Attention Psy-Op!!! Huge Lie in the making !!! Remake of 9/11. They are trying every trick to get a rationale going for invading IraN.
See ==> http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/5861897.htm
Posted on Wed, May. 14, 2003
U.S. investigating whether Saudi Arabia bombings were planned in Iran
By John Walcott --- Knight Ridder Newspapers
WASHINGTON - U.S. intelligence agencies are investigating whether senior al-Qaida leaders hiding in Iran may have helped to plan or coordinate the terrorist bombings that killed 34 people, including eight Americans, late Monday in Saudi Arabia.
Intelligence officials said several al-Qaida leaders, including Saif al Adel, who's wanted in connection with the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa and may now be the terrorist group's third-ranking official, and Osama bin Laden's son Saad have found refuge in Iran, where they remain active.
National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, speaking to foreign journalists in Washington on Wednesday, made no mention of a possible link between al-Qaida members in Iran and the Saudi bombings but said: "We are concerned about al-Qaida operating in Iran."
The Iranian government has expelled more than 500 lower-ranking al-Qaida members and denies harboring any of the group's senior leaders. But the U.S. officials, who all spoke on the condition of anonymity, said there was evidence that members of Iran's Revolutionary Guard were sheltering al Adel, the younger bin Laden, other al-Qaida leaders and some other members of bin Laden's family.
The officials emphasized that no hard evidence has been found that al-Qaida fugitives in Iran had a hand in the Saudi bombings.
But the suspicions have given a new urgency to United Nations-sponsored talks between White House aide Zalmay Khalilzad and Iranian officials in Geneva.
In the talks, senior administration officials said, the United States is seeking an end to Iran's suspected nuclear-weapons program, promises that Tehran won't try to export its Islamic revolution to Iraq, an end to Iranian support for other terrorist groups such as Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad, and the return of fugitive members of Ansar al Islam, a small terrorist group with al-Qaida ties that was crushed last month by U.S. and Kurdish forces in Iraq.
Among other things, the officials said, Iran has asked the United States to disarm and disband the Mujahedeen Khalq, an Iranian rebel group that was based in Iraq and backed by Saddam Hussein. That effort, a senior U.S. official said Wednesday, has been complicated by legal questions, some of them about how to deal with Mujahedeen members who are U.S. citizens.
If the CIA or other intelligence agencies find evidence confirming suspicions that the Saudi bombings were planned or supported from Iran, one senior U.S. official warned Wednesday, the conversation with Iran "could become a confrontation."
Asked what the administration's options would be in that case, another senior official conceded that trying to seize al Adel and others would be extremely difficult, but added: "The military option is never off the table."
The suspicions of a link between Iran and the bombings are focused largely on al Adel, who some U.S. officials think is now the head of al-Qaida operations in the Persian Gulf.
Some officials think that Khaled Jehani, the leader of the al-Qaida cell in Saudi Arabia that is suspected of carrying out the attacks, began reporting to al Adel after former gulf operations chief Abdul Rahim al Nashiri was captured last November. Nashiri is now in U.S. custody. Other officials, however, think Jehani may have taken over from Nashiri and also is running the Saudi Arabian cell, which Saudi intelligence officials think may have had more than 100 members, on his own.
Saudi intelligence officials said suspected al-Qaida members who were arrested before the bombings have told interrogators that Jehani's group was planning to initiate a major operation in Saudi Arabia during the U.S. invasion of Iraq, but that the invasion came sooner than they expected. Al-Qaida's objectives, the suspects reportedly said, included members of the Saudi royal family as well as Americans and other Westerners.
Several times recently, one U.S. official said, Osama bin Laden expressed frustration to his lieutenants in Iran that al-Qaida had struck no significant blows as the United States invaded Muslim Iraq. "The fact that his frustration was directed toward those in Iran is interesting," one official said.
Relations between bin Laden, a Sunni Muslim, and the Shiite Muslims in Iran have been rocky, at best. After al-Qaida and Taliban fighters attacked Iran's consulate in Mazar-e-Sharif, Afghanistan, in 1998, killing 11 Iranians, Iran tried to assassinate Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar.
However, U.S. intelligence officials said, Egyptian Islamic Jihad, the extremist group that counted al Adel and bin Laden's top deputy, Ayman al Zawahri, among its members and later merged with al-Qaida, had closer ties to Tehran.
Al Adel himself, the officials said, got help from the Iranian-backed Hezbollah after a suicide boat attack against the U.S. Navy destroyer The Sullivans went awry in Yemen in January 2000. Armed with new plastic explosives and a better bomb design, al-Qaida attacked the USS Cole in Yemen that October, killing 17 Americans.
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