http://sufinews.blogspot.co.uk/2006/02/modernity-and-fundamentalism-in-sind.html
http://archives.dailytimes.com.pk/editorial/18-Jan-2006/washington-diary-modernity-and-fundamentalism-dr-manzur-ejaz
"One cannot rule out the possibility that the vice of sectarianism reached the villages along with the instruments of modernity. In some strange manner, sectarian hatred has accompanied tractors, TVs and electricity. It can be postulated that fundamentalism is more closely associated with mechanisation, commercialisation and urbanisation of society than the inherent genius of a nationality."
"Sindh and southern Punjab, dominated by a feudalism and tribalism, have not experienced the rise of competitive middle classes; or their size and influence has been quite limited. As a result, the traditional mode of thinking, expressed through Sufism, has maintained its predominance. Of course, the teaching of the mother tongue has helped the Sindhis keep their traditions alive but that has not been the determining factor. Had it been so, Sikh and Hindu fundamentalism could not have emerged because the use of the mother tongue in the respective areas was not disrupted."
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/759336/posts
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB122702984907237857
"Groups such as Al Qaeda, the Boroumands write, owe a debt to 20th-century European doctrines of the extreme right and left. One stream of influence can be traced to Hassan al-Banna, who founded the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in 1928. From Italy's fascists he took the idea of unquestioning loyalty to a charismatic leader, modelling the slogan of his paramilitary organisation — "action, obedience, silence" — on Mussolini's injunction to "believe, obey, fight". Taking a cue from the Nazis, he placed great emphasis on the Brotherhood's youth wing and the marriage of the physical and the spiritual, Islam with activism."
.........
Here is the paper
http://www.journalofdemocracy.org/sites/default/files/Boroumand.pdf
Khomeini’s revolution was not an exclusively Shi’ite phenomenon. Not accidentally, one of the first foreign visitors who showed up to congratulate him was the Sunni Islamist Mawdudi; before long, Qutb’s face was on an Iranian postage stamp. Khomeini’s successor, Ali Khamenei, translated Qutb into Persian. Khomeini’s own interest in creating an “Islamist International”—it would later be known by the hijacked Koranic term Hezbollah (“party of God”)—was apparent as early as August 1979.
https://twitter.com/mohamedabuadam/status/752441338197643264
Photos of Syed Qutb and Khalid Islamboli on postage stamps of Iran
Impact of Iranian revolution across Sunni world
https://books.google.com.pk/books?id=OLvTNk75hUoC&pg=PA132&lpg=PA132#v=onepage&q&f=false
http://www.hudson.org/research/11621-after-iran-deal-u-s-needs-to-reassure-arabs-over-pax-iranica
"Ironically, the spread of puritanical madrasas in the Muslim world was partly a function of the fear generated around the Muslim world by Ayatollah Khomeini’s Iranian revolution. As Shia clerics created a theocracy in ancient Persia, Sunni clerics started nurturing ambitions of similar authority and power in other countries. Some Arab governments made mistakes in dealing with this theocratic push for power by giving the clerics money for preaching their brand of Islam. But even then, so far, Iran-like theocracies have not swept Muslim countries.
Support for conservative Islamic groups, such as the Wahhabis, inadvertently led to Islamist radicalism. But none of the regimes in Muslim countries became radical as a result, and the ones that did (e.g. the Taliban in Afghanistan, the Morsi regime in Egypt), were forced out of power by one set of circumstances or another. That is very different from Iran where radicalism is entrenched in the very nature of a revolutionary regime."
http://www.rferl.org/content/article/1065135.html
Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution provided an influential model and a source of emulation for Palestinian militants. Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) was created in 1980, and from its inception founders regarded Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini as the leader of Islamic revolutions everywhere. The success of the Iranian revolution showed the PIJ founders that "Islam was the solution and that jihad was the way," Ziad Abu-Amr wrote in "Islamic Fundamentalism in the West Bank and Gaza" (1994). Not only was the PIJ inspired by Khomeini, but it also cited one of his fatwa declaring the elimination of Israel a religious duty.
https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/101744-Maudoodi-an-ardent-advocate-of-Muslim-unity
http://www.thenews.com.pk/print/101658-Maudoodi-an-ardent-advocate-of-Muslim-unity
"Maulana Maudoodi was the first leader in Pakistan who supported Imam Khomeini's struggle for Islamic Revolution in Iran. Both leaders met during Haj in 1956 for the first time and this meeting led to an understanding between them over the implementation of Islamic system. Maulana Maudoodi vehemently condemned the killing of about 15,000 Khomeini supporters by the Raza Shah regime in 1963. This annoyed the then Pakistani government, which took punitive action against Jamaat-e-Islami and its monthly magazine Tarjamanul Quran that carried an article supporting Khomeini and condemning Shah. An exchange of letters also took place between Khomeini and Maudoodi in 1979, the year when Islamic Revolution triumphed in Iran. Author Syed Nisar Ali Tirmizi also mentions similarity of views between Maulana Maudoodi and Allama Arif Hussain Hussaini, both of whom struggled for Muslim unity and implementation of Islamic system in Pakistan."
http://carnegie-mec.org/diwan/74633?lang=en
To be sure, the arrival of Khomeinism had far-reaching effects by politicizing Shi‘a identity, supporting armed Shi‘a groups across the region, and rattling Sunni regimes with a vow to topple Gulf monarchies. But the revolution also professed to be ecumenical and non-sectarian and did in fact inspire many Sunni Islamists. Today, the Iranian regime tries—unconvincingly—to maintain this façade in its pronouncements and statements. The chapter by Afshon Ostovar does a wonderful job of capturing this tension in Iran’s foreign policy, between universalist aspirations and particularist realities. He argues that self-interest, not Shi‘ism, ultimately governs Iranian policies, as shown by Iran’s longstanding links with Sunni groups such as the Taliban, Hamas, and Al-Qaeda. And while he assigns a fair share of the blame to Iran in stoking sectarianism—particularly through its support of non-state armed groups in Iraq and the Levant—he also acknowledges that Iran operates in a deeply sectarian neighborhood.
Here, the role of its geostrategic rival is crucial. It was actually Saudi Arabia’s counterreaction to the Iranian Revolution through the mobilization of anti-Shi‘a Salafism during the 1980s and beyond that had a more determinative effect on sectarianism.
http://www.sundance.tv/series/carlos/cast/anis-naccache
http://www.weeklystandard.com/who-is-anis-nakash/article/511392
http://www.wsj.com/articles/obamas-sanctions-gift-to-an-assassin-for-iran-1439158939
Anis Naccache’s name is synonymous with political violence. In 1975, as a lieutenant of the arch-terrorist Carlos the Jackal, he helped lead the hostage-taking of 11 OPEC oil ministers in Vienna. Four years later he put his skills at the service of Khomeini’s Islamic Republic.
But the attempt on Bakhtiar’s life went awry. Mr. Naccache and his team first killed a police officer posted in the building. But they got the wrong apartment door, shooting and killing an elderly French woman and wounding her sister. Unable to break down Bakhtiar’s door, they escaped and were confronted by more French police. In the ensuing firefight the terrorists shot another officer, paralyzing him for life. Mr. Naccache and three accomplices were convicted of murder and handed life sentences in 1982. A fifth team member received a 20-year sentence.
Iran didn’t throw in the towel. Paris was rocked by bombings in the mid-1980s, killing at least eight French citizens and injuring scores. An Iran-linked group called the Committee for Solidarity With Arab and Middle Eastern Political Prisoners claimed responsibility for many of the attacks and demanded the release of Mr. Naccache and other convicted terrorists. In Lebanon, Iran’s proxy, Hezbollah, abducted 16 French nationals—mostly diplomats and journalists—in a bid to gain the release of Mr. Naccache and his accomplices.
France relented in July 1990, and Mr. Naccache and his fellow assassins were put on a plane to Tehran after a pardon by President François Mitterrand. The French hostages in Lebanon had been released in 1988, and to no one’s surprise French officials denied that any deal had been made. A different team of killers was dispatched to Paris to assassinate my great uncle in 1991, and this time they succeeded.
Today Anis Naccache describes himself as a businessman. According to a 2003 filing with Iran’s corporate registry, he serves as chairman of the board of the Bazargani Tejarat Tavanmand Saccal company. As a longtime friend of Hezbollah’s terror mastermind Imad Mughniyah—who was assassinated in 2008—Mr. Naccache also became a trusted conduit to Tehran’s terror outpost on the Mediterranean.
https://dagobertobellucci.wordpress.com/2011/12/19/khomeini-was-the-re-newer-of-the-20th-century-interview-with-bosnian-sufi-leader-shaykh-edin-baba/
Khomeini was the re-newer of the 20th Century Interview with Bosnian Sufi leader Shaykh Edin Baba Ibrahim al-Breft: There are some sufi ulama who believe that Imama Khomaini (ra) was a mujaddid, i.e. re-newer, of the twentieth century, according to the Holy Prophet hadith that ‘God, Almighty, will send a man who will adjust His Faith for that era or hundred years’.
http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2011/01/iran_the_muslim_brotherhood_an.php
“I
herewith proclaim to those (Western leaders) who still do not want to
see the realities that the political axis of the new Middle East will
soon be Islamic rulership and a democracy based on religion,” senior
Iranian cleric Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami said on Friday during public
prayers in Tehran.
“All
these protests in Egypt, Tunisia, Jordan and Yemen are inspired by
Iran’s Islamic revolution and these countries are de facto rocked by the
aftershock of the Iranian revolution,” Khatami claimed, according to Haaretz.
......
Indeed,
ties between the Brotherhood and Iran predate 1979. Hassan al Banna,
the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, believed that Sunnis and Shiites
should overcome their differences to face their common enemies. So, too,
did Ayatollah Khomeini, who openly advocated an alliance between the
two main branches of Islam. Al Banna and Khomeini were also linked by a
prominent Iranian scholar named Nawab Safawi. Khomeini was close to
Safawi and al Banna also embraced the Iranian cleric. As others have
written, Safawi introduced Khomeini to the Brotherhood and its political
ideology.
Through
Safawi, the Brotherhood’s ideas were imported into Iran and had a
lasting impact on Iranian Islamist thinking. Consider this stunning
example.
One
of the principal architects of jihadist thinking is Sayyid Qutb, a
prominent Muslim Brother who was executed for his machinations in Egypt
in 1966. Qutb is widely, and correctly, described as the intellectual
forefather of al Qaeda, which still references his writings to this day —
almost 50 years after his execution. Well, Qutb didn’t just influence
al Qaeda’s thinking. Ayatollah Khameini, the current supreme leader of
the Iranian revolution, translated two of Qutb’s most important volumes
into Persian. Those two translated volumes have been widely read inside
Iran and some say they are the most circulated Islamist tracts.
All
of this is a shorthand way of saying that the Iranian revolution and
the Muslim Brotherhood share a similar political ideology, even if their
theology is different. In other words, the differences between Sunnis
and Shiites are not insurmountable from either Iran’s or the Muslim
Brotherhood’s point of view. When Ayatollah Khatami roots for the
protesters in Egypt, then, it is a safe bet that he and others in Iran
are specifically cheering on the Muslim Brotherhood.
Indeed, this should be obvious. Iran is today the chief sponsor of Hamas, a Sunni Islamist terrorist organization that is itself a wing of the Muslim Brotherhood. And throughout the 1990s Iran was allied with Hassan al Turabi, the Muslim Brotherhood leader who helped orchestrate a military coup in Sudan in 1989. Turabi, in turn, was one of Osama bin Laden’s main benefactors from 1991 through 1996. As was documented during the trial of some of the terrorists responsible for the 1998 embassy bombings, bin Laden was introduced to key Iranian leaders, as well as Hezbollah terrorists, in Turabi’s Sudan.
Indeed, this should be obvious. Iran is today the chief sponsor of Hamas, a Sunni Islamist terrorist organization that is itself a wing of the Muslim Brotherhood. And throughout the 1990s Iran was allied with Hassan al Turabi, the Muslim Brotherhood leader who helped orchestrate a military coup in Sudan in 1989. Turabi, in turn, was one of Osama bin Laden’s main benefactors from 1991 through 1996. As was documented during the trial of some of the terrorists responsible for the 1998 embassy bombings, bin Laden was introduced to key Iranian leaders, as well as Hezbollah terrorists, in Turabi’s Sudan.
http://english.aawsat.com/amir-taheri/features/iran-and-the-ikhwan-the-ideological-roots-of-a-partnership
For over a decade, the Islamic Republic had been a major provider of funds for Hamas, the Palestinian branch of the Brotherhood. It had played host to it leaders and provided its military units with weapons and training. For years, Tehran had also provided financial and propaganda support for the Algerian offshoots of the Muslim Brotherhood. In 1992, documents leaked in Germany showed that Tehran had deposited more than 7 million US dollars in accounts controlled by the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS).
...
In
Britain, for example, Tehran financed the group led by the Pakistani
“brother” Kalim Siddiqui, as well as the creation of the so-called
“Muslim parliament” in London.
In
the 1990s, Tehran also channeled funds to the Turkish branch of the
Brotherhood, helping them create the machine needed to win local and
then national elections. When Necmettin Erbakan, a Turkish politician
linked to the Brotherhood, became prime minister in 1996, Tehran forged a
close alliance with his government. Together they held grandiose plans
for creating an Islamic G8 to challenge the G7 led by the United States.
The
first contacts between the Iranian regime and the Brotherhood had been
established in the late 1980s, as the Iran–Iraq War raged. The Islamic
Republic’s ambassador to the Vatican, Hadi Khosrowshahi, established
contacts with a number of Muslim Brotherhood figures in exile in Europe.
The Iranian embassy in the Vatican also launched a publishing business
that helped translate and circulate a number of Brotherhood books.
Khosrowshahi,
himself a mid-ranking mullah, translated a history of the Brotherhood
into Persian, the first complete account of the Egyptian movement’s
birth and development. Later, the Iranian ambassador to the United
Nations office in Geneva, Cyrus Nasseri, met a number of Egyptian exiles
in Switzerland, some related to Hassan Al-Banna, who founded the
Brotherhood in 1928. By the early 1990s, Tehran had also established
contact with the Tunisian Islamist leader Rachid Ghannouchi of Ennahda
and Abbassi Madani, the leader of the FIS. Another bridge to the
Brotherhood for Iran was Hassan Al-Turabi, a Sudanese politician who,
though not a member of the Brotherhood, had managed to charm them into
supporting his quest for power.
The
various strands of Islamist radicalism were brought together in April
1991 in the so-called Popular Arab and Islamic Conference, hosted by
Turabi in Khartoum. Over 70 organizations from some 50 countries were
represented. The gathering was a veritable who’s who of Islamist
radicalism, fostered and supported by the Muslim Brotherhood and the
regime in Iran. According to Muhammad Mahdavi, at the time a diplomat
with the Iranian regime, Tehran contributed 3 million dollars towards
the cost of the event.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/may/06/osama-bin-laden-family-on-the-run-after-9-11?CMP=share_btn_tw
In January 2002, George Bush included Tehran in his “axis of evil”. After this, Iran’s secretive Quds force, a clandestine division of the country’s Revolutionary Guard, led by Major General Qassem Suleimani, went out of their way to assist al-Qaida. They set up a refugee camp in the no man’s land just beyond the Iranian border with Afghanistan. Hundreds of families arrived in buses and beaten-up taxis, on foot, or by pony. Taliban guards barred the way to foreign aid workers, reporters and any other unwanted visitors, while smartly-dressed officials escorted approved families to Tehran.
....
Shortly afterwards, a brutal roundup began in Iran. Osama’s family, Saif al-Adel, Mahfouz and other al-Qaida leaders were seized by Iranian government agents and secretly transported to the main Quds force training facility in Tehran. Located close to the former Shah’s Sa’dabad Palace, in the far north of the city, the site was officially called the Imam Ali University for Army Officers. They were housed in concrete barracks with box-like cells running along a central corridor. Outside was an alley and yard, facing 6ft-high walls topped with razor wire. Renovations and repairs were ongoing, suggesting hasty decisions had been taken to contain them. “Block 100”, as the Iranians called it, was windowless, with only narrow ducts beneath the eaves drawing in fresh air. “Perhaps this is the place where Iran is hiding its nuclear bombs,” Mahfouz remembers one of the arrivals remarking.
As days turned into weeks, the Bin Ladens’ paranoia grew. Their fears were well founded: the civilian government in Tehran had caught wind of the secret al-Qaida migration and now trumped the freewheeling Major General Suleimani by offering prisoners to Washington DC in exchange for diplomatic recognition and an easing of sanctions. The only thing getting in the way was President Bush and Dick Cheney’s obsession with toppling Saddam Hussein. Focused on an Iraqi invasion, having hyped Baghdad as al-Qaida’s mentor, the White House rejected Tehran’s proposal and with it the chance to detain the military and spiritual chiefs of al-Qaida, as well as Osama’s family. Had they accepted, al-Qaida would have been critically weakened.
http://www.benadorassociates.com/article/21198
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB120675195927473485
29 March 2008: For more than a quarter century, Tehran has been host to the offices of more than three dozen terrorists organizations, from the Colombian FARC to the Palestinian Hamas and passing by half a dozen Trotskyite and Leninist outfits. It also finances many anti-American groups and parties of both extreme right and extreme left in Europe and the Americas. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has bestowed the Muslim title of "brother" on Cuba's Fidel Castro, Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, Bolivia's Evo Morales and Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega. Communist North Korea is the only country with which the Islamic Republic maintains close military-industrial ties and holds joint annual staff sessions.
George Ibrahim Abdallah, the Lebanese maverick who led a campaign of terror in Paris in the 1980s on behalf of Tehran, was a Christian. So was Anis Naqqache, who led several hit-teams sent to kill Iranian exile opposition leaders. For years, and until a recent change of policy, Tehran financed and offered shelter to the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), a Marxist movement fighting to overthrow the Turkish Republic. Why? Tehran's displeasure with Turkish membership of NATO and friendship with the U.S.
Yes, Mr. Obama might ask, but what about Sunni-Shiite cooperation?
The Islamic Republic has financed and armed the Afghan Sunni Hizb Islami (Islamic Party) since the 1990s. It's also financed the Front for Islamic Salvation (FIS), a Sunni political-terrorist outfit in Algeria between 1992 and 2005.
In 1993, a senior Iranian delegation, led by the then Islamic Parliament Speaker Ayatollah Mehdi Karrubi, attended the Arab-Muslim Popular Congress organized by Hassan al-Turabi, nicknamed "The Pope of Islamist Terror," in Khartoum. At the end of this anti-American jamboree a nine-man "Coordinating Committee" was announced. Karrubi was a member, along with such Sunni eminences as Osama Bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Mr. Turabi and the Algerian Abdallah Jaballah. The fact that Karrubi was a Shiite mullah did not prevent him from sitting alongside Sunni sheikhs.
In 1996, a suicide attack claimed the lives of 19 American servicemen in Al Khobar, eastern Saudi Arabia. The operation was carried out by the Hezbollah in Hejaz, an Iranian-financed outfit, with the help of the Sunni militant group "Sword of the Peninsula."
In 2000, Sunni groups linked to al Qaeda killed 17 U.S. servicemen in a suicide attack on USS Cole off the coast of Yemen. This time, a Shiite militant group led by Sheikh al-Houti, Tehran's man in Yemen, played second fiddle in the operation.
In Central Asia's Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, Tehran has for years supported two Sunni movements, the Rastakhiz Islami (Islamic Awakening) and Hizb Tahrir Islami (Islamic Liberation Party). In Azerbaijan, a former Soviet republic, Tehran supports the Sunni Taleshi groups against the Azeri Shiite majority. The reason? The Taleshi Sunnis are pro-Russian and anti-American, while the Shiite Azeris are pro-American and anti-Russian.
There are no Palestinian Shiites, yet Tehran has become the principal source of funding for radical Palestinian Sunni groups, notably Hamas, Islamic Jihad and half a dozen leftist-atheist minigroups. Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh refuses to pray alongside his Iranian hosts during his visits to Tehran. But when it comes to joining Khomeinist crowds in shouting "Death to America" he is in the forefront.
With Arab oil kingdoms no longer as generous as before, Iran has emerged as the chief source of funding for Hamas. The new Iranian budget, coming into effect on March 21, allocates over $2 billion to the promotion of "revolutionary causes." Much of the money will go to Hamas and the Lebanese branch of Hezbollah.
In Pakistan, the Iran-financed Shiite Tehrik Jaafari joined a coalition of Sunni parties to govern the Northwest Frontier Province, until they all suffered a crushing defeat at last month's parliamentary elections.
The fact that the Sunnis and Shiites in other provinces of Pakistan continued to kill each other did not prevent them from developing a joint, anti-U.S. strategy that included the revival of the Afghan Taliban and protection for the remnants of al Qaeda. Almost all self-styled "holy warriors" who go to Iraq on a mission of murder and mayhem are Sunnis. And, yet most pass through Syria, a country that, as already noted, is dominated by a sect with a militant anti-Sunni religious doctrine.
Next month, Tehran will host what is billed as "The Islamic Convergence Conference," bringing together hundreds of Shiite and Sunni militants from all over the world. The man in charge, Ayatollah Ali-Muhammad Taskhiri, has described the goal of the gathering to be delivering "a punch in the face of the American Great Satan."
Still, Mr. Obama might ask: what about al Qaeda and Iran?
The 9/11 Commission report states that Tehran was in contact with al Qaeda at various levels before the 2001 attacks. Tehran has admitted the presence of al Qaeda figures in Iran on a number of occasions, and has arranged for the repatriation of at least 13 Saudi members in the past five years. The Bin Laden family tells us that at least one of Osama's sons, Sa'ad, has lived in Iran since 2002.
Reports from Iran claim that scores of Taliban leaders and several al Qaeda figures spend part of the year in a compound-style housing estate near the village of Dost Muhammad on the Iranian frontier with Afghanistan. One way to verify these claims is to allow the world media access to the area. But Tehran has declared large segments of eastern Iran a "no-go" area, even for its own state-owned media.
http://islamtimes.org/ur/doc/news/236565/
2 Feb 2013:
ملی یکجہتی کونسل سندھ کے صدر و امیر جماعت اسلامی سندھ اسد اللہ بھٹو نے اپنے خطاب میں کہا کہ امام خمینی (رہ) نے پرامن جدوجہد کرتے ہوئے اس وقت کے ابو جہل شاہ ایران کو شکست دے کر نبی پاک کی سیرت و سنت کو زندہ کرتے ہوئے ایران میں اسلامی انقلاب برپا کیا۔ اس اسلامی انقلاب کی کرنیں ساری دنیا میں محسوس کی جا رہی ہیں۔ آج دنیا میں اس حوالے سے تبدیلی بھی ہے۔ انہوں نے کہا کہ امام خمینی (رہ) امت کیلئے انقلاب کے ایک عظیم رہبر اور نشان بھی ہیں۔ انقلاب اسلامی ایران سے سبق حاصل کرتے ہوئے مصر میں بھی تبدیلی واقع ہو رہی ہے۔ ہم اللہ سے دعا کرتے ہیں کہ ہم بھی پاکستان میں انقلاب اسلامی اور نظام مصطفٰی کے نفاذ میں کامیاب ہو جائیں۔ انہوں نے کہا کہ الحمد اللہ ملی یکجہتی کونسل ایک ایسا پلیٹ فارم بن چکا ہے کہ جس پر تمام مکاتب فکر و مسالک کی نمائندگی موجود ہے۔ اس کے ذریعے اتحاد امت کا وہ درس دیا جا رہا ہے جو کہ امام خمینی (رہ) کے مشن کا لازمی حصہ ہے، کیونکہ جب تک امت جمع نہیں ہوگی، اس وقت تک امریکہ اور اس کے حواریوں کو شکست نہیں دی جاسکتی۔ انہوں نے کہا کہ آج کے بابرکت دن کے موقع پر ہمیں یہ عہد کرنا چاہئیے کہ ہم اتحاد و وحدت مسلمین کے ذریعے آج کے ابوجہل و شاہ ایران کو شکست دیں گے۔
http://islamtimes.org/ur/doc/news/608594/
11 Feb 2017:
سیمینار کی صدارت بانی سرپرست علامہ مرزا یوسف حسین نے کی۔ مولانا امین انصاری، مولانا سلیم اللہ ترکی، علامہ علی کرار نقوی، علامہ عبدالخالق فریدی، آغا غلام محمد سلیم، اسلم خٹک، مطلوب اعوان، علامہ شاہ فیروز الدین رحمانی، علامہ قرۃ العین عابدی، علامہ عبداللہ جوناگڑھی، مولانا منظرالحق تھانوی، انور شاہ کشمیری، علامہ روشن دین، علامہ سید سجاد شبیر رضوی، علامہ حمید حسینی، علامہ صادق جعفری، مفتی سعید الرحمن، قاری انوار حمیدی، سید رضی حیدر رضوی، سید حسن مہدی و دیگر نے کہا کہ غیر شرعی مغربی جمہوری نظام نے اسلام کے نام پر بننے والی اسلامی نظریاتی مملکت خداداد پاکستان کو فرقہ واریت دہشت گردی ظلم و ناانصافی کی دلدل میں دھکیل دیا ہے، پاکستان میں حقیقی امن و خوشحالی کیلئے پرامن اسلامی انقلاب وقت کی اہم ترین ضرورت ہے، پوری قوم بلاامتیاز مسلک شیعہ سنی نظام مصطفی کے نفاذ کیلئے متحد ہیں، ملک کو سیکولر بنائے جانے کی سازشوں کو کسی صورت کامیاب نہیں ہونے دیا جائے گا، مفاد پرست سیاستدان اور امریکی نواز حکمران اپنا قبلہ درست کرلیں، مقاصد پاکستان اور نفاذ اسلام سے روگردانی کرنے والے ملک و قوم کے خیر خواہ نہیں ہوسکتے۔
http://islamtimes.org/ur/doc/article/608670/
12 Feb 2017:
جماعت اسلامی پاکستان کے مرکزی نائب امیر و ملی یکجہتی کونسل سندھ کے صدر اسداللہ بھٹو نے اپنے خطاب میں کہا کہ انقلاب سے قبل عالم اسلام میں تین بزرگ تھے، ایران میں امام خمینی (رہ)، پاکستان میں مولانا سید ابوالاعلٰی مودودی اور مصر میں حسن البنا، ان تینوں نے دنیا کے اندر اسلامی انقلاب کی بات کی تھی، یہی وجہ تھی کہ جب ایران میں اسلامی انقلاب آیا تو مولانا سید ابوالاعلٰی مودودی نے اسے اسلامی انقلاب کہا اور امام خمینیؒ نے بھی اپنے تین نمائندگان مولانا سید ابوالاعلٰی مودودی کے پاس بھیجے، اسی لئے آج تک دنیا بھر کے مظلومین و مستعضعفین کی نظریں انقلاب اسلامی ایران کی طرف اٹھتی ہیں، جس طرح انقلاب اسلامی کے آغاز سے آج تک ایران نے مظلومین و مستعضفین کو درپیش مسائل و مشکلات کے حل کیلئے صف اول کا کردار ادا کیا ہے، وہ ہمیشہ جاری و ساری رہے گا۔ انہوں نے کہا کہ دنیا میں جتنے بھی انقلاب آئے، ان میں صاحب انقلاب ہی سب کچھ ہوتا ہے، لیکن یہ امام خمینیؒ کا کمال تھا کہ انہوں نے اپنے یا اپنے اہل خانہ کیلئے ذرہ برابر بھی مادی استفادہ نہیں کیا، اگر امام خمینی (رہ) خود کو رضا شاہ پہلوی کے مقابلے میں پیش کرکے اپنی بادشاہت کا اعلان کرتے تو یقیناً عوام اسے قبول بھی کر لیتے، لیکن انہوں نے پوری زندگی اس اسلامی انقلاب کی خدمت کیلئے وقف کر دی۔
Iran and Al-Qaeda connection
Al-qaeda was not sectarian initially, and was focused on "Enemy Far" (USA) rather than "Enemy Near" (regimes).
https://twitter.com/thomasjoscelyn/status/918884868670545920
1. There's a lot of ignorance concerning Iran's relationship with al Qaeda. Basic Fact: Obama admin repeatedly pointed to their "agreement." [Thread on Iran & Al-qaeda relationship]
https://twitter.com/thomasjoscelyn/status/918922326875541505
19. Fun fact: #ISIS accused Al Qaeda of working with #Iran -- and Al Qaeda didn't deny it.
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/11/al-qaeda-iran-cia/545576/
[Detailed article on Iran Al-Qaeda connection]
On December 19, 2001, Mahfouz Ibn El Waleed, a whip-thin Islamic scholar from Mauritania, boarded a bus in Quetta, in the Pakistani province of Baluchistan, heading for Taftan, the official border crossing into Iran. He told the story to us over many lengthy meetings, explaining how he travelled on counterfeit documents as “Dr. Abdullah,” a “medic, treating refugees from the Afghan war,” carrying a suitcase filled with U.S. dollars, in a bus with a wanted poster for bin Laden pasted to the windscreen.
....
On December 19, 2001, Mahfouz Ibn El Waleed, a whip-thin Islamic scholar from Mauritania, boarded a bus in Quetta, in the Pakistani province of Baluchistan, heading for Taftan, the official border crossing into Iran. He told the story to us over many lengthy meetings, explaining how he travelled on counterfeit documents as “Dr. Abdullah,” a “medic, treating refugees from the Afghan war,” carrying a suitcase filled with U.S. dollars, in a bus with a wanted poster for bin Laden pasted to the windscreen.
At international conferences in Germany, Geneva, and Tokyo between December 2001 and April 2003, convened to tackle reconstruction in post-Taliban Afghanistan, Iranian officials proposed to their U.S. counterparts certain incentives in exchange for normalizing relations. Early on, the Quds force was gambling that other al-Qaeda leaders would follow Mahfouz and seek shelter in Iran, and on that basis Iranian officials proposed potentially offering them to the Americans as their end of the deal. U.S. officials involved in these talks recalled that the Bush administration flat-out declined, the president lumping Iran in with the so-called “axis of evil” powers in his State of the Union address in January 2002.
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A contingent of al-Qaeda’s clerical and military leaders remained in Iran until April 2012, when Mahfouz also slipped away from his Quds Force guard, and eventually flew home to Mauritania. Most of the outfit’s military council, a core group of five led by the Egyptian Saif al Adel, remained in Iran until 2015. Then the Quds Force transported some to Syria to join the fight against the Islamic State. Leading this cell was Abu al-Khayr al-Masri and Abu Mohammed al-Masri—the latter Hamza’s father-in-law, described by the U.S. intelligence community as the “most experienced and capable operational planner not in U.S. or allied custody.” With them came Jordanian fighters with connections to Zarqar, including one of Zarqawi’s most important deputies—the plan being for this group to contact ISIS fighters and leaders, encouraging a split.
https://www.ctc.usma.edu/posts/marriage-of-convenience-the-evolution-of-iran-and-al-qaidas-tactical-cooperation
Iran and Al-qaeda tactical cooperation [Detailed report by Assaf Moghadam]
http://nationalinterest.org/feature/iran%E2%80%99s-approach-extreme-sunni-militants-11322?page=show
Tehran fought the Taliban and its Al Qaeda allies tooth and nail in Afghanistan from 1994 to 2001. But it adopted a soft approach toward Al Qaeda operatives during most of the 2000s. It put fleeing Al Qaeda operatives it captured under house arrest, exchanging them when necessary. In 2010, the freeing of an Iranian diplomat kidnapped in Pakistan most likely came after Tehran struck a deal with Al Qaeda.
When opportune, Tehran even tolerated Sunni jihadist activities on its soil. For a while, Tehran let operatives from Ansar Al-Islam, an Iraqi Kurdish offshoot of Al Qaeda, set up camp in Iran after they fled the American military in Iraq. These Kurdish jihadists were deemed as leverage against the United States. The Iranians only turned against Ansar AI-Islam when the group targeted Iran.
Regional circumstances and safeguarding its interests, not ideology, have historically shaped Tehran’s approach to extreme Sunni militants. The rise of ISIS, however, is upsetting this blueprint.
http://almon.co/e0
http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2012/al-monitor/iran-and-al-qaedabr-more-enemies.html#ixzz4xRY0HMDi
Iran and al Qaeda: More Enemies Than Allies Read more:
According to a U.S. analysis of letters found in the Abbottabad compound when U.S. Special Forces killed bin Laden a year ago, “the relationship is not one of alliance, but of indirect and unpleasant negotiations over the release of detained jihadis and their families, including members of bin Laden’s family.”
The report by the Combating Terrorism Center (CTC) at West Point, released Thursday, goes on to say that Iran’s detention of some prominent al-Qaeda members who fled Afghanistan after 9-11 “seems to have sparked a campaign of threats, taking hostages and indirect negotiations …that have been drawn out for years and may still be ongoing.”
....
Eight of the 10 Arab “muscle hijackers” who took part in the 9-11 attacks entered Afghanistan via Iran between October 2000 and February 2001 but the commission “found no evidence that Iran or Hezbollah was aware of the planning for what later became the 9/11 attack.”
However, after the attacks, Iran turned against al-Qaeda and detained hundreds of Arab fighters fleeing the U.S. war in Afghanistan. According to research I did for my book, Bitter Friends, Bosom Enemies, Iran extradited a number of these detainees to their home countries.
But Iran held on to high-profile detainees including several children of bin Laden and Saif al-Adel, then al-Qaeda’s number three, for insurance against al-Qaeda and as potential bargaining chips.
In 2003, after the U.S. invaded and occupied Iraq, Iran offered to trade these detainees to the United States for senior figures of the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), an Iranian opposition group that at the time had more than 3,000 members at a base in Iraq called Camp Ashraf.
The Bush administration refused and then Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage told me that then Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and his aide Douglas Feith wanted to hold onto MEK members as possible agents against Iran.
....
According to the CTC report, al Qaeda kept trying to get Iran to free the detainees who included a bin Laden son, Khalid, who was killed with him a year ago, and another son, Sa’ad, who died in 2009. A June 2009 letter addressed to “our venerable shaykh,” written by an al Qaeda official called “Atiyya,” says that the Iranians have released “a group of brothers” and that they are expected to free women and children related to bin Laden “perhaps within a week.”
Instead, Iran held onto the relatives. In March 2010, a teenage daughter of bin Laden, Iman, "escaped" to the Saudi embassy in Tehran and was allowed to return home. In return, Iran obtained the release of an Iranian diplomat kidnapped 15 months earlier in Pakistan by Sunni militants.
According to the CTC report, Atiyya bragged that al Qaeda abducted the Iranian — Heshmatollah Attarzadeh-Niaki, the commercial counselor in the Iranian Consulate in Peshawar — and escalated other threats that “scared them [the Iranians] …based on what they saw [we are capable of], to be among the reasons that led them to expedite [the release of these prisoners].”
Still, Iran held onto other bin Laden relatives, including a daughter, Fatima.
The report says that al Qaeda fugitives fled to Iran after 9-11 because of links with an Afghan militant, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, residing in Iran. Al-Qaeda did not see Iran “from the perspective that ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend,’ but the group might have hoped that ‘the enemy of my [American] enemy would leave me alone.”
....
“Rather than being secretly in bed with each other as some have argued, al Qaeda had a fairly hostile relationship with the Iranian regime,” Riedel said. “To get members of his family out of Iran, for example, bin Laden had an Iranian diplomat kidnapped and then traded. The Iranians released some of his family members in the deal but then double crossed al Qaeda by not letting one of his daughters, Fatima, free.”
http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/911/report/911Report_Ch2.htm
"Bin Ladin seemed willing to include in the confederation terrorists from almost every corner of the Muslim world. His vision mirrored that of Sudan's Islamist leader, Turabi, who convened a series of meetings under the label Popular Arab and Islamic Conference around the time of Bin Ladin's arrival in that country. Delegations of violent Islamist extremists came from all the groups represented in Bin Ladin's Islamic Army Shura. Representatives also came from organizations such as the Palestine Liberation Organization, Hamas, and Hezbollah.51
Turabi sought to persuade Shiites and Sunnis to put aside their divisions and join against the common enemy. In late 1991 or 1992, discussions in Sudan between al Qaeda and Iranian operatives led to an informal agreement to cooperate in providing support-even if only training-for actions carried out primarily against Israel and the United States. Not long afterward, senior al Qaeda operatives and trainers traveled to Iran to receive training in explosives. In the fall of 1993, another such delegation went to the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon for further training in explosives as well as in intelligence and security. Bin Ladin reportedly showed particular interest in learning how to use truck bombs such as the one that had killed 241 U.S. Marines in Lebanon in 1983.The relationship between al Qaeda and Iran demonstrated that Sunni-Shia divisions did not necessarily pose an insurmountable barrier to cooperation in terrorist operations. As will be described in chapter 7, al Qaeda contacts with Iran continued in ensuing years.52"
http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/8879.htm
"Osama Bin Laden was not keen to stir up this sectarian antagonism. He was entirely focused on the Jihad against the West, while maintaining some sort of modus vivendi with Iran and its satellite governments.[1] The turning point came when Abu Mus'ab Al-Zarqawi was made Emir of Al-Qaeda in Iraq. Al-Zarqawi departed from Bin Laden's hands-off approach vis-à-vis the Shi'ites. He declared "a total war of Sunni vengeance"[2] against the Shi'ites and masterminded ruthless terror attacks against Shi'ite communities in Iraq. Al-Zarqawi founded the Islamic State in Iraq, which would transform into ISIS a few years later."
"one of Bin Laden's wives, six of his children, and eleven of his grandchildren found refuge in an IRGC-controlled site outside Tehran."
http://www.brookings.edu/research/articles/2015/02/24-byman-williams-isis-war-with-al-qaeda
"Al Qaeda considers Shia Muslims to be apostates but sees killing sprees against them as too extreme and thus detrimental to the broader jihadist project. Zawahiri criticized AQI’s killing of Shia in private correspondence captured by U.S. forces (asking Zarqawi, “Why kill ordinary Shia considering that they are forgiven because of their ignorance?”) and argued that this was a distraction from targeting the Americans. Strategically, Al Qaeda believes that the “Muslim masses,” without whose support Al Qaeda will wither and die, do not really understand or particularly care about the doctrinal differences between Sunni and Shia, and when they see jihadists blowing up Shia mosques or slaughtering Shia civilians, all they see are Muslims killing other Muslims."
https://books.google.com.pk/books?id=Vt-a30Z4_UUC&pg=PA26&lpg=PA26#v=onepage&q&f=false
Al-qaeda became sectarian in Iraq where Zarqawi led a brutal anti-Shia campaign in 2003. Bin Laden and Zawahiri publicly opposed Zarqawi when he started his rabidly anti-Shia campaign in Iraq in 2003.
http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/iranian-pots-saudi-kettles-iran-fm-blasts-wahhabism-forgets-tehrans-own-record-1216702427
Notably, a leading figure of al-Qaeda in Iraq – Abu Musab al-Zarqawi – was given shelter in Iran in 2001 and 2002, with Tehran reportedly refusing to extradite him to Jordan.
https://twitter.com/brianfishman/status/805775673830805504
I encourage folks to avoid simplistic analysis on this one. There is plenty of evidence that Iran tolerated jihadis when it suited them.
https://twitter.com/brianfishman/status/805775832992116736
There is also plenty of evidence that Iran restricted and fought jihadis when it suited them.
https://twitter.com/brianfishman/status/805776031206567937
4-It's also clear that jihadis worked to gain leverage over Iran, which had many jihadis in custody.
https://twitter.com/brianfishman/status/805776990087286784
6-Pre-9/11, Iran's relationship w jihadis varied significantly depending on group. No blanket policy. Egyptian Islamic Group had the best.
https://twitter.com/brianfishman/status/805777214641938432
After 9/11, Iran held jihadis in custody, but allowed them the ability to communicate externally.
https://twitter.com/brianfishman/status/805777575448612865
Al-Qaeda worked to kidnap Iranian diplomats to trade for their fellows held in Iran. Calling this an "alliance" misses obvious tension.
https://warontherocks.com/2017/06/abbottabad-revisited/
Gen. Qassem Suleimani, the commander of Iranian and Shia forces deployed against ISIL in Syria and Iraq today, was Gul’s Iranian doppelgänger. As commander of the elite Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corp’s (IRGC), Suleimani was similarly responsible for the safekeeping of bin Laden’s family and the al-Qaeda leaders and their families who had fled from Afghanistan as a result of the American invasion. Reverentially referred to as “Hajji Qassem” by bin Laden’s sons, Suleimani provided accommodation for them, their siblings, and mothers as well as their father’s closest confidants and their families at a clandestine Quds Force training headquarters in Tehran.
This tale of Iranian connivance provides additional evidence debunking the popular misconception that extremists do not cooperate across sectarian lines. Rather, it demonstrates how when interests overlap, they have repeatedly shown a remarkable ability to cast aside their otherwise rigid differences to work together. The ancient proverb that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” has long characterized the shifting and sometimes inexplicable alliances formed across the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia since the war on terrorism commenced 16 years ago. In this instance, the intensity of the shared enmity between Salafi-Jihadi Sunnis and Shia militants against the United States can never be prudently forgotten.
...
When the United States invaded Afghanistan in October 2001, al-Adel headed for Iran rather than Pakistan. His longstanding ties to both Hizballah and the IRGC from his time in the Sudan assured al-Adel a warm welcome. Indeed, before long, he was “shuttling between Al Qaeda cells hiding in Mashhad, Zahidan, Shiraz, Tehran, and small towns on the Caspian Sea” maintaining group cohesion and providing for their variegated needs.
This flow of al-Qaeda operatives from Afghanistan was facilitated by one of al-Adel’s most trusted protégés from the pre-9/11 era — an uncouth Jordanian thug named Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The collection of senior al-Qaeda personages who al-Zarqawi shepherded to safety in Iran ranged “from bomb makers to former camp commanders, biological weapons specialists, operational planners, and financial chiefs.” Their survival was imperative if the movement was to survive.
As a U.S.-led invasion of Iraq grew increasingly likely, al-Adel decided that al-Qaeda “should begin building up a force on the Iran-Iraq border, ready to take on the Americans whenever they arrived.” He entrusted al-Zarqawi with this important task. Thus, the seeds were sown for the Iraq-based jihadist terrorist organization that would emerge over a decade later calling itself as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
26 Oct 2003:
TEHRAN NAMES REPATRIATED AL-QAEDA SUSPECTS
Foreign Ministry spokesman Assefi said on 26 October that Tehran has provided the United Nations with the names of 225 suspected Al-Qaeda members that it has repatriated and the names of 2,300 other people who were arrested and repatriated when they tried to enter Iran through Pakistan, IRNA reported. The arrests were made between October 2002 and July 2003. IRIB had reported that this report was released as an "official document" on 23 October. The IRIB dispatch said the Iranian report named 78 Al-Qaeda members who were arrested in Iran and repatriated, and a list of 147 other Al-Qaeda members and suspects who are facing legal proceedings was also provided to the UN. Assefi refused during his 26 October press conference to identify or provide the exact number of Al-Qaeda suspects being held in Iran, AP reported. An anonymous "senior U.S. official" said on 26 October that none of the repatriated Al-Qaeda suspects are top members of the organization, CNN reported. "We have no indication they've turned over any of the big guys," the official said. BS
https://www.rferl.org/a/1342759.html
Nov 2003:
QUESTIONS SURROUND IRANIAN AL-QAEDA EXTRADITIONS. An anonymous Pakistani Interior Ministry spokesman denied on 3 November that Iran has handed over Al-Qaeda members to Pakistan, the "Daily Times" of Lahore reported on 4 November. Anonymous "Saudi official sources," meanwhile, said that Tehran and Riyadh are negotiating the repatriation of Saudi Al-Qaeda members, UPI reported on 3 November, citing the "Ukaz" daily newspaper (www.okaz.com.sa). "Saudi Arabia received al-Qaeda suspects in several batches from Iran last year, including men, women and children," the sources said, adding that nobody has been extradited since then.
These statements come in the wake of Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Assefi's announcement on 26 October that Iran has provided the United Nations with the names of Al-Qaeda and Taliban suspects it has extradited (see "RFE/RL Newsline," 27 October 2003).
"Al-Hayah" on 2 November published the names of these individuals. The list includes 14 women and 46 boys. Moreover, the list includes 29 Saudi Arabians, 12 Jordanians, and 13 Yemenis, seven of whom were extradited to Yemen and the rest to Morocco. There are six Moroccans, six Tunisians who were extradited to Italy, and one Syrian. Thirty-five Pakistanis, seven Somalis, and 34 unidentified individuals were deported to Pakistan. Three Afghans and one Austrian were sent to their respective countries of origin.
"Al-Hayah" published interviews with some of these deportees on 3 November. One of the Saudis, Hatim Bin-Dawi Juhaydil al-Juayd, said he and a friend were arrested while trying to get to Iraq via Iran before Operation Iraqi Freedom, and the Iranians held them for a whole month before extraditing them. He denied membership in Al-Qaeda. The father of another man on the list said that his son died in a traffic accident two years ago.
Amman has officially requested that Tehran extradite three Jordanian citizens living in Iran, an anonymous "informed legal source" said in the 4 November "Al-Sabil" weekly. Amman also has asked Tehran to extradite Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, but it is not clear if he is in Iran or in Iraq. The individuals Amman is seeking reportedly fought in Afghanistan or Chechnya, and the later joined Ansar al-Islam. (Bill Samii)
http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2006/11/irans_involvement_in.php
http://uk.reuters.com/article/us-somalia-idUKL1389704620061113
13 Nov 2006: But the report said about 720 Somali Islamist fighters with combat experience -- selected by Afghanistan-trained hardline Islamist commander Adan Hashi Farah "Ayro" -- went to Lebanon to fight Israel along Hezbollah in mid-July. The fighters were paid $2,000 and as much as $30,000, to be given to their families, if they were killed, the report says.
At least 100 Somali fighters returned, along with five Hezbollah members, while an unknown number stayed in Lebanon for advanced military training, it states.
"In exchange for the contribution of the Somali military force, Hezbollah arranged for additional support to be given ... by the governments of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Syrian Arab Republic, which was subsequently provided," it says.
That included shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles, grenade launchers, machine guns, ammunition, medicine, uniforms and other supplies. Additionally, Syria hosted about 200 Islamist fighters for training in guerrilla warfare, the report says.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/8083016/Wikileaks-how-Iran-devised-new-suicide-vest-for-al-Qaeda-to-use-in-Iraq.html
https://www.theguardian.com/world/iraq/warlogs/C39190D3-0310-47E3-A50A-27B920C4A81B
17 Nov 2006: Iran and Syria trained Sunni insurgents in Iraq to use miniature cameras and secondary detonation device in Suicide Vest Improvised Explosive Devices (SVIED)
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3442337,00.html
28 August 2007:
Iran and its associated Shiite sects are hijacking Arab causes and exploiting them to serve an "expansionist scheme", a top Sunni Islamist cleric warned in a statement.
Sheikh Hamid al-Ali, based in Kuwait, is a leading Islamist ideologue, whose teachings are often posted on Islamist websites. He has been linked to al-Qaeda activities in the Gulf state, and is described by the US government as a "terrorist facilitator who has provided financial support for al-Qaeda affiliated groups seeking to commit acts of terrorism in Kuwait, Iraq, and elsewhere." Ali is also well known for lashing out against Shiites.
http://english.alarabiya.net/en/views/news/middle-east/2014/09/25/Iran-s-relationship-with-al-Qaeda-It-s-complicated.html
"In 2008, al-Qaeda kidnapped an Iranian diplomat in Pakistan and negotiated his release in exchange of freeing some of its members in Iran including a former colonel in the Egyptian army Saif al-Adel.
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/22/world/middleeast/leader-of-qaeda-cell-in-syria-muhsin-al-fadhli-is-killed-in-airstrike-us-says.html
21 July 2015:
Mr. Fadhli had been tracked by American intelligence agencies for at least a decade. According to the State Department, before Mr. Fadhli arrived in Syria, he had been living in Iran as part of a small group of Qaeda operatives who had fled to the country from Afghanistan after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Iran’s government said the group had been living under house arrest, but the exact situation of the Qaeda operatives has been disputed for years, and many members of the group ultimately left Iran for Pakistan, Syria and other countries.
In 2012, the State Department identified Mr. Fadhli as Al Qaeda’s leader in Iran, directing “the movement of funds and operatives” through the country. A $7 million reward was offered for information leading to his capture. The same State Department release said he was working with wealthy “jihadist donors” in Kuwait, his native country, to raise money for Qaeda-allied rebels in Syria.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/top-al-qaeda-operatives-freed-in-prisoner-swap-with-iran/2015/09/18/02bc58e2-5e0c-11e5-9757-e49273f05f65_story.html?utm_term=.7a6294052141
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/18/world/middleeast/iran-released-top-members-of-al-qaeda-in-a-trade.html
2015: "The government of Iran released five senior members of Al Qaeda earlier this year, including the man who stepped in to serve as the terrorist group’s interim leader immediately after Osama bin Laden’s death, and who is the subject of a $5 million bounty, according to an American official who had been briefed on the matter."
http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2015/09/senior-al-qaeda-leaders-reportedly-released-from-iran.php
Sep 2015: In recent days, pro-al Qaeda jihadists claimed to confirm a recent news report saying that several senior al Qaeda leaders have been released from Iranian custody. Sky News reported earlier this week that five veteran jihadists were released in exchange for an Iranian diplomat who had been kidnapped in Yemen. Several jihadists on Twitter who are connected to al Qaeda have said the report is accurate. One of them is known as “Al Siyasi al Mutaqa’id,” who has relayed accurate information on al Qaeda in the past.
The five jihadists who were reportedly freed are: Saif al Adel, Abu Mohammed al Masri, Abu Khayr al Masri, Khalid al Aruri and Sari Shihab. The first three are well-known senior al Qaeda leaders who have served in elite management and advisory positions within the group. In addition, Saif al Adel and Abu Mohammed al Masri have long been wanted for their role in the August 1998 US Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. Al Aruri was a senior lieutenant to Abu Musab al Zarqawi, the founder of al Qaeda in Iraq.
http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2016/05/al-qaeda-defector-discusses-groups-secrets-in-islamic-state-magazine.php
3 May 2016: In the 19th edition of Al Naba, an interviewer asked Lubnani how he managed to travel from the Khorasan (an area that encompasses Afghanistan and Pakistan) to the caliphate’s home in Syria after his falling out with al Qaeda’s leadership.
“The matter was relatively easy,” Lubnani responded. “Coordinators from al Qaeda oversaw the entry of members to Iran” and the “[t]ravelers remained there in guest houses for some time until the completion of their travel arrangements to Sham [Syria].”
“This was with the knowledge of the Rafidi [Shiite] government in Iran, even under the eye of its intelligence services,” Lubnani stressed. “Simply put, once a traveler entered one of the guest houses, intelligence services knew of his arrival through those in charge of these guest houses.” The safe house operators “would meet with the Iranian intelligence services weekly” and “the phones of the guest houses were tapped and under their [the Iranians] control.”
Lubnani told Al Naba that he “emigrated this way” and his “stay in Iran was prolonged, until the al Qaeda coordinators confirmed” that he was not going “to travel to the lands of the Islamic State.” (Although he did just that.) He claimed that he “escaped from the fist of Iranian intelligence,” which learned of his “presence through the coordinators of al Qaeda’s guest houses.”
http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2016/07/treasury-designates-three-senior-al-qaeda-members-in-iran.php
20 Jul 2016: The Treasury Department announced today that three senior al Qaeda members have been added to the US government’s list of designated terrorists. All three of them are “located in Iran.”
The newly-designated al Qaeda operatives are: Faisal Jassim Mohammed Al Amri Al Khalidi, Yisra Muhammad Ibrahim Bayumi, and Abu Bakr Muhammad Muhammad Ghumayn.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-sanctions-militants-iran-idUSKCN1002VK
http://www.rferl.org/content/us-treasury-blacklists-three-al-qaeda-leaders-living-in-iran/27870698.html
20 Jul 2016: Iran has held several Al-Qaeda members, both high-ranking and lower-level, in prison since the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington, though U.S. officials say the precise conditions of their confinement are unclear.
Al-Qaeda and Iran's government have a complex and sometimes tense relationship, according to documents seized from Osama bin Laden's hideout in Pakistan and made public. At times, Iranian authorities promised to release and may have actually released Al-Qaeda figures, but one of bin Laden's sons who had been held in Iran, Saad, reportedly was killed in 2009.
Iran's Shi'ite Muslim rulers deny cooperating with Al-Qaeda, a Sunni extremist group. Iranian officials call Al-Qaeda a terrorist group, and Iranian security forces periodically report the arrest of Al-Qaeda members.
An analysis by the U.S. Military Academy at West Point published in 2012 concluded that while it was obvious the Al-Qaeda-Iran relationship was antagonistic, the rationale behind Iran's detention of Al-Qaeda militants for years "without due process" was unclear.
The Treasury Department's statement did not make clear what conditions the men were living under in Iran. Bayumi has been in Iran since 2014, the Treasury Department said, but it did not say how long the other two men had lived there.
https://www.saprac.org/uploads/2/4/0/6/24062436/hamza_bin_laden_-_how_iran_is_trying_to_revive_al_qaeda.pdf
http://english.alarabiya.net/en/perspective/analysis/2016/07/26/Message-from-Bin-Laden-s-son-exposes-Iran-s-attempt-to-revive-al-Qaeda-.html
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