Links between Iran and Qaeda leaders: CIA documents

CAIRO – 3 November 2017: The CIA released documents found after killing founder and head of Al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, claiming connections between Al-Qaeda leaders and Iran.

The documents were found by the CIA, in the raid on bin Laden’s compound in 2011, according to USA Today.

“Irani people are Twelver Shia. The way they view Sunni Muslims is clear and known. Their ambition to control the Islamic world is known as well. However, they would cooperate with the strictest Salafists and Wahhabis (Islamic branches that oppose Shia), if they thought it would serve their interests even if temporarily, and then renounce them in the proper time”, said one of the documents dated 1428 A.H. (2008) and written by an anonymous writer, apparently an Al-Qaeda senior operative.

Concerning Al-Qaeda elements accessing Iran, the writer claimed Iran opened its borders to them in so long as they did not use cellphones, as the U.S. monitors them, or attract attention to themselves.

Al-Qaeda is a militant Islamist group established in 1988 by bin Laden and others. In a taped statement, bin Laden claimed the involvement of Al-Qaeda in the September 11, 2001 attacks on the U.S., which killed nearly 3,000 people. In May 2011, former American president Barack Obama announced the death of Bin Laden by the U.S. forces, in Pakistan, Abbottabad.