AFP
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
Under the above heading, Mariana Belinkaya, in “Kommersant”, wrote about the Trump administration’s claim to have ties between Tehran and Al Qaeda.
The article reads: US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo accused Tehran of having ties to the Al Qaeda terrorist network. According to him, contacts between them intensified in 2015, after the conclusion of the “nuclear deal” with Iran, from which the United States withdrew nearly three years ago. The announcement came eight days before Donald Trump’s presidential term ends. Advisers to the president-elect, Joe Biden, believe that the outgoing administration is doing everything in its power to make it difficult for the new president to reconnect with Tehran and return the United States to the “nuclear deal.”
It is noteworthy that the Politico correspondent noticed that on the eve of that, Mike Pompeo sat in a cafe in Washington, with the head of the Mossad, Yossi Cohen, and wrote about it on Twitter. Israel is the most active in the Middle East in supporting the Trump administration’s efforts to create an anti-Iran coalition and confront the “nuclear deal.”
As for Tehran’s accusations by Washington and Western intelligence agencies in general of supporting Al Qaeda and providing asylum to its members on Iranian soil, they are not new. It was rumored even before Donald Trump arrived at the White House. But during the era of the last president, the US-Iranian relations, which had gone on a warm path, became strained, and accusations against Tehran became an almost constant trend.
Intelligence circles differ on the relationship between Iran and Al Qaeda. For example, Reuters quoted a senior intelligence official as stressing that the Iranians were never friends with Al Qaeda, either before or after September 11, and any statements about current cooperation should be treated with caution.
Indeed, the relationship between Shiite Iran and the Sunni base was never simple. Al Qaeda has taken Iranian military and diplomats hostage and used them to make deals with Tehran. In addition, after the outbreak of war in Syria in 2011, Iran and al-Qaeda found themselves in different trenches, and the group’s leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, issued tough enough statements against Tehran.
The article expresses only the opinion of the newspaper or writer
