https://www.nytimes.com/2020/1...d.html?smid=tw-share

Israeli agents shot Abu Muhammad al-Masri on the streets of Tehran at the behest of the U.S., officials said, but no one — Iran, Al Qaeda, the U.S. or Israel — has publicly acknowledged the killing.

Al Qaeda’s second-highest leader, accused of being one of the masterminds of the deadly 1998 attacks on American embassies in Africa, was killed in Iran three months ago , intelligence officials have confirmed.

Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah, who went by the nom de guerre Abu Muhammad al-Masri, was gunned down on the streets of Tehran by two assassins on a motorcycle on Aug. 7, the anniversary of the embassy attacks. He was killed along with his daughter, Miriam, the widow of Osama bin Laden’s son Hamza bin Laden.

The attack was carried out by Israeli operatives at the behest of the United States, according to four of the officials. It is unclear what role if any was played by the United States, which had been tracking the movements of Mr. al-Masri and other Qaeda operatives in Iran for years.

The killing occurred in such a netherworld of geopolitical intrigue and counterterrorism spycraft that Mr. al-Masri’s death had been rumored but never confirmed until now. For reasons that are still obscure, Al Qaeda has not announced the death of one of its top leaders, Iranian officials covered it up, and no country has publicly claimed responsibility for it.

Mr. al-Masri, who was about 58, was one of Al Qaeda’s founding leaders and was thought to be first in line to lead the organization after its current leader, Ayman al-Zawahri.

Long featured on the F.B.I.’s Most Wanted Terrorist list, he had been indicted in the United States for crimes related to the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, which killed 224 people and wounded hundreds. The F.B.I. offered a $10 million reward for information leading to his capture, and as of Friday, his picture was still on the Most Wanted list.

That he had been living in Iran was surprising, given that Iran and Al Qaeda are bitter enemies. Iran, a Shiite Muslim theocracy, and Al Qaeda, a Sunni Muslim jihadist group, have fought each other on the battlefields of Iraq and other places.

American intelligence officials say that Mr. al-Masri had been in Iran’s “custody” since 2003, but that he had been living freely in the Pasdaran district of Tehran, an upscale suburb, since at least 2015.

Around 9:00 on a warm summer night, he was driving his white Renault L90 sedan with his daughter near his home when two gunmen on a motorcycle drew up beside him. Five shots were fired from a pistol fitted with a silencer. Four bullets entered the car through the driver’s side and a fifth hit a nearby car.

As news of the shooting broke, Iran’s official news media identified the victims as Habib Daoud, a Lebanese history professor, and his 27-year-old daughter Maryam. The Lebanese news channel MTV and social media accounts affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps reported that Mr. Daoud was a member of Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed militant organization in Lebanon.

It seemed plausible.

The killing came amid a summer of frequent explosions in Iran, mounting tensions with the United States, days after an enormous explosion in the port of Beirut and a week before the United Nations Security Council was to consider extending an arms embargo against Iran. There was speculation that the killing may have been a Western provocation intended to elicit a violent Iranian reaction in advance of the Security Council vote.

And the targeted killing by two gunmen on a motorcycle fit the modus operandi of previous Israeli assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists. That Israel would kill an official of Hezbollah, which is committed to fighting Israel, also seemed to make sense, except for the fact that Israel had been consciously avoiding killing Hezbollah operatives so as not to provoke a war.

In fact, there was no Habib Daoud.

Several Lebanese with close ties to Iran said they had not heard of him or his killing. A search of Lebanese news media found no reports of a Lebanese history professor killed in Iran last summer. And an education researcher with access to lists of all history professors in the country said there was no record of a Habib Daoud.

One of the intelligence officials said that Habib Daoud was an alias Iranian officials gave Mr. al-Masri and the history teaching job was a cover story. In October, the former leader of Egypt’s Islamic Jihad, Nabil Naeem, who called Mr. al-Masri a longtime friend, told the Saudi news channel Al Arabiya the same thing.

Iran may have had good reason for wanting to hide the fact that it was harboring an avowed enemy, but it was less clear why Iranian officials would have taken in the Qaeda leader to begin with.

Some terrorism experts suggested that keeping Qaeda officials in Tehran might provide some insurance that the group would not conduct operations inside Iran. American counterterrorism officials believe Iran may have allowed them to stay to run operations against the United States, a common adversary.

It would not be the first time that Iran had joined forces with Sunni militants, having supported Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Taliban.

“Iran uses sectarianism as a cudgel when it suits the regime, but is also willing to overlook the Sunni-Shia divide when it suits Iranian interests,” said Colin P. Clarke, a counterterrorism analyst at the Soufan Center.

Iran has consistently denied housing the Qaeda officials. In 2018, the Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi said that because of Iran’s long, porous border with Afghanistan, some Qaeda members had entered Iran, but they had been detained and returned to their home countries.

However, Western intelligence officials said the Qaeda leaders had been kept under house arrest by the Iranian government, which then made at least two deals with Al Qaeda to free some of them in 2011 and 2015.

Although Al Qaeda has been overshadowed in recent years by the rise of the Islamic State, it remains resilient and has active affiliates around the globe, a U.N. counterterrorism report issued in July concluded.

Iranian officials did not respond to a request for comment for this article. But Iranian state-run media quoted Saeed Khatibzadeh, a spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as vehemently denying any presence of Qaeda members in Iran. He warned the American media not to fall into the “Hollywood script” trap of senior American and Israeli officials.

Spokesmen for the Israeli prime minister’s office and the Trump administration’s National Security Council declined to comment.

Mr. al-Masri was a longtime member of Al Qaeda’s highly secretive management council, along with Saif al-Adl, who was also held in Iran at one point. The pair, along with Hamza bin Laden, who was being groomed to take over the organization, were part of a group of senior Qaeda leaders who sought refuge in Iran after the 9/11 attacks on the United States forced them to flee Afghanistan.

According to a highly classified document produced by the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center in 2008, Mr. al-Masri was the “most experienced and capable operational planner not in U.S. or allied custody.” The document described him as the “former chief of training” who “worked closely” with Mr. al-Adl.

In Iran, Mr. al-Masri mentored Hamza bin Laden, according to terrorism experts. Hamza bin Laden later married Mr. al-Masri’s daughter, Miriam.

more at link

Beautiful, heart warming story to start of my Saturday. May he roast in peace.

I agree with Mr. Lee; good news in a time of constant bad news.

The Sun shines a bit brighter this morning.

“The wheels of justice grind slowly, but exceedingly fine,” is an adage that’s all too often not true, but when it is true we can celebrate.

Mazel Tov!

Such a shame. He was just turning his life around.

AMF

For the record, I would just like to state that all of Al Quaeda is No. 2 to me.



.

quote:

Originally posted by kz1000:
Mazel Tov!

Omain!

Andy McCarthy:

Iran & al-Qaeda, a Love Story

press continues insisting they are bitter rivals, 30 yrs of history notwithstanding

Thanks for the link SDY. There has been really good news in the fight against AQ lately: This death in AFG is one example.

Here’s another one Who was hiding in Ghazni only a few miles south of Kabul.

As the “peace” treaty with TB daily looks more aspirational than substantial, operations showing the TB - AQ link are important to exploit. We aren’t any closer to resolution in AFG, but it’s nice to see the AQ brand suffering significant losses.

He was probably an aspiring hip hop artist too.

This next post has much less "evidence" behind it

Hassan Hassan:

Ayman Zawahiri, al-Qaeda leader & Osama bin Laden successor, died a month ago of natural causes in his domicile. The news is making the rounds in close circles.

- I realize the issue wt such claims but corroborated it wt sources close to AQ (Hurras al-Din)

Confidence in the MASSIVE-IF-TRUE news I tweeted earlier about the (natural) death of al-Qaeda’s leader Ayman al-Zawahiri further boosted by more details from well-informed analysts about the circumstances around Zawahiri.

Charles Lister:

AQ leader #Zawahiri, rumored to have been in ill health for months, is also thought possibly dead — his contact w. #Syria’s Huras al-Din stopped 2 months ago.

quote:

Originally posted by sdy:Ayman Zawahiri, al-Qaeda leader & Osama bin Laden successor, died a month ago of natural causes

Well I guess you'd naturally die with four bullets in the noggin.

Not really sorry but it could not have happened to a nicer guy. Wish the same on his replacement. ....................... drill sgt.

al-Masri’s daughter, the one who was married to bin Laden’s son, is also dead. Good. Hamza bin Laden reported killed in July of 2019

https://apnews.com/article/emb...b11f0d82f50055faf7b5

Al-Masri was gunned down in a Tehran alley on Aug. 7, the anniversary of the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Al-Masri was widely believed to have participated in the planning of those attacks and was wanted on terrorism charges by the FBI.

Al-Masri’s death is a blow to al-Qaida, the terror network that orchestrated the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the U.S, and comes amid rumors in the Middle East about the fate of the group’s leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri. The officials could not confirm those reports but said the U.S. intelligence community was trying to determine their credibility.

Two of the officials — one within the intelligence community and with direct knowledge of the operation and another former CIA officer briefed on the matter — said al-Masri was killed by Kidon, a unit within the secretive Israeli spy organization Mossad allegedly responsible for the assassination of high-value targets. In Hebrew, Kidon means bayonet or “tip of the spear.”

The official in the intelligence community said al-Masri’s daughter, Maryam, was also a target of the operation. The U.S. believed she was being groomed for a leadership role in al-Qaida and intelligence suggested she was involved in operational planning, according to the official, who like the others, spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence.

Al-Masri’s daughter was the widow of Hamza bin Laden, the son of al-Qaida mastermind Osama bin Laden. He was killed last year in a U.S. counterterrorism operation in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region.

His death is likely true, probably not as described but motorcycle hits are common so, dead is dead.

Highly unlikely the Iranians are 'allowing' the Israelis to conduct an OP without any quid pro quo. The Iranians either got all the info they needed out of al-Masri or, he wore-out his welcome. Turkey has been warming up its Ottoman urges lately, pissing off everyone one of its neighbors, perhaps a bit of intel passing or, this satisfies a past favor.

I missed it: How did the Iranians “allow” the Israelis to carry out this operation? Did they “allow” the killing of their nuclear scientists?
I admit I haven’t read everything here in detail, so if the Israelis and Iranians are cooperating in some way now, I’d be curious to learn the details we know.