|
Trending Topics
|
Source: http://memri.org/bin/latestnews.cgi?ID=SD134706
Sunni Islamist Websites in Iraq Claim Iran/Al-Qaeda Contacts Months Before 9/11
[MEMRI] In early October 2006, Sunni Islamist websites affiliated with the jihad groups in Iraq posted what they claimed was a top-secret Iranian document dated May 2001, indicating contacts between top al-Qaeda figures and the highest echelons of the Iranian intelligence apparatus, which is part of the office of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. The document, signed by the head of Khamenei's intelligence apparatus, Ali Akbar Nateq Nouri, includes statements by Khamenei regarding the importance of the Iranian and Muslim struggle against the U.S. and Israel, which "constitutes the primary goal" of the Iranian regime. It also mentions the need to tighten Iran's cooperation with "the fighters of al-Qaeda and Hizballah." Contacts between the Iranian regime and top al-Qaeda operatives were exposed in a February 2003 report in the London daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, in an interview with Hamid Reza Zakeri, a senior official in Iran's Revolutionary Guards who had defected to the West.