Mossad kills al-Qaeda deputy al-Masri in Tehran



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On behalf of Washington, Israeli agents are said to have shot number two in the Al Qaeda terror network. Israeli commentators see this as a signal for future US President Joe Biden.

Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah is considered to be the mastermind behind the August 7, 1998 attack on the US embassy in Kenya.

Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah is considered to be the mastermind behind the August 7, 1998 attack on the US embassy in Kenya.

Str / EPA

It was already night in Tehran when a murder attempt was made in a more exclusive neighborhood in the north of the capital on 7 August. Eyewitnesses later reported that two men on a motorcycle fired five shots, four of which hit a white Renault, and then fled. The two occupants of the car, a man and a woman, had died instantly. The victims were two Lebanese citizens, Fars news agency reported, which belongs to the milieu of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. He provided his identity with Habib Dawudi, presumably a history professor, and his 27-year-old daughter Miriam.

Reports quickly got around that the victims were high-ranking members of the Lebanese Hezbollah. It was also fitting that the crime had been committed near the home of Iraqi militia leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, who was killed by the Americans in Baghdad in January along with Iranian general Kassem Soleimani.

Tehran denies the news

According to the American media, the Iranian information was nothing more than cloudy firecrackers. The murder victim was none other than Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah, Qaeda’s number two, the New York Times reported in its Saturday edition. According to Israeli media reports, Washington obtained the information and gave the order. The act itself was committed by two agents of the Israeli foreign intelligence service Mossad. Abdullah, an Egyptian, better known by his cover name Abu Mohammed al-Masri, was one of the founding members of the Al-Qaeda terror network. He is considered to be the mastermind behind the attacks on US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania on August 7, 1998, which resulted in 224 deaths and hundreds of injuries. His daughter Miriam is the widow of Hamza bin Ladin, the son of Kaida founder Usama bin Ladin, who was killed last year in the Afghan-Pakistani border area.

Tehran denies the information. State Department spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh described it as a “Hollywood scenario”. There are no Kaida members present in Iran. The Shia Islamic Republic is known to have hosted high-ranking representatives of the Sunni terrorist group, although the two sides are fighting bitterly on the battlefields in Iraq and Syria. The existence of direct cooperation is the subject of controversy among experts. Those who know Iran see this as reassurance for Tehran against potential attacks in their own country. The leadership negotiated a prisoner swap at least twice after Al Qaeda kidnapped Iranian diplomats. As part of that exchange, several Al-Qaeda leaders were released or were released from house arrest five years ago, including al-Masri and Saif al-Adel, who is considered to be number three in the terror network. While Abdullah and al-Adel remained in Tehran, the rest went to northwest Syria, where Americans have killed some Qaeda commanders in recent months.

Israel against a new version of the nuclear deal

Terrorism experts believe the killing of al-Masri will aggravate the fragmentation of Qaeda that has been observed for a long time. Within the Iranian leadership it is likely to fuel mutual distrust fueled by the attack on the Natanz nuclear plant and a series of cyber attacks and explosions.

With the operation, Israel is making it clear that Washington must take its interests into account, the country’s largest daily newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth wrote in a comment Sunday. Since Biden’s election victory, Israeli media have speculated on possible surprises while Donald Trump is still in office. Ronen Bergman, who wrote a book on Mossad and is the author of “Yedioth Ahronoth”, called the assassination of al-Masri a “small sideline” in the war between Iran on the one hand and the US and Israel on the other. other. The last word has not yet been spoken, Bergman writes.



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