudi Arabia for helping Israel attack. Shehri was held in Guantanamo for six years before being sent back to his native Saudi Arabia and then fleeing to Yemen to help set up AQAP. AQAP demonstrated that it can reach beyond Yemen to carry out its plans when it dispatched the suicide bomber who tried to blow up Northwest Flight 253 last Christmas. The writer is a senior fellow in the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution.
2010-08-19 08:53:40Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive