So I’m watching Dennis Miller’s show (hey, I was pathetically bored, what can I say?) and he has Robert Kagan on. Kagan served in the Bush 1.0 Admin and is now working for one of the Carnegie Foundations. Kagan made the claim that “Eight of the top Al Qaeda leaders are in Iran.” Uh, excuse me? I thought it had been pointed out some time ago that AQ wasn’t in Iran. So, is Kagan continuing the BS or has AQ moved into the neighborhood since the US invaded Iraq?
A link would be helpful…
I don’t know what Kagan is talking about. The idea of al Qaeda cooperating with Iran is complete nonsense. Al Qaeda is run by extremist Sunni Muslims, Iran by reactionary Shi’i Muslims. For both groups, their religion is the most important thing in their lives. Each group would regard the other as heretics. It’s like accusing cats and canaries of working together.
Could senior al Qaeda members be hiding out in Iran without the Iranian government’s knowledge? I suppose so, but then Kagan couldn’t know about it either. I call bullshit on this story.
That’s what I’m thinking it is, bullshit, but crazier things have been known to happen.
Yes, it is a bizarre turn of events… sounds unlikely in the extreme… but not outside the realm of possibility.
When I first heard these reports last year, I thought “No way.” Because al-Qa‘idah is ultra-ultra-Wahhabi, and if there’s one thing on Earth the Wahhabis hate and despise worse than anything else, it’s the Shi‘ah. The Wahhabis would like nothing better than to exterminate all Shi‘ah from the face of the Earth. The Shi‘ah, naturally, return the sentiment.
However, what we do know is that several top al-Qa‘idah personnel made it out of Afghanistan and later turned up in Kurdish-controlled Northern Iraq (not the part under Saddam’s control, mind you, but the area that “we” and our “friends” supposedly monitored). Now how would they get from Afghanistan to Iraq with a price on their heads and all the ways out of Afghanistan watched? Except… for the Iranian border.
Based on what I can piece together of this very murky scenario, my theory is certain Iranian officials were bribed to look the other way. They probably figured it was less trouble to allow the al-Qa‘idah boys safe passage through Iran than to get mixed up in somebody else’s fight. But they definitely would need their palms well greased. They say everybody has his price. I personally doubt that the top leadership of Iran approved this, but corruption on the middle to lower levels of Iranian officialdom would be sufficient to allow this to happen.
Note that the Iranian goverment dislikes both AQ and the US. It is in their best interest to facilitate this conflict. Holding AQ agents in Iran or turning them over to others would lessen the conflict. But, allowing AQ agents to move thru Iran in order to continue fighting works out nicely. (Esp. if they pay for the priviledge.)
Having two of your enemies fight to the death is a good thing for you. Preventing one of them from fighting to the death doesn’t help.
It’s not a binary world out there.
Ah, so you’re suggesting the old philosophy of “The enemy of my enemy is my friend” is in play here.
I’ve heard that the eastern parts of Iran, near the Afghanistan border, is pretty much out of the control of the Iranian government. If that’s the case, it’s certainly possible that members of Al-Qaeda could be in Iran, though not with the permission or perhaps even knowledge of the Iranian government.
And, uhh… just pretend that post was written competently. Sigh :rolleyes: this is what happens when you start a thought, get called away for half an hour, then come back and finish it without proofreading.
Following the fall of the Taleban, there was much speculation that some Qaeda leaders had fled to Iran. There was debate whether they had snuck in under the radar of the Iranian authorities, or with the blessing of the higher-ups there. Upon becoming known to the authorities, it was unclear whether the Qaeda members were true guests, or under house arrest, or prisoners of the Iranian regime.
Iran finally owned up to this, as can be seen in various articles, such as this BBC article.
It’s possible this is what Kagan is referring to - if so, any implication that they’re running free doing as they please would seem to be inaccurate.
Al Qaeda and the Shi’ites cooperating is about as likely as Saddam and Osama bin Laden cooperating. Which is to say, not very. (Bin Laden is a religous fundamentalist. Saddam was a secular dictator. The two are polar opposites on the political spectrum, and it’s more likely that Bin Laden would try to kill Saddam than to help him.)
No, precisely the opposite. Note how I finished my post:
“It’s not a binary world out there.”
Americans keep thinking of things in binary terms in world politics and this leads to a lot of stupid actions. Like invading Iraq as part of the War on Terror.
Saddam did give the ol AQ some help though, so its not out of the realm of possibility.
Heh. If nothing else, they were giving the Palestinians piles of cash for killng Israelis. On those grounds alone we could have justified it. In any event, As far as I am concerned it is a binary world: US versus THEM. Thems anyone who wants to kill US. Whether THEM (this is starting to sound like a cheesy spy movie!) agree with each other or not is irrelevant.
But we didn’t come here to play politics. Iran isn’t going to go along with AQ over the long haul, and there isn’t much of AQ left in the ME anyway. But this kind of “looking the other way” is practically normal.
I’d say Robert Kagan is on pretty solid ground.
Washington Post, 12/7/03:
“Jordan’s King Abdullah is quietly trying to broker a deal that would lead Tehran to surrender about 70 al Qaeda operatives, including the son of Osama bin Laden, in exchange for U.S. action on the largest Iranian opposition group now based in Iraq, according to U.S. and Middle East officials.” Full text.
But I have not seen any updates on this story in quite some time.
Cite? As far as I am aware, there has never been any proof and plenty of denials.
This is exactly the kind of thinking that leads to repeated mistakes in policy. Stick to your concept of the world, if you want, but realize that it’s not going to help you reach your goals.
Heh heh. Hardly.
I knwo that not all of US or THEM thinks of themselves in those terms. But that’s irrelevant. No, these are simple categories for dealing with people. If you aren’t helping US, you are helping THEM. THEM only needs for you to ignore the problem. Perhaps we’ll punish said not-collaborator. Perhaps not, if the damage is small. But such groups are an enemy along with THEM, even though their intention was no such thing. And some groups claim membership in US and don’t help at all. They are to one degree or another, helping THEM. And of course, THEM and US ain’t 'zactly unified.
But I know who my enemy is even better than he does himself. I don’t need him to agree with me. And its time to air the whole of it in the open. A thousand years of ‘nuance’ and ‘sophistication’ gets you nowhere with people who neither comprehend nor care about it. I expect US to act forthrightly, clearly, and openly. Walk softly and carry a big stick. From time to time, make sure everyone gets a good look at that stick.
And if we can get a few of THEM to back down - or even switch sides and join US, it’s all the same to me.
Don’t confuse comprehesion with alliances.
Let me say, in an attempt to keep this thread from careening out of General Questions, that the SDMB is devoted to fighting ignorance, not propagating it.
If you, smiling bandit, are engaged in a knife-fight with George W. Bush, and I’m merely sitting idly by the sidelines with my bag of popcorn, whose side am I on, besides my own?