And Yes, Iran Has Unsettling al Qaeda Connections

Guest Column  |  By Nicholas Guariglia  |  April 3, 2008

Last week I wrote an article that explored what the 9/11 Commission had to say about Iraq’s links to al Qaeda. The consensus of that commission was, in essence, that while it has not been proven that Saddam’s Iraq had any collaborative relationship with the terror group – that is to say, they never cooperated on a specific attack – there were, in fact, serious connections and high-level contacts between the two parties for years (offers of asylum to bin Laden, requests for basing privileges by bin Laden, etc.). 
          

Even more information is now available in the aftermath of the Institute for Defense Analysis’ report, called the Iraqi Perspectives Project (IPP), which is an investigative study of over 600,000 pages of newly translated documents, data, and audio and video files captured in Iraq. The report concludes Iraq had a long history of sponsoring Jihadist organizations, both linked to al Qaeda and independent of al Qaeda, even though the Ba’athists in Saddam’s inner circle held ideological disagreements with the Islamists and their fundamentalist zealotry.
 

In the aftermath of Sen. McCain’s trip abroad, and his supposed “gaffe” where he suggested Iran was assisting al Qaeda in Iraq, all that is true about Iraq and al Qaeda could and should be said about Iran and al Qaeda – even if some in the Obama camp find it unbearable to listen to and accept. 
          

“Just yesterday, we heard Senator McCain confuse Sunni and Shi’ite, Iran and al Qaeda,” Sen. Obama surmised, continuing, “Maybe that is why he voted to go to war with a country that had no al Qaeda ties.” This quote gives validity to the assumption that Obama’s head is still in the sand over Iraq and al Qaeda – he does not want to read the IPP, 9/11 Commission, and Senate Select reports et al in their proper context because he does not want to believe Iraq could possibly have associated itself with al Qaeda. Furthermore, Sen. McCain did not “confuse” Sunni and Shi’a; he never suggested Iran was the former and al Qaeda the latter.  McCain made the apparent sin of suggesting – contrary to the conventional wisdom but not contrary to empiricism and fact – that Iran, a Shi’ite country has, yes, worked with al Qaeda, a Sunni network.
          

Obama and his associates do not want to recognize this. They’d much prefer to live in a world where the Iranian ayatollahs were not subsidizing Jihadist groups the world over. And if they cannot have this world, they will conjure this world up in their minds and articulate it in their vernacular.
 

If McCain’s comments about Iran’s role in the Iraqi “insurgency” can be erroneously caricaturized as an imprudent and Bush-like beating of the war drums, then how are we to characterize Iran’s role in the insurgency? Just where is the similar rhetorical ire over the EFPs with Tehran’s traces on them? And what are we to make of the comments which accept unconsidered conventional wisdom, and give the world’s largest and most robust state sponsor of terrorism the highest benefit of the doubt?
          

Sen. Obama’s most senior military advisor, the increasingly unhinged (and visibly angry) retired Air Force Gen. Merrill McPeak, has gone on record as saying “Iran is a big enemy of al Qaeda.” Gen. McPeak went on, elaborating that “they,” the Iranians, “were a big enemy of the Taliban… They cooperated with us quite completely in the initial phases of our Afghanistan operation. And it was us that insulted them by including them in the ‘axis of evil’ and making sure they understood we didn’t like them very much.” McPeak concludes, “That drove us apart.”
 

Excuse me, sir. Just this week, 15 Iraqi civilians were killed in Baghdad’s infamous Green Zone by an unprovoked rocket barrage that Gen. Petraeus blamed on Tehran. “The rockets that were launched… were Iranian-provided, Iranian-made rockets,” Petraeus charged, concluding, “All of this in complete violation of promises made by President Ahmadinejad and the other most senior Iranian leaders to their Iraqi counterparts.”
          

Is Gen. McPeak implying that this onslaught – and the continued salvo of EFP/IED attacks by Iranian Revolutionary Guards and Quds Force members – is the byproduct of a 2002 State of the Union “insult” and a natural response from the insulted?
          

This self-castigation is inexcusable, but promulgating the fallacy that Iran and al Qaeda are irreconcilable enemies – or that Shi’a and Sunni adversaries would not conspire together – is worse, and flies in the face of actuality.
 

The 9/11 Commission report, for example, concludes amongst other things that a) in late ’91 or early ’92, Iran agreed to train al Qaeda operatives during meetings in Sudan, and not long afterwards al Qaeda members traveled to Iran to receive training in explosives; b) that al Qaeda operatives traveled to Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley to receive training from Iranian Revolutionary Guards; c) that Iran facilitated the transit of Sunni Jihadists to al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan via Iranian territory, opting not to stamp the Jihadists’ passports when they passed through Iran, making it impossible for countries to know when someone had attended a training camp in Afghanistan (needless to say, it would have been polite of the Iranians had they stamped the passports of the eight or nine 9/11 hijackers that transited through their country prior to the attack – that could have helped); d) and that al Qaeda and Iranian government officials maintained contact after bin Laden’s move back to Afghanistan.
          

The U.S. military has captured much data indicating that Iran has been busy supporting both Shi’a and Sunni insurgent groups in Iraq, and I’m sure Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, who speaks of this phenomenon to the press every chance he gets, would be more than willing to elaborate for Sen. Obama or Gen. McPeak. Much investigative research has been dedicated to this topic, and it is widely believed – whether you speak to Guardian journalist Simon Tisdall, Stephen Fidler of London’s Financial Times, Iraqi intelligence chieftain Muhammad al Shahwani, Iraqi tribal councilor Tamir al Tamimi, or Gen. Petraeus himself – that Iran is mischief-making in Iraq (and abroad) in ways we do not yet fully understand.
 

This is not to say that Ayatollah Khamenei is in ideological agreement with, or entirely masterminding, everything al Qaeda has been doing. That is not the case. But the idea that the Sunni-Shi’a divide is irrevocable is foolhardy and dangerous. In some instances, it isn’t a “divide” at all. The Iranian government supports Sunni Hamas, it assisted the Wahhabi ICU in Somalia, it is aligned with the Ba’athists in Syria, it is widely believed to be giving sanctuary to al Qaeda linchpin Saif al Adel and bin Laden’s son and heir Saad, and, according to most pragmatic observations, it supports any and all in Iraq.
          

According to a translation by the Middle East Media Research Institute, a former commander of a Sunni insurgent group once linked to al Qaeda, Abu Azzam al Tamimi (no relation to Mr. Tamir al Tamimi mentioned above), has gone on record as saying that “Iran interferes in every aspect in Iraq.”  When asked what he meant by that and just whom Iran supports, Tamimi responded “Everybody… it works with the government, with the opponents of the government, with the opponents of the government’s opponents, with al Qaida, with the enemies of al Qaida, with the militias, with the enemies of the militias… Iran spreads its investments everywhere… with the Shi’ites, the Sunnis, and the Kurds.”
          

That may be the most accurate quote regarding Iran’s role in Iraq one may ever come across.