Iran and al Qaeda strategic cooperation

Daniel Mandel:

LIBERALS continue to slam Sen. John McCain for his supposed misstatement, back in March, that Iran is aiding al Qaeda terrorists in Iraq. In fact, there's plenty of evidence of just that.

This week, Robert Naiman at the Huffington Post accused McCain of making this "totally unsubstantiated allegation." In recent weeks, McCain's been attacked on the same ground time and again - in the pages of the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, The New Republic and the British Guardian, to name a few.

McCain retracted the claim before the end of the press conference where he made it - which has lead the anti-conservative Media Matters for America to describe it as an "admittedly false claim."

In fact, McCain was right the first time. Iran has helped al Qaeda, inside and outside Iraq, considerably - and still does.

Indeed, a source that Democrats generally deem unimpeachable, the 9/11 Commission, pointed to the al-Qaeda/Iran connection as dating back to at least '92. That's when Iranian representatives met with al Qaeda leaders in Sudan and agreed to help with training - later provided by Iran's Revolutionary Guard in Lebanon to an unknown number of the terrorists.

And when al Qaeda relocated to Afghanistan in the mid-1990s, Iran provided transit for many of the group's operatives - including, the commission believed, eight to 10 of the 9/11 hijackers.

What of al-Qaeda-in-Iraq? The last year or so has furnished much evidence of systematic and continuous Iranian support:

January 2007: US forces in Iraq captured members of Iran's Revolutionary Guard, as well as documents indicating that the Guard was collaborating with al Qaeda inside Iraq.

March 2007: Kurdish forces in northern Iraq repelled the twelfth incursion from Iranian territory that year by an al Qaeda affiliate, Ansar-al-Islam.

April 2007: US forces operating against al Qaeda in Sunni neighborhoods of Baghdad found substantial amounts of Iranian-made weaponry.

May 2007: Coalition forces in Iraq captured a courier bearing messages from al Qaeda field commanders addressed to senior al Qaeda leaders ensconced in Iran - including Osama bin Laden's son, Said.

February 2008: As the Sunni "Awakening Councils" began to show marked success in turning local Sunnis against al Qaeda, the Iraqi intelligence head and a senior advisor to the councils pointed to Iranian intelligence targeting the new US allies via car bombs, suicide bombers and other means. To camouflage their involvement in these efforts, they have fake Iraqi Shia groups claim credit for these operations.

The al Qaeda/Iran nexus isn't one of dubious meetings and unsubstantiated clues, but one of multifaceted cooperation.

It makes sense for Iran to assist al Qaeda in Iraq, if only to keep the Sunni Islamists and Americans killing each other. Both al Qaeda and America are thereby distracted from other theaters of deep interest to Iran, like Pakistan.

Some insist that Iran's extremist Shia regime would never cooperate with the Sunni Islamists of al Qaeda. In fact, Tehran regularly aids Sunni terrorists - witness Iran's outpouring of arms, munitions and training to the Sunni Hamas terrorists running Gaza and to the al-Qaeda-linked Islamic Courts militia in Somalia.

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Democrats combine wishful thinking with their usual attempts to show Republicans as unintelligent adversaries. It is a part of their arrogant make up to act like the smartest guy in the room and anyone who disagrees with them is a dunce. It is also a part of their non to subtle attempts to play on McCain's age, although their guy Obama has made some pretty boneheaded gaffe himself such as his recent comment that he had been in 57 states. You have to catch that on YouTube on conservative blogs though because other than the LA Times it has not been in the main stream media.

Al Qaeda and Iran to have a strategic interest in keeping the Iraq war going in hopes that the Democrats will be elected before it is over. If that happens and Democrats snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, the strategic alliance between al Qaeda and Iran will allow them to fight over the spoils.