07/09/2011
Iran also was a major foe of Afghanistan’s Taliban, which sheltered al-Qaeda before the Sept. 11 attacks and remains its close ally. In 1998, eight Iranian diplomats were killed when Taliban forces overran Mazar-e-Sharif in northern Afghanistan and were accused of the systematic slayings of Shiites. The rights group Amnesty International said Taliban fighters stormed the Iranian consulate as part of its anti-Shiite purges. The U.N. Security Council denounced it as a “criminal act.”
Iran’s leaders sensed an opportunity when, amid the post-9/11 turmoil, bin Laden relatives and scores of al-Qaeda figures and foot-soldiers fled into its territory from Afghanistan.
Iran put many under house arrest-style limits but refused to send them to U.S. allies, such as Saudi Arabia, where they could face extradition or interrogations by American forces. Tehran’s leadership believed that holding bin Laden relatives and al-Qaeda officials could offer a guarantee against attacks by the terror group’s anti-Shiite elements. It, too, was another chip to play in the messy shakeout in Afghanistan, where Iran has deep cultural and economic ties.
At the same time, Iran cooperated with the West against al-Qaeda.
In 2003, Iran gave the U.N. Security Council the names of 225 al-Qaeda suspects detained after illegally crossing into Iran and deported to their countries in the Middle East, Europe and Africa.
A former Bush administration official, Hillary Mann Leverett, told the AP in 2008 that Iran had rounded up hundreds of Arabs who had crossed the border from Afghanistan, expelled many of them and made copies of nearly 300 of their passports in an effort to help the U.S. counter al-Qaeda after 9-11.
It was a moment of rare common purpose between Iran and Washington that could have opened doors for greater diplomatic overtures. Instead, Iranian officials say they felt blindsided by being named in 2002 as part of president George W. Bush’s “axis of evil” after cooperating on identifying al-Qaeda suspects.
In May, Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said the United States has no excuse to keep troops in the Middle East after killing bin Laden.
The extent of Iran’s loosening the reins on al-Qaeda figures and bin Laden on its soil remains unknown. Among the late terror chief’s relatives in Iran are one of his wives and several children and grandchildren. Early last year, one of bin Laden’s daughters, Iman, managed to flee one of the compounds in Iran to reach the Saudi Embassy in Tehran. She was eventually allowed to leave Iran to resettle in Syria.
Even bin Laden’s own family has sent mixed messages to Iran.
Last year, one of bin Laden’s sons, Khalid, dispatched a letter to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei claiming that his relatives were mistreated and “beaten and silenced” bringing a warning to Iran from al-Qaeda’s branch in North Africa. Khalid was among those killed in the U.S. raid on bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan.
Khalid’s half-brother, Omar bin Laden, gave a sharply different assessment of Iran’s handling of his relatives. “I know 100 percent that my brothers and sisters have been well treated” in Iran, he said in March 2010 from London. “They have told me from their own mouths.”
