From today’s Los Angeles Times:
Some U.S. Officials Fear Iran Is Helping Al Qaeda WASHINGTON – U.S. intelligence officials, already focused on Iran’s potential for building nuclear weapons, are struggling to solve a more immediate mystery: the murky relationship between the new Tehran leadership and the contingent of Al Qaeda leaders residing in the country. Some officials, citing evidence from highly classified satellite feeds and electronic eavesdropping, believe the Iranian regime is playing host to much of Al Qaeda’s remaining brain trust and allowing the senior operatives freedom to communicate and help plan the terrorist network’s operations. And they suggest that recently elected President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may be forging an alliance with Al Qaeda operatives as a way to expand Iran’s influence or, at a minimum, that he is looking the other way as Al Qaeda leaders in his country collaborate with their counterparts elsewhere…. U.S. officials also said that other senior Al Qaeda figures – including Zarqawi, now the group’s point man in Iraq – had moved in and out of Iran with the possible knowledge or complicity of Iranian officials….
