WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Tuesday accused Iran of getting secret ties with the al-Qaida community and imposed new sanctions on a number of senior Iranian officers.
Pompeo’s feedback come only a week sooner than the Trump management leaves administrative center and seemed aimed toward President-elect Joe Biden’s mentioned want to renew negotiations with Iran over the 2015 nuclear deal. President Donald Trump withdrew from the deal in 2018.
In a speech to the National Press Club simply, Pompeo attacked Iran for alleged secret ties with al-Qaida, mentioning newly declassified intelligence suggesting Tehran harbored the crowd’s No. 2, Abu Muhammad al-Masri, who was once killed in August, reportedly by way of Israeli brokers.
Shiite-ruled Iran and predominantly Sunni al-Qaida aren’t herbal allies within the Islamic international and feature had a fraught courting for the reason that Taliban, which harbored bin Laden, took over Afghanistan in 1996. Two years later, Iran accused the Taliban of murdering a number of of it diplomats within the northern town of Mazar-i-Sharif.
Although U.S. officers had in the past showed the demise of al-Masri and his daughter, the widow of Osama bin Laden’s son Hamza, Pompeo’s remarks have been the primary on-the-record feedback supporting the declare.
“Today, I can confirm publicly to the world for the first time, his death on Aug. 7 of last year,” Pompeo mentioned. He additionally alleged that Iran had “closely monitored” al-Qaida contributors sooner than the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist assaults within the United States and had stepped up such task and had made up our minds to actively make stronger them following the nuclear settlement.
Pompeo claimed that ties between al-Qaida and Iran massively stepped forward in 2015, when the Obama management, along side France, Germany and Britain, have been finalizing the nuclear deal. He introduced no proof for the declare. Pompeo has been adamantly antagonistic to the nuclear settlement since he was once a member of Congress.
“A sea change was happening within the Iran-al-Qaida axis,” Pompeo mentioned. “Iran decided to allow al-Qaida to establish a new operational headquarters, on the condition that al-Qaida operatives inside abide by the regime’s rules governing al-Qaida’s stay inside the country.”
He mentioned that since 2015, Iran has given al-Qaida leaders larger freedom of motion within Iran and feature supplied secure havens and logistical make stronger to al-Qaida. Pompeo asserted that al-Qaida had now based totally its management in Tehran and was once proceeding to devise assaults at the U.S. and Western objectives from there.
Iran has denied all such fees.