Iran Worked with Al Qaeda, Docs from Raid on Bin Laden Compound Show

Stephen Hayes and Bill Kristol of the Weekly Standard are calling on the Obama Administration to release long-suppressed documents from the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound, which illustrate collusion between the government of Iran and al-Qaeda, including Iran’s assistance with attacks on Americans.

Six highly-placed insiders discussed these documents with the Standard. Several of them said the evidence was so explosive that it could derail the nuclear deal with Iran.

The Weekly Standard’s account of these documents sheds new light on just how destructive President Obama’s mad dash for an Iranian nuclear legacy has been for American national security. This president is forcing our intelligence apparatus to ignore a great deal of Iranian criminal activity that is not directly connected to their nuclear program, effectively blinding the United States to serious military and terrorist threats.

“There are letters about Iran’s role, influence, and acknowledgment of enabling al Qaeda operatives to pass through Iran as long as al Qaeda did their dirty work against the Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan,” Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, tells the Weekly Standard. “What Congress should demand is to see all the UBL [Osama bin Laden] documents related to Iran and all the documents related to intentions of AQ into the future—they are very telling.”

Derek Harvey, a former senior DIA official who has been described by several U.S. generals as the top intelligence analyst in government, helped run the exploitation team. He says, “The UBL treasure trove of information almost certainly contains extremely valuable, insightful information, and potentially explosive, that would illuminate the duplicitous Iran relationship with Osama Bin Laden and al Qaeda writ large.”

Michael Pregent, a member of the DIA team that examined the documents, confirmed some of the revelations about Iran. As he put it, “The documents indicate that Iran facilitated the safe passage of al Qaeda operatives, provided safe houses during travel, and had an agreement in place—a you-don’t-mess-with-us-and-we-won’t-mess-with-you clause. The guaranteed safe passage through Iran into Afghanistan and Pakistan could only have been carried out by Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps operatives.

As further evidence of how the enforced blindness of Obama’s Iran policy hinders our national security efforts, the Standard recalls how intelligence and military officials “requested access to the collection to extract intelligence and provide it to war fighters.” Their request was denied, then partially granted… and then rescinded, as soon as they started turning up politically inconvenient material about al-Qaeda’s ties to Iran.

To address the question every reader is no doubt asking: yes, this collusion might very well extend to the 9/11 attacks. At least one of bin Laden’s documents reportedly concerns many of the 9/11 hijackers traveling through Iran in 2000 and early 2001. It has long been suspected that Iran’s pets in Hezbollah were involved with the hijackers, too.

Hayes and Kristol write:

The Obama administration does not want the bin Laden documents released. To date, the Administration has made public fewer than 150 documents out of more than a million, despite a statutory requirement to expedite the release of the collection. Remarkably, members of Congress, including those on the intelligence committees, do not have access to the documents. Republicans in Congress share the blame for this. With the admirable exception of Representative Devin Nunes, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Republicans have shown little interest in the documents and what they tell us about al Qaeda and, in this case, Iran. That’s inexcusable, but it’s not too late.

The paltry handful of bin Laden documents that have been made available already provided damning confirmation of long-suspected and ongoing cooperation between Iran and al-Qaeda. That is not to say it is an entirely smooth relationship; Iran has arrested some al-Qaeda bigwigs, while the terrorists have kidnapped an Iranian here and there.