(Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs) The 9/11 Commission report in 2004 found that "senior managers in al-Qaeda maintained contacts with Iran and the Iranian-supported worldwide terrorist organization Hizbullah....Al-Qaeda members received advice and training from Hizbullah." A large percentage of the 14 Saudi "muscle" operatives "traveled into or out of Iran between October 2000 and February 2001." In his 2011 book, The Secret War with Iran: The 30-Year Clandestine Struggle against the World's Most Dangerous Terrorist Power, journalist Ronen Bergman exposed the ties between the 9/11 al-Qaeda terrorists and the government of Iran. "Starting in the 1990s, Iran and Hizbullah helped Osama Bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri create a new terror organization from scratch. Iran trained group members, equipped them with advanced technological means, enabled them to move freely and provided them with plenty of terror-related expertise and experience accumulated by Hizbullah in its operations against Israel and the United States." "Many of the terrorists headed from Afghanistan to Iran, with Iranian officials ordering border control officers not to stamp these passports. Following the attacks, many senior al-Qaeda men found shelter in Iran. Tehran denied their presence for some time and later admitted that hundreds of al-Qaeda members are in the country and are under 'house arrest.'" In December 2011, Federal Judge George Daniels signed a default judgment finding Iran, the Taliban, and al-Qaeda liable for the 9/11 attacks. He found that the 2001 attacks were caused by the support provided to al-Qaeda by the defendants. The judge also found that "Iran continues to provide material support and resources to al-Qaeda by providing a safe haven for al-Qaeda leadership and rank-and-file al-Qaeda members." In 2017, the CIA released a 19-page al-Qaeda report written in Arabic on the history of al-Qaeda relations with Iran, seized in the U.S. Special Forces raid in 2011 that killed Bin Laden. The report, written in 2007, revealed that Iran offered al-Qaeda fighters "money and arms and everything they need, and offered them training in Hizbullah camps in Lebanon, in return for striking American interests in Saudi Arabia."
2019-09-11 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive