Al-Qaeda Concentrates Leadership and Command Functions in Iran

The regime in Iran decided to place its survival and the survival of its apparatuses above the national interests. This is the only possible explanation for the fact that during the past year, and especially after the increasing threat of sanctions against Iran and particularly against the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), the latter made a strategic decision to step up its influence on Al-Qaeda and to receive its support for Iranian interests when necessary.

According to this decision, Iran has now become a central arena of Al-Qaeda activity and serves as a 'lifeline' and contact to areas outside Afghanistan-Pakistan. In 2009, Al-Qaeda's leadership, which stays in the tribal area of Pakistan, increased its exploitation of Iranian territory to carry out all its operational activity in the various arenas. In addition, senior IRGC echelons have facilitated the entry of Al-Qaeda operatives into Iran, and as result, many operatives have been granted asylum in Iran.

The Al-Qaeda leadership have also been allowed to use Iranian territory as a basis for organizing their activity.

Given the entry concessions, the number of Al-Qaeda operatives who came to Iran in 2009 increased significantly to approximately dozens of senior officials and several hundred operatives. Iran's geographic proximity to key Jihad countries - Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq — has contributed to this, as well as the freedom of action and even assistance (passive or active) Iran gives Al-Qaeda.

Al-Qaeda elements currently in Iran are divided into two groups. In the first category, there are senior officials who fled Afghanistan and who have been staying in Iran since 2003. The second group includes senior operational and logistic operatives and field operatives of a lower rank.

Iranian clerics, from the heart of the regime, such as Masbah Yazdi, who had to deal with the traditional rivalry between the two main streams of Islam, the Sunni and Shia, ruled that as Muslims pressured by the infidels, Al-Qaeda members are entitled to asylum in Iran. Moreover, Iran has the full right to cooperate with them against the infidel camp.

Specifically, there is an extensive presence of two Al-Qaeda frameworks influencing Iraq: The Kurdistan Brigades and Ansar Al-Islam, who fled the Kurdish region to Iran and turned Iran into a significant base from which they carry out attacks in Iraq.

The Iranian regime's interest in these two frameworks stem from regarding Iraq as a natural expansion area for Iran, and its wish to unite the Shiites in the Gulf under it influence.