The ties between Al-Qaeda and Iran will now get tighter than before the death of Osama Bin Laden. The new interim leader oif Al-Qaeda, Saif al-Adel resides currently in Iran. In fact many top Al-Qaeda leaders are given refuge there. With Bin Laden gone, Iran seems poised to exert even more influence on the organization.

The death of Osama bin Laden has put a new focus on what role Iran might play in al-Qaida’s future, as intelligence officials around the world analyzed reports that Saif al-Adel had taken over as al-Qaida’s interim leader. Al-Adel was last known to be under house arrest outside Tehran.

[….]

Al-Adel is among the many senior al-Qaida figures who fled into Iran after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. They were arrested there in 2003 and were placed under what has been loosely called “house arrest” in a compound outside Tehran. Over the years, some have been able to come and go, and the U.S. has worried that Iran would someday free them to restore al-Qaida’s ranks.

[….]

The roster of al-Qaida figures held in Iran is particularly valuable in a post-bin Laden era. One is Abu Hafs the Mauritanian, a bin Laden adviser who helped form the modern al-Qaida by merging bin Laden’s operation with Ayman al-Zawahiri’s Islamic Jihad. Al-Qaida’s longtime chief financial officer, Abu Saeed al-Masri, has been held there. So have bin Laden’s spokesman, Suleiman Abu Ghaith, and Mustafa Hamid, an al-Qaida trainer whose terrorism pedigree spans decades.

This needs watching.