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9/11 commission links al-Qaeda with Iran
While it found no operational ties between al-Qaida and Iraq, the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks has concluded that Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network had long-running contacts with Iraq’s neighbor and historic foe, Iran. Al-Qaida, the commission determined, might even have played a “yet unknown role” in aiding Hezbollah militants in the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers complex in Saudi Arabia, an attack the United States has long blamed solely on Hezbollah and its Iranian sponsors.
We at Rantburg have known differently for a while.
The notion that bin Laden might have had a hand in the Khobar bombing would mark a rare operational alliance between Sunni and Shiite Muslim groups that historically have been at odds. That possibility, largely overlooked in the furor of revelations released last week by the commission, comes amid worsening relations between the United States and Iran. The Sept. 11 panel’s findings on Iran have been eclipsed by the continuing political debate over Iraq, which the commission said had not developed a “collaborative relationship” with al-Qaida despite limited contacts in the 1990s. That appeared to conflict with previous characterizations made by President Bush, Vice President Cheney and other administration officials in their justifications for launching the war against Saddam Hussein.

In relation to Iran, commission investigators said intelligence “showed far greater potential for collaboration between Hezbollah and al-Qaida than many had previously thought.” The commission’s Republican chairman, former New Jersey Gov. Thomas Kean, also said in a TV appearance last week that “there were a lot more active contacts, frankly, with Iran and with Pakistan than there were with Iraq.” But perhaps most startling was the commission’s finding that bin Laden may have played a role in the Khobar attack. While previous court filings and testimony have indicated that al-Qaida and Iranian elements had contacts during the 1990s, U.S. authorities have not publicly linked bin Laden or his operatives to that strike, which killed 19 U.S. servicemen. A June 2001 indictment of 14 defendants in the case makes no mention of al-Qaida or bin Laden and lays the organizational blame for the attacks solely on Hezbollah and Iran. Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert who heads the Washington office of Rand Corp., said that although bin Laden’s then-fledgling organization was an early suspect in the blasts, “the evidence kept pointing to an Iranian connection, so people tended to discount a bin Laden connection.”
Posted by: Dan Darling 2004-06-27
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=36538