When al-Qaeda commander Abu Mohammad al-Masri, responsible for the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, was killed in Tehran in August, a complex operation coordinated with Israel’s Mossad Security Service. Al-Masri’s targeted killing involved a coordinated effort from U.S., Israeli intelligence and dissident groups in Tehran. Whether Israeli’s Mossad actually pulled the trigger or set off the bomb to get al-Masri is anyone’s guess. What’s known for sure is that one of al-Qaeda’s most wanted men, with a $10 million bounty on his head, was killed in Tehran. President Donald Trump, 74, yanked the U.S. out May 8, 2018 of former President Barack Obama’s July 15, 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action [JCPOA] AKA “The Iranian Nuke Deal.” U.S. allies complained that canceling the deal endangered global national security.
U.S. intel officials know how hard it was May 2, 2011 to track down Al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden, taking 10-years to figure out his whereabouts, eventually finding him in Abbottabad, Pakistan, killing him and dumping his corpse somewhere in the Indian Ocean. With the best minds from the U.S. and CIA coordinating with British M16, Israeli Mossad, German Intelligence [FIS], French DBSE intelligence, etc., it took the U.S. 10 years to find and kill Bin Laden. When it comes to the more recent operation that killed A;-Masri, the coordinated effort with the CIA, Mossad and elements Iranian resistance, succeeded in getting al-Masri in August. Iran and al-Qaeda media services kept his assassination secret, not admitting when they lose an al-Qaedea leader. Coordinating an operation to kill al-Masri involved a costly, long-term operation orchestrated with the CIA and Mossad.
When Biden’s sworn in as the nation’s next president Jan. 20, 2021, he’ll have some big decisions to make about whether to rejoin the JCPOA. When 58-year-old President Barack Obama signed the Iranian Nuke deal July 15, 2020, he was pressured by P5+1, including the U.S., U.K., France, Russia, China and Germany, to adhere to an agreement that compromised U.S. national security. U.N. Security Council members were hell-bent on getting Iran to stop enriching uranium, all concerned that Tehran was getting dangerously close to an A-bomb. While Tehran insists that its uranium enrichment program was purely peaceful, the Western alliance, Russia and China believed otherwise. Yet none of the Security Council members expected Tehran was actively harboring al-Qaeda fugitives in Tehran. If the P5+1 knew Tehran was actively involved in harboring terrorists, there would be no deal.
Al-Masri and his Egyptian comrade Saif al Adel were both believed harbored by Iranian authorities. While there’s no love lost between Iran’s Shiites and al-Qaeda’s Sunn terrorists, both groups are joined by their hatred of the U.S. Al-Masri was considered the chief operational mind of al-Qaeda, not 69-year-old titular leader Ayman al-Zawahri, who’s believed out-of-commission or dead. Al-Zawahri assumed al-Qaeda’s No. 1, after Bin Laden’s death May 2, 2011. “It was a joint operation with the America provding technical details that identified Masri’s secret identity and location in Tehran, while the Israelis provided the actual assassins to do the attack in Tehran,” said an unnamed European intel official. Israeli’s are natural fit for operations in Iran because of 500,00 Israeli’s grew up in Iran and speak Farsi fluently. Israeli Iranians are a natural fit for Mossad security services.
Leaking the operation that killed al-Masri was designed to send incoming Biden administration officials a message that the entire JCPOA was flawed from Day 1 because it didn’t take into account Iran’s malign activities in the Mideast and North Africa. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned former President Barack Obama about entering into an agreement with Tehran, knowing cooperation with al-Qaeda and other Sunni terror groups. “This community is closely watched by Mossad and military intelligence and of course it’s used to recruit both agents and analysts,” said unnamed Mossad official, referring to how Israeli Iranians get recruited to work in Tehran. CIA officials know that the Mossad is uniquely suited to recruit local assassins to target Iranian officials. Mossad has targeted certain Iranian nuclear scientist working on Iran’s illicit uranium enrichment program.
Biden’s foreign policy team will no doubt try to revive much of the old Obama-Biden policy, including the JCPOA. Israel wants Biden to know that there are problems with Iran regardless of the past global actions on Tehran’s nuclear enrichment program. Leaking the targeted assassination of al-Masri sends a message to Biden’s foreign policy team that things can’t go back to business-and-usual with Tehran. “I’m not sure the Israelis are being shy about reminding [President-elect Joe] Biden that even if you want to resume talks with Tehran over the nuclear deal, there ‘s still going to be an issue of the presence of a dozen top al-Qaeda people in Tehran . . .” said the unnamed intel official. With Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei harboring al-Qaeda and Islamic State of Iraq and Syria [ISIS] terrorists in Iran, it’s difficult to go back. Biden can’t go back to business-as-usual with Tehran until they renounce terrorism.
