FP: US intelligence cuts the way to tie Iran's Trump to the base

In spite of allegations by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Tehran and al-Qaeda have often been more at odds than they have been since September 11, Foreign Affairs magazine reported. 
According to the report, to strengthen Trump's management of its case against Iran, Pompeo, during his briefing to Congress, recently claimed to have close ties between Iran and al-Qaeda. 
Hersh says CIA experts have disagreed with the allegations, saying any relationship between Iran and al-Qaeda is almost certainly not a complicity in terrorist acts.
Seth Jones of the Center for Strategic and International Studies said: "The administration is about sharks. We have now reached the lowest number of al-Qaeda members in that country since the events of September 11, and the number I have seen is less than Five (people) ". 
The report stresses that because of religious hostility, Shiite Iran has been largely at odds with the Sunni-dominated al Qaeda since it grew up in the mountains of neighboring Afghanistan and Pakistan, while Tehran long before the events of September 11 supported the Northern Alliance, which was fighting against the Taliban Al Qaeda's host. After the events of September 11, Iran imposed house arrest on its al Qaeda figures, and these figures have since changed.
The skeptics in Congress fear that Pompeo is talking about a relationship with al-Qaeda to avoid seeking Congressional approval for the use of military force against Iran, since the current ratification since the events of 11 September still applies to any forces linked to al-Qaeda , Pointing out that this ratification allows the president to use force "against countries, organizations and persons who decide that they planned, ratified, committed or aided the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, or hosted such organizations or persons." 
"It seems that Pompeo wants to argue that Iran's hosting of al Qaeda members justifies war, but even those who take a hawkish stance from Iran feel this is a dubious position," the magazine says.
"I have never called for war on this issue," the report quoted Thomas Jocelyn of the Defense for Democracies as saying. "There are indeed many examples of differences between the two (al-Qaeda and Iran), especially in Syria and Yemen. The arrest of some al-Qaeda members and their families In Iran a point of disagreement between the parties. " 
"But human beings are usually deceptive, and there is no doubt that there was an agreement between Iran and al-Qaeda that would allow the latter to operate the mechanism for the transfer of major funds and members from inside Iran. This information from the Treasury and Foreign Ministries under the Obama presidency, beginning July 2011, .
"Many observers believe that because of the common hostility toward America, there is a kind of understanding between the two sides, but that understanding has always been subject to changes in mood based on the relationship between Washington and Tehran, Tehran tried after the US invasion of Iraq to exchange al-Qaeda figures in Tehran is a Mujahideen-e Khalq in Iraq, but there is no evidence that Tehran has aided in any terrorist act by al-Qaeda. On the contrary, evidence suggests that Iran has put an end there. " 
"My reading of Iranian accounts indicates that they were willing to allow some members of al-Qaeda and their families, over several years, to live on their territory provided they were not involved in planning attacks," Jones was quoted as saying.
The report pointed out that suspicions were raised in mid-2003 when several bombs exploded in three residential compounds in Saudi Arabia, killing 27 people, including nine Americans. The militants in America accused Iran, saying the orders came from Saif al-Adl, He is imprisoned in Iran. 
"I do not think there was any evidence at any time of active cooperation or support from Iran," the author quotes James Dobbins, who treated Iran a lot as President George W. Bush's envoy to Afghanistan after 9/11. There is something to communicate, and perhaps simply not to interfere in the affairs of al-Qaeda sometimes for any reason, in addition to it is known that the Iranian government is divided, does not know the right hand what the left hand doing.
According to the magazine, the US administration recently tried to accuse Iran of collaborating with the Taliban in Afghanistan. The Ministry of Defense published a timetable called the "Iranian Campaign for Malignant Influence," which included alleged Iranian ties to the May 31 bombing in Afghanistan, US soldiers, and the killing of four Afghan civilians. 
"Iran's support for the Taliban has become more public and official in recent years, and Iran has provided material aid to the Taliban since at least 2007," the report quoted Pentagon spokeswoman Rebecca Riparik as saying. "Iranian support is from light weapons, explosives, mortars, heavy machine guns and rockets 107 mm, in addition to training on the tactics of small units, and the use of weapons systems.
"Although Iran plays an important role in Afghanistan and has a reasonable relationship with the Afghan government, it provides limited assistance to the Taliban, including training camps within the Iranian border," Hersh said, quoting Jones. But that stopped a decade ago, "he added." However, the person must put things in context, the largest external supporter of the Taliban is Pakistan, and in particular the main intelligence. " 
"Iran was about to declare war on the Taliban after the latter attacked the Iranian consulate in Mazar-e-Sharif (1998)," he said, adding that after America expelled the Taliban from Afghanistan, Afghanistan's main cities In 2001, Iran helped reduce the influence of the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Dobbins noted Iran's pledge to pay $ 500 million for the reconstruction of Afghanistan at the donors' conference in Tokyo, more than twice as promised by the United States. Shortly after the Tokyo meeting, Bush included Iran, Iraq and North Korea in the axis of evil.

The report finds that, however, Iran continued to cooperate sporadically with Washington in Afghanistan, noting that after the fall of the Taliban, and while there was not a large US military presence, Iran offered to train and arm the Afghan army, and continued to fund the Northern Alliance to conduct operations Cleansing against al-Qaeda, according to Dobbins.

The author notes that Tehran extended its hand immediately after the events of September 11, arrested al-Qaeda members in Iran, issued a statement denouncing the attacks and supported the US invasion of Afghanistan against the Taliban. But Bush's son's speech, which Iran described as part of the axis of evil, "According to Iranian sources, Zarif said in an interview in the middle of the first decade of the 20th century that" it destroyed the positions of those who believed that helping America would pay off. "

However, Iran continues to try to negotiate with America by opening a back channel in the spring of 2003 to negotiate with the United States about its nuclear program, which was very small in time, and even negotiate its support for Hezbollah, noting that although those negotiations Was rejected by the Bush administration at the time, but it was the basis for the negotiations that led to the nuclear agreement a decade later in 2015.

"With Trump's rejection of the agreement today and his attempt to isolate and confront Iran again, the reformers and moderates in Iran have lost credibility, and it will not be impossible for the hardliners in Tehran to reconsider once again the relationship with al-Qaeda and the Taliban," Foreign Policy concludes. , But the evidence of active cooperation remains little at best, at least with al-Qaeda, according to experts. "