The Obama administration has sanctioned three senior al-Qaeda members operating in Iran just weeks after dismissing reports of cooperation between the global terror organization and the Islamic Republic, deepening criticism from experts and lawmakers that the administration is seeking to downplay those connections in order to avoid complications with last summer’s nuclear deal.
The three members sanctioned on Wednesday helped move al-Qaeda “money and operatives from South Asia and across the Middle East” for years, the Treasury Department said in a statement. One of the operatives, Yisra Muhammad Ibrahim Bayumi, worked with Iranian officials.
An Obama administration official told THE WEEKLY STANDARD earlier this month that “[a]nyone who thinks Iran was or is in bed with al-Qaeda doesn’t know much about either.”
Lawmakers and experts who spoke to TWS in the aftermath of the new sanctions announcement suggested that some in the administration may be seeking to downplay Iranian terror activities to avoid having to confront Tehran. Iranian officials have repeatedly said that any new sanctions would be a violation of the nuclear deal, and have said that broader counterterrorism measures are also violations.
“The Obama administration continues to wear blinders when it comes to the terrorist threat—its latest talking points ignore history and reality related to the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism, Iran,” Kansas congressman Mike Pompeo told TWS. “We cannot be lulled into a false sense of security, particularly as reports surface that al-Qaeda was working on chemical and biological weapons in Iran. The Iranian government’s direct work with, and harboring of, senior members of al-Qaeda must elicit a greater response.”
Terrorism and sanctions experts who spoke to TWS highlighted tension between the administration’s political approach to Iran and multiple findings regarding Iran’s support for terrorism.
“In general, the administration wants to justify the nuclear deal with Iran which grants extraordinary concessions to the Iranian regime, and it’s very difficult to do that if you’re out there saying, they’re still [working] with al-Qaeda,” Thomas Joscelyn, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told TWS.
“Parts of the administration are … documenting facts on the ground, and you can see how those facts don’t support the president’s own policy goals,” he said. “It’s very difficult to justify the president’s policy goals if you just acknowledged that Iran is harboring the terror network that struck us on 9/11.”
The State and Treasury Departments have long acknowledged Iran’s support for al-Qaeda. Their findings reveal the “large gulf” in the administration between facts and the White House’s policy ambitions, Joscelyn said.
Even the administration’s acknowledgment Wednesday of the connections between Iran and al-Qaeda was done in a way that minimized friction with Iran, according to a longtime sanctions expert who spoke to TWS.
“There was very little risk for the White House in designating [the al-Qaeda operatives],” said Jonathan Schanzer, who worked at the U.S. Treasury Department and is now vice president of research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “They were after all not Iranians themselves, and there will be very little financial impact as a result of these designations.”
