Joint CIA-Mossad Op Eliminates Al-Qaeda No. 2 Hiding in Iran

Joint CIA-Mossad Op Eliminates Al-Qaeda No. 2 Hiding in Iran

The world is a much safer place thanks to a recently revealed U.S.-Israel covert operation that killed Al Qaeda’s second-in-command, Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah, hiding in Iran.

Abdullah, who went by his jihadi name Abu Muhammad al-Masri, was on the FBI’s most-wanted list and was plotting further terrorist attacks at the time of the strike.

The leading Al-Qaeda figure was believed to be the mastermind of the bombing of the U.S. American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, which killed 224 people and injured over 5,000. He was shot and killed in Iran’s capital Tehran by two Israeli operatives on August 7, the anniversary of the embassy bombings, media reports said.

Among those eliminated in the anti-terrorism operation was Abdullah’s 27-year-old daughter Maryam bin Laden, one of Osama bin Laden’s daughters-in-laws, who was being groomed for a leadership role in the terrorist organization, news reports confirmed.

The killing of a high-level Al Qaeda operative on Iranian soil once again highlights the Mullah regime’s foremost role in promoting a worldwide Islamic jihad. The story was first broken by the New York Times on Friday.

The Associated Press  on Sunday reported the details of the anti-terror operation:

The United States and Israel worked together to track and kill a senior al-Qaida operative in Iran earlier this year, a bold intelligence operation by the two allied nations that came as the Trump administration was ramping up pressure on Tehran.

Four current and former U.S. officials said Abu Mohammed al-Masri, al-Qaida’s No. 2, was killed by assassins in the Iranian capital in August. The U.S. provided intelligence to the Israelis on where they could find al-Masri and the alias he was using at the time, while Israeli agents carried out the killing, according to two of the officials. The two other officials confirmed al-Masri’s killing but could not provide specific details.

Al-Masri was gunned down in a Tehran alley on Aug. 7, the anniversary of the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Al-Masri was widely believed to have participated in the planning of those attacks and was wanted on terrorism charges by the FBI.

Al-Masri’s death is a blow to al-Qaida, the terror network that orchestrated the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the U.S, and comes amid rumors in the Middle East about the fate of the group’s leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri. The officials could not confirm those reports but said the U.S. intelligence community was trying to determine their credibility.

Two of the officials — one within the intelligence community and with direct knowledge of the operation and another former CIA officer briefed on the matter — said al-Masri was killed by Kidon, a unit within the secretive Israeli spy organization Mossad allegedly responsible for the assassination of high-value targets. In Hebrew, Kidon means bayonet or “tip of the spear.”

Al Qaeda’s second-highest leader was planning attacks on Jews and Israelis at the time of the operation, Israeli TV channels revealed. The Times of Israel news website reported the coverage in the Israeli media:

“Abu Muhammad al-Masri had recently begun planning attacks against Israelis and Jewish targets in the world,” the Israeli TV report said, quoting unnamed Western intelligence sources. This further underlined why the US and Israel had a “shared interest” in the elimination of this “arch-terrorist,” it said. The US was seeking him for orchestrating two devastating attacks on embassies in Africa in the 1990s, while Israel alleges he oversaw the 2002 suicide bombing of an Israeli-owned hotel in Kenya in which three Israelis were killed.

The killing of al-Masri was the result of a huge, year-long operation, that went off without a hitch, the Israeli report said. The New York Times story said he was shot dead in Tehran by two Israeli agents on a motorbike, who fired five bullets at close range.

The killing of al-Masri was the result of a huge, year-long operation, that went off without a hitch, the Israeli report said. (…) The Channel 12 report specified that the gunmen were Mossad agents. Israel’s Channel 13, by contrast, said the gunmen were likely “foreign agents activated by Israel.”

Channel 13 further said Iran now fears further operations against terrorist chiefs in Tehran by Israel and the United States in the final weeks of the Trump presidency.

The latest high-profile anti-terror operation again shows President Donald Trump’s resolve to strike a decisive blow at Iran’s terrorist capabilities as his first term comes to a close. The senior Al Qaeda operative was taken out “at the behest of President Trump’s administration,” London-based newspaper The Times confirmed.

The White House is continuing with its policy of ‘maximum pressure’ on Iran. Early January, President Trump ordered a drone strike near Baghdad that successfully took out the head of Iran’s foreign terrorist operations, Qasem Soleimani. Last week, the U.S. Treasury targeted Iran’s global weapons supply network. Several companies, including China-based ones, were blacklisted as part of the latest sanctions.

“The Iranian regime utilizes a global network of companies to advance its destabilizing military capabilities,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said on Wednesday. “The United States will continue to take action against those who help to support the regime’s militarization and proliferation efforts.”

Thrilled by the mainstream media reports declaring Democratic candidate Joe Biden winner of the U.S. presidential race, Iran’s Mullahs are rushing ahead with their nuclear weapons program. The nuclear watchdog International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported on Wednesday that Tehran’s stockpile of enriched uranium had crossed the 2,440kg-mark, 12 times higher than the permissible limit. The amount is “theoretically enough to produce two nuclear weapons,” BBC confirmed.

Iran’s nuclear gamble, driven probably by the regime’s premature euphoria over a Biden-Harris presidency, could backfire as President Trump is still in command of the White House. According to media reports, the U.S. president recently ‘asked for options on strike on Iran nuclear site.’

Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.