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US Warns Iran Fueling Potential al-Qaida Resurgence

Jeff Seldin

   Far from potentially fading into obscurity, one of the world's most
   feared jihadist terrorist organizations may be poised for a potential
   resurgence thanks to an unlikely ally.

   Almost two decades after the United States first targeted al-Qaida's
   leadership in Afghanistan for carrying out the September 11, 2001
   attacks on New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the terror
   group has established a new home, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
   warned Tuesday, one he suggested was somewhat sheltered from U.S.
   military might.

   "Al-Qaida has a new home base. It is the Islamic Republic of Iran,"
   Pompeo said during a speech at the National Press Club in Washington.

   "Tehran has allowed al-Qaida to fundraise, to freely communicate with
   al-Qaida members around the world, and to perform many other functions
   that were previously directed from Afghanistan or Pakistan," Pompeo
   said.

   "As a result of this assistance, al-Qaida has centralized its
   leadership inside of Tehran," he added, describing Iran as the terror
   group's new "operational headquarters."

   The warning from the United States' top diplomat, in the waning days of
   U.S. President Donald Trump's presidency, returns the administration's
   focus to Iran, which it criticized early and often following Trump's
   inauguration. But it also represents a stunning shift from assessments
   of al-Qaida shared by other top administration officials just in the
   past several months.

   "I think al-Qaida's on the ropes, no doubt," State Department
   Counterterrorism Coordinator Ambassador Nathan Sales told a virtual
   forum this past November.

   "There's a sense in which the question of who leads al-Qaida's core
   matters is a little bit less today than it did a decade ago, certainly
   two decades ago," Sales said, calling the group's leadership "really a
   remnant of its former self."

   U.S. National Security Adviser Robert O'Brien was equally optimistic,
   saying just a day earlier that al-Qaida has been "incapable of
   directing a complex, large-scale attack against the U.S. because of the
   pressure that we've kept on them."

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