The United States and Israel worked together to track down and kill a top al Qaeda operative in Iran earlier this year, a daring intelligence operation by the two allied nations that came as the Trump administration increased pressure on Tehran.
Four current and former US officials said Abu Mohammed al-Masri, al-Qaida’s number two, was killed in August in the Iranian capital. The United States provided intelligence to the Israelis on where they could find al-Masri and the alias he was using at the time, while Israeli agents carried out the assassination, according to two of the officials. The other two officials confirmed al-Masri’s murder, but were unable to provide specific details.
Al-Masri was shot dead in an alley in Tehran on August 7, the anniversary of the 1998 bombings against the US embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Al-Masri was widely believed to have participated in the planning of those attacks and was wanted by the FBI on terrorism charges.
Al-Masri’s death is a blow to al-Qaida, the terrorist network that orchestrated the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, and comes amid rumors in the Middle East about the fate of the group’s leader, Ayman. al-Zawahiri. Officials could not confirm those reports, but said the US intelligence community was trying to determine their credibility.
Two of the officials, one within the intelligence community and with direct knowledge of the operation and another former CIA officer briefed on the matter, said al-Masri was assassinated by Kidon, a unit within the secret Israeli spy organization. Mossad allegedly responsible for the murder. high value goals. In Hebrew, Kidon means bayonet or “spearhead.”
The intelligence community official said al-Masri’s daughter Maryam was also a target of the operation. The United States believed she was being groomed for a leadership role in al Qaeda and intelligence suggested she was involved in operational planning, according to the official, who, like the others, spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss confidential information.
Al-Masri’s daughter was the widow of Hamza bin Laden, the son of al-Qaida mastermind Osama bin Laden. He was assassinated last year in a US counterterrorism operation in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region.
The news of al-Masri’s death was first reported by The New York Times.
Both the CIA and the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which oversees the Mossad intelligence agency, declined to comment.
Israel and Iran are staunch enemies, and the Iranian nuclear program is Israel’s main security concern. Israel has welcomed the Trump administration’s withdrawal from the 2015 Iranian nuclear deal and the US pressure campaign on Tehran.
At the time of the killings, the Trump administration was in the advanced stages of trying to push the UN Security Council to reinstate all international sanctions against Iran that were lifted under the nuclear deal. None of the other members of the Security Council agreed with the United States, which has promised to punish countries that fail to enforce sanctions as part of its “maximum pressure” campaign on Iran.
Israeli officials are concerned that the incoming administration of President-elect Joe Biden may return to the nuclear deal. It is likely that if Biden commits to the Iranians, Israel will push for the agreement to be modified to address Iran’s long-range missile program and its military activity throughout the region, specifically in Syria and its support for groups like Hezbollah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad.
Revelations that Iran was harboring an al Qaeda leader could help Israel bolster its case with the new American administration.
Al-Masri had been on a kill or capture list for years. But his presence in Iran, which has a long history of hostility toward al-Qaida, presented significant obstacles to stopping or killing it.
Iran denied the reports, saying the government does not host any al Qaeda leaders and blaming the United States and Israel for trying to foment anti-Iran sentiment. US officials have long believed that various al Qaeda leaders have lived quietly in Iran for years and published intelligence assessments have proven that case.
Al-Masri’s death, albeit under a false name, was reported in the Iranian media on August 8. The reports identified him as a Lebanese history professor potentially affiliated with the Iran-linked Hezbollah movement in Lebanon and said he had been killed by gunmen on a motorcycle along with his daughter.
Lebanese media, citing Iranian reports, said the dead were Lebanese citizen Habib Daoud and his daughter Maraym.
The deaths of al-Masri and his daughter occurred three days after the catastrophic August 4 explosion in the port of Beirut and did not receive much attention. Hezbollah never commented on the reports and Lebanese security officials did not report that any citizens were killed in Tehran.
A Hezbollah official declined to comment on al-Masri’s death on Saturday, saying that Iran’s Foreign Ministry had already denied it.
The alleged killings appear to conform to a pattern of behavior attributed to Israel in the past.
In 1995, the founder of the Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad was killed by a gunman on a motorcycle in Malta, in a murder widely attributed to Mossad. Mossad also reportedly carried out a series of similar killings of Iranian nuclear scientists in Iran in the early last decade. Iran has accused Israel of being behind these killings.
Yoel Guzansky, a senior fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies and a former analyst for Iranian affairs in the prime minister’s office, said Iran has been known for some time to hide top al Qaeda figures. While he had no direct knowledge of al-Masri’s death, he said that a joint U.S.-Israel operation would reflect the two nations’ close intelligence cooperation, with the United States typically stronger on the technical aspects of intelligence gathering and Israel expert in operative agents. Behind enemy lines.
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