Iran’s relationship with al-Qaeda : It’s complicated *

* As is any reporting on it

A striking commonality between two al-Qaeda figures that made headlines this week is that they both lived in Iran. Muhsin al-Fadhli, targeted by a U.S. airstrike in Syria on Monday night, is a reported al-Qaeda figure who was reportedly placed under house arrest in Iran, while Sulaiman Abu Ghaith (Osama bin Laden’s son-in-law), slapped with a life sentence in a New York court, had spent more than 10 years in Iran. According to U.S. officials, he was in confinement, however.

The juxtaposition of al-Qaeda as in theory an arch-foe of the Iranian regime while at the same time having senior members inside Iran, underscores a very complex relationship that Tehran has with the terrorist organization. In approaching its ties with al-Qaeda, Iran perhaps seeks to gain leverage over the group, use it as a card in promoting regional interest and in worst case scenarios perhaps seeks to utilize it operationally against the West or Israel or Arab neighbors in an event Tehran is attacked.

According to the U.S. Department of State, al-Fadhli was al-Qaeda’s senior facilitator and financier in Iran, with a bounty on his head of $7 million. He is believed to have relocated to Iran from Afghanistan in 2009, where he was under “house arrest” but later ran a group to “move fighters and money through Turkey to support al-Qaeda-affiliated elements in Syria” before moving there himself in 2013. His transfer to Syria was based on orders from al-Qaeda central in Pakistan to lead the “Khorasan” group and help bridge differences between ISIS and the al-Nusra Front. Many alleged Nusra followers on twitter have declared that al-Fadhli was killed in a U.S. airstrike in Northern Syria on Monday, while the Pentagon is still investigating.

Bin Laden’s son-in-law, Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, followed a similar trajectory to al-Fadhli’s, where, according to the U.S. Department of Justice, “he was successfully smuggled from Afghanistan into Iran in 2002” where he spent at least 10 years before his arrest during a stopover in Jordan in March, 2013. Abu Ghaith was labeled as the “spokesperson” for al-Qaeda, editing videos of Bin Laden and expanding the recruiting efforts of the organization.

http://english.alarabiya.net/en/views/2014/09/25/Iran-s-relationship-with-al-Qaeda-It-s-complicated.html