For those who missed it yesterday - Iran harboring al-Qaeda leadership
The full text of the article is available yesterday, but I just wanted to make a couple of points. The first is that the US doesn't appear to have any clue as to what's going on in Iran HUMINT-wise, which in addition to being worrisome for anyone in favor of airstrikes, makes it extremely difficult to just pooh-pooh this stuff. The SIGINT says that the senior al-Qaeda leaders can still move and communicate - 3 years after Saif al-Adel masterminded the Riyadh bombings. The fact that the ranking Democrat on the House IR subcommittee devoted to terrorism says that intelligence indicates that the Iranians are in collaboration with al-Qaeda is rather telling in and of itself.
The article describes Abu Khayr as "the head of Al Qaeda's leadership council," which may indicate that we should probably move him up the food chain. Abdel Aziz al-Masri is named as "a biological weapons expert who heads the network's effort to develop weapons of mass destruction," so I'm assuming that he's Abu Khabab's replacement as the head of the WMD committee.
Posted by: Dan Darling 2006-03-22 |