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Tag: al-Qaida

  • How the CIA tracked the chief of al-Qaeda

    Written by Julian E. Barnes and Eric Schmitt

    Intelligence officers made a vital discovery this spring after monitoring Ayman al-Zawahri, the chief of al-Qaida, to Kabul, Afghanistan: He favored to learn alone on the balcony of his protected home early within the morning.

    Analysts seek for that type of pattern-of-life intelligence, any behavior the CIA can exploit. In al-Zawahri’s case, his lengthy balcony visits gave the company a possibility for a transparent missile shot that might keep away from collateral harm.

    The hunt for al-Zawahri, one of many world’s most needed terrorists, stretches again to earlier than the 9/11 assaults. The CIA continued to seek for him as he rose to the highest of al-Qaida after the loss of life of Osama bin Laden and after the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan final yr. And a misstep in the course of the chase, the recruitment of a double agent, led to one of many bloodiest days within the company’s historical past.

    Soon after the United States left Kabul, the CIA sharpened its efforts to search out al-Zawahri, satisfied he would attempt to return to Afghanistan. Senior officers had informed the White House they’d be capable to keep and construct informant networks contained in the nation from afar and that the United States wouldn’t be blind to terrorism threats there. For the company, discovering al-Zawahri could be a key check of that assertion.

    This article relies on interviews with present and former American and different officers, impartial analysts who’ve studied the decadeslong hunt and others briefed on the occasions main as much as the weekend strike. Most spoke on the situation of anonymity due to the delicate intelligence used to search out al-Zawahri.

    For years, al-Zawahri was considered hiding within the border space of Pakistan, the place many Qaida and Taliban leaders took refuge after the US invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001. He was needed in reference to the 1998 embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya, and the CIA had tracked a community of people that intelligence officers thought supported him.

    The examination of that community intensified with the US’ exit from Afghanistan final yr and a perception amongst some intelligence officers that senior leaders of al-Qaida could be tempted to return.

    The hunch proved proper. The company came upon that al-Zawahri’s household had returned to a protected home in Kabul. Although the household tried to make sure they weren’t being watched and to maintain al-Zawahri’s location secret, intelligence businesses quickly realized he too had returned to Afghanistan.

    “There was a renewed effort to figure out where he was,” stated Mick Mulroy, a former CIA officer. “The one good thing that might have come out of withdrawing from Afghanistan is that certain high-level terrorist figures would then think it is safe for them to be there.”

    The protected home was owned by an aide to senior officers within the Haqqani community, a battle-hardened and violent wing of the Taliban authorities, and it was in an space managed by the group. Senior Taliban leaders often met on the home, however American officers have no idea what number of knew that the Haqqanis have been hiding al-Zawahri.

    If some senior Taliban officers didn’t know that the Haqqanis had allowed al-Zawahri to return, his killing may drive a wedge between the teams, impartial analysts and others briefed on the occasions stated.

    It isn’t clear why Al-Zawahri moved again to Afghanistan. He had lengthy made recruiting and promotional movies, and it might have been simpler to supply them in Kabul. He additionally might have had higher entry to medical remedy.

    No matter what the explanation, his ties to leaders of the Haqqani community led US  intelligence officers to the protected home.

    “The Haqqanis have a very long relationship with al-Qaida going back to the mujahedeen days,” stated Dan Hoffman, a former CIA officer. “They provide al-Qaida with a lot of tactical support that they need.”

    Once the protected home was positioned, the CIA adopted the playbook it wrote in the course of the hunt for bin Laden. The company constructed a mannequin of the location and sought to be taught all the things about it.

    Analysts finally recognized a determine who lingered on the balcony studying, however by no means left the home, as al-Zawahri.

    US officers shortly determined to focus on him, however the location of the home posed issues. It was within the Sherpur neighborhood of Kabul, an city space of carefully spaced homes. A missile armed with a big explosive may harm close by houses. And any form of incursion by Special Operations forces could be prohibitively harmful, limiting the choices for the US authorities to conduct a strike.

    The seek for al-Zawahri carried enormous significance for the company. After the US invasion of Afghanistan, the CIA base in Khost province turned residence to a focusing on group devoted to monitoring each bin Laden and al-Zawahri. It was one of many leads developed by the CIA to trace al-Zawahri that proved disastrous for the company’s officers at that base, Camp Chapman.

    CIA officers hoped Humam Khalil Abu Mulal al-Balawi, a Jordanian physician and propagandist for al-Qaida, would make them al-Zawahri. He supplied American officers with details about al-Zawahri’s well being, convincing them his intelligence was actual. But he was in reality a double agent, and on Dec. 30, 2009, he confirmed up at Camp Chapman with a suicide vest. When it exploded, seven CIA officers have been killed.

    For many, the Khost assault intensified efforts to search out al-Zawahri. “To honor their legacy, you carry on with the mission,” Hoffman stated.

    In 2012 and 2013, the CIA targeted the hunt on Pakistan’s North Waziristan area. CIA analysts have been assured they’d discovered the small village the place al-Zawahri was hiding. But intelligence businesses couldn’t discover his home within the city of a few dozen compounds, making a raid or drone strike unimaginable.

    Still, the U.S. hunt pressured al-Zawahri to stay within the tribal areas of Pakistan, probably limiting the effectiveness of his management inside al-Qaida.

    “Anytime anything related to bin Laden or Zawahri hit the intel channels, everyone stopped to pitch in and help,” stated Lisa Maddox, a former CIA analyst. “It was the CIA’s promise to the public: to bring them to justice.”

    On April 1, high intelligence officers briefed nationwide safety officers on the White House concerning the protected home and the way they’d tracked al-Zawahri. After the assembly, the CIA and different intelligence businesses labored to be taught extra about what they known as al-Zawahri’s sample of life.

    One key perception was that he was by no means seen leaving the home and solely appeared to get contemporary air by standing on a balcony on an higher flooring. He remained on the balcony for prolonged intervals, which gave the CIA likelihood to focus on him.

    Al-Zawahri continued to work on the protected home, producing movies to be distributed to the Qaida community.

    A senior administration official, who spoke on the situation of anonymity to debate the delicate choices resulting in the strike, stated the intelligence introduced to the White House had been repeatedly vetted, together with by a crew of impartial analysts tasked with figuring out everybody who was staying on the protected home.

    As choices for a strike have been developed, intelligence officers examined what sort of missile might be fired at al-Zawahri with out inflicting main harm to the protected home or the neighborhood round it. They finally selected a type of Hellfire missile designed to kill a single particular person.

    William Burns, the CIA director, and different intelligence officers briefed President Joe Biden on July 1, this time with the mannequin of the protected home, the senior official stated.

    At that assembly, Biden requested about the opportunity of collateral harm, prodding Burns to take him by the steps of how officers had discovered al-Zawahri and confirmed his data, and their plans to kill him.

    Biden ordered a collection of analyses. The White House requested the National Counterterrorism Center to supply an impartial evaluation on the impression of al-Zawahri’s removing, each in Afghanistan and to the community worldwide, stated a senior intelligence official. The president additionally requested concerning the potential dangers to Mark R. Frerichs, an American hostage held by the Haqqanis.

    In June and July, officers met a number of instances within the Situation Room to debate the intelligence and study the potential ramifications.

    The CIA plans known as for it to make use of its personal drones. Because it was utilizing its personal belongings, few Pentagon officers have been introduced into the planning for the strike, and plenty of senior navy officers realized about it solely shortly earlier than the White House announcement, an official stated.

    On July 25, Biden, glad with the plan, approved the CIA to conduct the airstrike when the chance introduced itself. Sunday morning in Kabul, it did. A drone flown by the CIA discovered al-Zawahri on his balcony. The company operatives fired two missiles, ending a greater than two-decadelong hunt.

    This article initially appeared in The New York Times.

  • Nine troopers amongst 15 killed in Burkina Faso’s north

    Fifteen individuals had been killed, together with 9 troopers, in coordinated jihadi assaults in northern Burkina Faso on Sunday, the military stated.

    Two army detachments, in Gaskinde and Pobe Mengao in Soum province within the Sahel area had been hit by “terrorists” Sunday morning, wounding greater than two dozen individuals, stated the military in an announcement. Security operations are underway in each areas, it stated.

    The assaults are the newest in a sequence of elevated violence linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic state throughout the nation that’s killed 1000’s and displaced 2 million individuals.

    Earlier this month, 16 troopers had been killed within the center-north area and at the very least 40 safety forces had been killed within the final two weeks of March, in keeping with an inner safety report for help teams seen by The Associated Press.

    The army junta, which overthrew a democratically elected authorities in January, is struggling to stem the violence whereas attempting to create new methods to safe the nation. Last week the federal government stated it was going to assist group leaders in speaking with some jihadis with a view to convey again locals who had joined them.

    However, group leaders stated there was little steerage on what that entailed and that this assault casts doubt on the method.

    “The situation is confusing. There is talk of dialogue and at the same time there are attacks,” Ousmane Amirou Dicko, the Emir of Liptako, instructed the AP.

    “Perhaps a desire to ‘negotiate’ from a position of strength, for some, or to make the dialogue fail for others,” he stated.

    Conflict analysts say the indiscriminate assaults sign a persistent militant marketing campaign and forged doubts on the administration’s capacity to comprise and subdue the jihadis, stated Laith Alkhouri, CEO of Intelonyx Intelligence Advisory, which offers intelligence evaluation. “It’s a task that’ll likely define their governance,” he stated.

  • US commander: Al-Qaida numbers in Afghanistan up ‘slightly’

    The al-Qaida extremist group has grown barely inside Afghanistan since US forces left in late August, and the nation’s new Taliban leaders are divided over whether or not to satisfy their 2020 pledge to interrupt ties with the group, the highest US commander within the area stated Thursday.
    Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie, head of US Central Command, stated in an interview with The Associated Press that the departure of US army and intelligence property from Afghanistan has made it a lot more durable to trace al-Qaida and different extremist teams inside Afghanistan.
    “We’re probably at about 1 or 2 per cent of the capabilities we once had to look into Afghanistan,” he stated, including that this makes it “very hard, not impossible” to make sure that neither al-Qaida nor the Islamic State group’s Afghanistan affiliate can pose a menace to the United States.

    Speaking on the Pentagon, McKenzie stated it’s clear that al-Qaida is making an attempt to rebuild its presence inside Afghanistan, which was the bottom from which it deliberate the September 11, 2001, assaults in opposition to the United States. He stated some militants are coming into the nation via its porous borders, however it’s onerous for the US to trace numbers.
    The US invasion that adopted the September 11 assaults led to a 20-year struggle that succeeded initially by eradicating the Taliban from energy however in the end failed. After President Joe Biden introduced in April that he was withdrawing fully from Afghanistan, the Taliban systematically overpowered Afghan authorities defenses and seized Kabul, the capital, in August.
    McKenzie and different senior US army and nationwide safety officers had stated earlier than the US withdrawal that it will complicate efforts to maintain a lid on the al-Qaida menace, partly due to the lack of on-the-ground intelligence info and the absence of a US-friendly authorities in Kabul.
    The US says it’ll depend on airstrikes from drones and different plane based mostly past Afghanistan’s borders to reply to any extremist threats in opposition to the US homeland.

    McKenzie stated no such strikes have been carried out for the reason that US accomplished its withdrawal from Afghanistan on Aug. 30. He added that America’s potential to conduct such strikes relies on the supply of intelligence, overhead imagery and different info and communications, “and that architecture is still being developed right now.”
    Al-Qaida is amongst quite a few extremist teams inside Afghanistan. After 2001, it misplaced most of its numbers and its potential to instantly threaten US territory, however McKenzie stated it retains “an aspirational desire” to assault the United States.
    During their first interval of rule in Kabul, from 1996 to 2001, the Taliban gave haven to al-Qaida and refused Washington’s demand after 9/11 to expel the group and switch over its chief, Osama bin Laden. The Taliban and al-Qaida have maintained ties ever since.
    “So we’re still trying to sort out exactly how the Taliban is going to proceed against them, and I think over the month or two it’ll become a little more apparent to us,” he stated.

    Similarly, McKenzie stated it’s not but clear how strongly Taliban will go after the Islamic State group, also called ISIS, which has violently attacked the Taliban throughout the nation. The United States blamed ISIS for an August 26 suicide bombing at Kabul airport that killed 13 American service members within the remaining days of the US evacuation.
    ISIS was “reinvigorated,” McKenzie stated, by the discharge of quite a few ISIS fighters from Afghan prisons in mid-August. He stated each ISIS and al-Qaida are recruiting from inside and outdoors Afghanistan.
    “So certainly we should expect a resurgent ISIS. It would be very surprising if that weren’t the case,” he stated, including, “It remains to be seen that the Taliban are going to be able to take effective action against them.”
    He known as al-Qaida a tougher drawback for the Taliban due to their longstanding ties.

    “So I think there are internal arguments inside the Taliban about the way forward,” he stated. “What we would like to see from the Taliban would be a strong position against al-Qaida,” which they promised as a part of the February 2020 Doha settlement that dedicated the United States to completely withdrawing from Afghanistan. “But I don’t believe that’s yet been fully realized.”
    McKenzie declined to offer an estimate of the variety of al-Qaida operatives inside Afghanistan. “I think it’s probably slightly increased,” he stated. “There’s a presence. We thought it was down pretty small, you know, toward the end of the conflict. I think some people have probably come back in. But it’s one of the things we look at, but I wouldn’t be confident giving you a number right now.”

  • Al-Qaida chief seems in 9/11 video amid rumors he’s useless

    Al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahri appeared in a brand new video marking the twentieth anniversary of the September 11, assaults, months after rumors unfold that he was useless.
    The SITE Intelligence Group that displays jihadist web sites stated the video was launched Saturday. In it, al-Zawahri stated that ‘Jerusalem Will Never be Judaized’, and praised al-Qaida assaults together with one which focused Russian troops in Syria in January.
    SITE stated al-Zawahri additionally famous the US army’s withdrawal from Afghanistan after 20 years of battle. It added that his feedback don’t essentially point out a latest recording, because the withdrawal settlement with the Taliban was signed in February 2020.

    Al-Zawahri made no point out of the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan and the capital Kabul final month, SITE added. But he did point out a January 1, assault that focused Russian troops on the sting of the northern Syrian metropolis of Raqqa.Rumors have unfold since late 2020 that al-Zawahri had died from sickness. Since then, no video or proof of life surfaced, till Saturday.
    “He could still be dead, though if so, it would have been at some point in or after Jan 2021,” tweeted Rita Katz, SITE’s director.
    Al-Zawahri’s speech was recorded in a 61-minute, 37-second video produced by the group’s as-Sahab Media Foundation.

    In latest years, al-Qaida has confronted competitors in jihadi circles from its rival, the Islamic State group. IS rose to prominence by seizing massive swaths of Iraq and Syria in 2014, declaring a ‘caliphate’ and increasing associates to a number of international locations throughout the area.
    IS’s bodily ‘caliphate’ was crushed in Iraq and Syria, although its militants are nonetheless energetic and finishing up assaults. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the shadowy chief of IS was killed by US particular forces in a raid in northwestern Syria in October 2019.
    Al-Zawahri, an Egyptian, grew to become chief of al-Qaida following the 2011 killing of Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan by US Navy SEALs.

  • Iran Rattled as Israel Repeatedly Strikes Key Targets

    In lower than 9 months, an murderer on a motorcycle fatally shot an al-Qaida commander given refuge in Tehran, Iran’s chief nuclear scientist was machine-gunned on a rustic highway, and two separate, mysterious explosions rocked a key Iranian nuclear facility within the desert, hanging the center of the nation’s efforts to complement uranium.
    The regular drumbeat of assaults, which intelligence officers mentioned had been carried out by Israel, highlighted the seeming ease with which Israeli intelligence was in a position to attain deep inside Iran’s borders and repeatedly strike its most closely guarded targets, typically with the assistance of turncoat Iranians.
    The assaults, the newest wave in additional than twenty years of sabotage and assassinations, have uncovered embarrassing safety lapses and left Iran’s leaders trying over their shoulders as they pursue negotiations with the Biden administration geared toward restoring the 2015 nuclear settlement.
    The recriminations have been caustic.
    The head of parliament’s strategic heart mentioned Iran had become a “haven for spies.” The former commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard known as for an overhaul of the nation’s safety and intelligence equipment. Lawmakers have demanded the resignation of high safety and intelligence officers.

    Most alarming for Iran, Iranian officers and analysts mentioned, was that the assaults revealed that Israel had an efficient community of collaborators inside Iran and that Iran’s intelligence providers had failed to seek out them.
    “That the Israelis are effectively able to hit Iran inside in such a brazen way is hugely embarrassing and demonstrates a weakness that I think plays poorly inside Iran,” mentioned Sanam Vakil, deputy director of the Middle East and North Africa Program at Chatham House.
    The assaults have additionally forged a cloud of paranoia over a rustic that now sees overseas plots in each mishap.
    Over the weekend, Iranian state tv flashed {a photograph} of a person mentioned to be Reza Karimi, 43, and accused him of being the “perpetrator of sabotage” in an explosion on the Natanz nuclear enrichment plant final week. But it was unclear who he was, whether or not he had acted alone and if that was even his actual identify. In any case, he had fled the nation earlier than the blast, Iran’s Intelligence Ministry mentioned.
    On Monday, after Iranian state information media reported that Brig. Gen. Mohammad Hosseinzadeh Hejazi, the deputy commander of the Quds Force, the overseas arm of the Revolutionary Guard, had died of coronary heart illness, there have been speedy suspicions of foul play.
    Hejazi had lengthy been a goal of Israeli espionage, and the son of one other distinguished Quds Force commander insisted on Twitter that Hejazi’s loss of life was “not cardiac-related.”
    A Revolutionary Guard spokesman didn’t clear the air with an announcement saying the overall had died of the mixed results of “extremely difficult assignments,” a current COVID-19 an infection and publicity to chemical weapons in the course of the Iran-Iraq conflict.
    The normal would have been the third high-ranking Iranian navy official to be assassinated within the final 15 months. The United States killed Gen. Qasem Soleimani, the chief of the Quds Force, in January 2020. Israel assassinated Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, Iran’s chief nuclear scientist and a brigadier normal within the Revolutionary Guard, in November.
    Even if Hejazi died of pure causes, the cumulative lack of three high generals was a major blow.

    The assaults symbolize an uptick in a long-running marketing campaign by the intelligence providers of Israel and the United States to subvert what they take into account to be Iran’s threatening actions.
    Chief amongst them are a nuclear program that Iran insists is peaceable, Iran’s funding in proxy militias throughout the Arab world, and its growth of precision-guided missiles for Hezbollah, the militant motion in Lebanon.
    An Israeli navy intelligence doc in 2019 mentioned that Hejazi was a number one determine within the final two, because the commander of the Lebanese corps of the Quds Force and the chief of the guided missile challenge. Revolutionary Guard spokesman Ramezan Sharif mentioned that Israel needed to assassinate Hejazi.
    Israel has been working to derail Iran’s nuclear program, which it considers a mortal risk, because it started. Israel is believed to have began assassinating key figures in this system in 2007, when a nuclear scientist at a uranium plant in Isfahan died in a mysterious fuel leak.
    In the years since, six different scientists and navy officers mentioned to be vital to Iran’s nuclear efforts have been assassinated. A seventh was wounded.
    Another high Quds Force commander, Rostam Ghasemi, mentioned just lately that he had narrowly escaped an Israeli assassination try throughout a go to to Lebanon in March.
    But assassination is only one device in a marketing campaign that operates on a number of ranges and fronts.
    In 2018, Israel carried out a daring nighttime raid to steal a half-ton of secret archives of Iran’s nuclear program from a warehouse in Tehran.
    Israel has additionally reached around the globe, monitoring down tools in different international locations that’s certain for Iran to destroy it, conceal transponders in its packaging or set up explosive units to be detonated after the gear has been put in inside Iran, in line with a former high-ranking U.S. intelligence official.
    A former Israeli intelligence operative mentioned that to compromise such tools, she and one other officer would drive by the manufacturing unit and stage a disaster, akin to a automobile accident or a coronary heart assault, and the girl would attraction to the guards for assist. That would get her sufficient entry to the ability to establish its safety system in order that one other workforce might break in and disable it, she mentioned, talking on situation of anonymity to debate covert operations.
    In an interview on Iranian state tv final week, Iran’s former nuclear chief revealed the origins of an explosion within the Natanz nuclear plant in July. The explosives had been sealed inside a heavy desk that had been positioned within the plant months earlier, mentioned Fereidoun Abbasi, the previous chief of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization.
    The explosion ripped by means of a manufacturing unit producing a brand new era of centrifuges, setting again Iran’s nuclear enrichment program by months, officers mentioned.
    The explosion on the Natanz plant final week, Abbasi mentioned, was the results of a “very sophisticated” operation by which the perpetrators had been in a position to minimize off energy to the centrifuges from each the principle electrical grid and the backup batteries concurrently. The sudden energy minimize despatched the centrifuges spinning uncontrolled, destroying 1000’s of them.
    Alireza Zakani, head of parliament’s analysis heart, mentioned Tuesday that in one other case equipment from a nuclear web site had been despatched overseas for restore and was returned to Iran with 300 kilos of explosives packed inside.
    In addition to setting again Iran’s uranium enrichment program, the assaults are prone to weaken Iran’s hand in oblique talks with the United States over restoring the 2015 nuclear settlement.
    President Donald Trump withdrew from the settlement, by which Iran accepted limits on its nuclear program in trade for the lifting of sanctions, in 2018. President Joe Biden has made restoring it one among his high overseas coverage goals.
    Israel opposed the settlement and the timing of its newest assault, whereas the nuclear talks had been going down in Vienna, instructed that Israel sought if to not derail the talks, to not less than diminish Iran’s leverage.
    The United States mentioned it was not concerned within the assault however has not publicly criticized it both.
    It would have been troublesome for Israel to hold out these operations with out inside assist from Iranians, and which may be what rankles Iran most.
    Security officers in Iran have prosecuted a number of Iranian residents over the previous decade, charging them with complicity in Israeli sabotage and assassination operations. The penalty is execution.
    But the infiltrations have additionally sullied the status of the intelligence wing of the Revolutionary Guard, which is answerable for guarding nuclear websites and scientists.
    A former Guard commander demanded a “cleansing” of the intelligence service, and Iran’s vice chairman, Eshaq Jahangiri, mentioned that the unit answerable for safety at Natanz needs to be “be held accountable for its failures.”
    The deputy head of parliament, Amir-Hossein Ghazizadeh Hashemi, instructed the Iranian information media on Monday that it was now not sufficient accountable Israel and the United States for such assaults. Iran wanted to wash its personal home.

    As a publication affiliated with the Guard, Mashregh News, put it final week: “Why does the security of the nuclear facility act so irresponsibly that it gets hit twice from the same hole?”
    But the Revolutionary Guard solutions solely to Iran’s supreme chief, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and up to now there was no signal of a top-down reshuffling.
    After every assault, Iran has struggled to reply, generally claiming to have recognized these accountable solely after they’d left the nation or saying that they remained at massive. Iranian officers additionally insist that they’ve foiled different assaults.
    Calls for retaliation develop louder after every assault. Conservatives have accused the federal government of President Hassan Rouhani of weak point or of subjugating the nation’s safety to the nuclear talks in hopes they’ll result in aid from U.S. sanctions.
    Indeed, Iranian officers shifted to what they known as “strategic patience” within the final yr of the Trump administration, calculating that Israel sought to goad them into an open battle that will remove the potential for negotiations with a brand new Democratic administration.
    Both Rouhani and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif have mentioned they might not enable the assaults to derail the negotiations as a result of lifting sanctions was the precedence.
    In Vienna on Tuesday, senior diplomats mentioned that progress was being made within the talks, nevertheless slowly. They agreed to arrange a working group to review learn how to sequence the return of the United States to the deal by lifting all sanctions “inconsistent” with the accord, and the return of Iran to the enrichment limits set within the accord.
    It can be doable that Iran’s response to the Israeli assaults has been muted much less by endurance than by failure.
    Iran was blamed for a bomb that exploded close to Israel’s Embassy in New Delhi in January, and 15 militants linked to Iran had been arrested final month in Ethiopia for plotting to assault Israeli, American and Emirati targets.
    But any overt retaliation dangers an awesome Israeli response.
    “They are not in a hurry to start a war,” mentioned Talal Atrissi, a political science professor on the Lebanese University in Beirut. “Retaliation means war.”
    And if the repeated Israeli assaults had the impact of fomenting a nationwide paranoia, an intelligence official mentioned, that was a aspect profit for Israel. The further steps Iran has taken to scan buildings for surveillance units and plumb staff’ backgrounds to root out potential spies has slowed down the enrichment work, the official mentioned.

    The standard knowledge is that neither aspect needs full-scale conflict and is relying on the opposite to not escalate. But on the similar time, the covert, regionwide shadow conflict between Israel and Iran has intensified with Israeli airstrikes on Iranian-backed militias in Syria and tit for tat assaults on ships.
    But as Iran faces a struggling economic system, rampant COVID-19 infections and different issues of poor governance, the strain is on to succeed in a brand new settlement quickly to take away financial sanctions, mentioned Vakil of Chatham House.
    “These low-level, gray zone attacks reveal that the Islamic Republic urgently needs to get the JCPOA back into a box” to liberate assets to deal with its different issues, she mentioned, referring to the nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

  • Mike Pompeo claims Iran is new ‘home base’ of Al-Qaida

    US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo stated Tuesday that al-Qaida had established a brand new residence base in Iran. He claimed the militant group had “burrowed inside” the nation, making it more durable for the US to focus on its members.
    Pompeo’s claims come on the again of a New York Times report {that a} prime al-Qaida chief, Abu Muhammad al-Masri, had been killed in Iran by Israeli operatives in August 2020. Iran subsequently denied the report.
    “Al-Masri’s presence inside Iran points to the reason that we’re here today … al-Qaida has a new home base, the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Pompeo informed a information convention on the National Press Club in Washington as an official affirmation of the report, albeit with out offering exhausting proof.

    “Iran is indeed the new Afghanistan … as the key geographic hub for al-Qaida,” Pompeo stated. “Unlike in Afghanistan, when al-Qaida was hiding in the mountains, al-Qaida today is operating under the hard shell of the Iranian regime’s protection,” he added.
    “Tehran gives sanctuary to the terror group’s senior leaders .. and has allowed al-Qaida to fund-raise, to freely communicate with other members around the world and perform many other functions that were previously directed from Afghanistan and Pakistan.”

    Iran denies al-Qaida hyperlink Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif responded to Pompeo’s remarks on Twitter, calling them “fictitious declassifications” and “warmongering lies.”
    As a clerical state based mostly on Shiite Islam, Iran is taken into account ideologically against extremist teams like al-Qaida, which adhere to the Sunni department of Islam and have historically been supported by Iran’s arch-enemy Saudi Arabia.
    A former head of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Pompeo has beforehand stated that al-Qaida founder Osama bin Laden “considered al-Qaida members inside Iran to be hostages.”
    Pompeo seeks to trigger havoc in final days Trita Parsi, govt vice chairman of the Quincy Institute suppose tank, spoke to DW about Pompeo’s accusation, calling it “hardly convincing.”
    The Trump regime has been “pursuing maximum pressure against Iran” since Trump took energy — he questioned why they might haven’t come ahead earlier if such proof did exist.
    Parsi additionally identified that by claiming Iran is the brand new residence base of al-Qaida, Pompeo has arrange a “casus belli that would allow the administration to go and attack Iran in its last couple of days in power.”

    Legislation from 2002 permits the federal government to take army motion in opposition to al-Qaida with out congressional approval.
    Parsi believes, nevertheless, that the true intention behind Pompeo’s transfer is “to make it impossible for the Biden administration to pursue diplomacy … and to undo the mess that Trump and Pompeo have caused.”
    He stated that this was according to the designation of the Houthis in Yemen as a terrorist group on Monday.

    A brand new al-Qaida-Iran axis?
    Pompeo’s arguments of Iranian assist for al-Qaida marks one of many first occasions Washington has clearly accused Tehran of supporting a Sunni extremist group. Iran is a recognized supporter of Shiite militant teams, corresponding to Lebanon’s Hezbollah.
    However, Pompeo has stated the connection between Iran and al-Qaida has improved because the 2015 nuclear settlement brokered by the Obama administration.
    US intelligence consultants have stated Iranian territory supplies a comparatively protected haven from the US army, and al-Qaida’s presence there is available in alternate for ensures that the extremists won’t goal Iranian pursuits.

    “Iran decided to allow al-Qaida to establish a new operational headquarters, on the condition that al-Qaida operatives inside abide by the regime’s rules governing al-Qaida’s stay inside the country,” Pompeo stated.

  • Mali: Targeted assault kills two French troopers

    Two French troopers had been killed in northwestern Mali when their automobile hit an improvised explosive gadget on Saturday, in line with the French presidency. An analogous assault on French troops primarily based in Mali killed three troops simply days earlier.
    French President Emmanuel Macron expressed grief over the deaths of Sergeant Yvonne Huynh and Brigadier Loic Risser within the Menaka area, his workplace stated in a press release. Another soldier was wounded within the blast, it added.

    Huynh, 33, was the primary feminine soldier despatched to the Sahel area because the French operation towards Islamists started there in 2013.
    Both Huynh and Risser had been members of a regiment specializing in intelligence work.
    “Their vehicle hit an improvised explosive device during an intelligence mission,” the French presidency stated of Saturday’s incident.
    Battle towards jihadis
    Around 5,100 French troops are stationed throughout the Sahel area and have been combating jihadi teams alongside troopers from Mauritania, Chad, Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, who collectively make up the G5 Sahel group.
    The al-Qaida-linked Group to Support Islam and Muslims (GSIM) had claimed duty for an earlier assault that killed three French troopers in central Mali.
    The group, the principle jihadist alliance within the Sahel, says the principle causes for its continued assaults on French troops is France’s army presence within the area in addition to the publication of Prophet Mohammad’s by a French newspaper and Macron’s protection of them within the identify of freedom of expression.

    President Macron has affirmed France’s willpower to proceed its position in “the battle against terrorism.”
    Last month, France stated its forces killed Bah ag Moussa, a frontrunner of al-Qaida’s North Africa wing, throughout an operation in northeastern Mali.
    In November, French forces killed 50 terrorists linked to al-Qaida central Mali.

  • Trump orders most American troops to leave Somalia

    The Pentagon has said it is pulling most US troops out of Somalia on President Donald Trump’s orders, continuing a post-election push by Trump to shrink US involvement in counterterrorism missions abroad.

    Without providing details, the Pentagon on Friday said in a short statement that “a majority” of US troops and assets in Somalia will be withdrawn in early 2021. There are currently about 700 troops in that Horn of Africa nation, training and advising local forces in an extended fight against the extremist group al-Shabab, an affiliate of al-Qaida.

    Trump recently ordered troop drawdowns in Afghanistan and Iraq, and he was expected to withdraw some or all troops from Somalia. Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had said on Wednesday that the future structure of the U.S. military presence in Somalia was still in debate.

    The adjusted U.S. presence, Milley said, would amount to “a relatively small footprint, relatively low cost in terms of number of personnel and in terms of money.” He provided no specifics but stressed that the U.S. remained concerned about the threat posed by al-Shabab, which he called “an extension of al-Qaida,” the extremist group that planned the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States from Afghanistan.

    “They do have some reach and they could if left unattended conduct operations against not only U.S. interests in the region but also against the homeland,” he said. “So they require attention.” Noting that Somalia remains a dangerous place for Americans, he said that a CIA officer was killed there recently.