IRAN AND AL-QAEDA: THE TIES THAT BIND
Publicly, the leadership of Iran and al-Qaeda appear for all the world to be on the outs. In recent days, al-Qaeda ideologue Ayman al-Zawahiri has launched a public broadside against the Iranian regime accusing the Islamic Republic of undermining the terror network's credibility abroad. Iran's transgression? Spreading rumors of Israel's involvement in the 9/11 attacks, an effort which Zawahiri claims served to discredit the rightful perpetrator of the attacks on New York and Washington. "The purpose of this lie is clear," Zawahiri has said in a public message to his supporters: "that there are no heroes among the Sunnis who can hurt America as no-one else did in history."
Privately, however, the relationship between the Bin Laden terror network and the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism is a good deal more complicated. According to Muwafaq al-Rubei, Iraq's National Security Advisor, the Iranian government is currently harboring some 100 leaders and members of al-Qaeda. "In Iran, there are many members of the terrorist organization, that come from Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, North Africa or Yemen," al-Rubei has told the leading pan-Arab daily Al-Sharq al-Awsat. And while some are in jail or under house arrest, the Iraqi National Security Advisor has charged, the communications of these operatives are by and large unhindered – allowing them to communicate and coordinate with other elements of their terror network. "We have information about other terror groups such as Ansar al-Islam and Ansar al-Sunna that cross the borders between Iran, Iraq and Kurdistan that have contacts with these leaders," al-Rubei has charged. (London BBC, 22, 2008; Rome AKI, April 23, 2008)
A HELPING HAND FOR PALESTINIAN MILITANTS
The Israeli government is sounding the alarm over what it claims are growing efforts by Iran to smuggle weapons into the Gaza Strip. Defense officials in Jerusalem have charged that Iran is supplying Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror groups with sophisticated weaponry – including short-range rockets – through a variety of unconventional methods. "They throw the weapons overboard in waterproof sealed tubes which then float into the Gaza waters and are picked up by fishermen," according to one official. "Sometimes Navy boats intercept them and sometimes they get through." Iran is also reportedly using underground tunnels in the Philadelphi Corridor that separates the Gaza Strip from Egypt as a conduit to arm Palestinian militants. (Jerusalem Post, April 17, 2008)
REWRITING HISTORY IN TEHRAN
Nearly seven years after the terrorist attacks of September 11th, more than a few conspiracy theories about the events of that fateful day have been aired and thoroughly debunked. But now, the world is being treated to one more, courtesy of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. "Four or five years ago a suspect event took place in New York," Ahmadinejad told supporters in Qom on April 17th. "A building collapsed and they said that 3,000 people had been killed, whose names were never published. Under this pretext they (the United States) attacked Afghanistan and Iraq and since then a million people have been killed." (Agence France Presse, April 17, 2008)
IRAN’S TAKE ON THE NEWS
The government of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may have made censorship a priority at home, but it is actively promoting a certain kind of media activism abroad. The country's official Islamic Republic International Broadcasting corporation, known as IRIB, has reportedly kicked off a new media course designed to train war journalists how to properly report on regional conflicts. The seminar, entitled "Training Reporters in Crisis," will prepare some twenty radio and television journalists to cover a new conflict involving Israel, Lebanon and Syria - something which officials in Tehran view as increasingly likely. (Jerusalem Post, April 17, 2008)
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