Iranian leaders were quick to criticize the April 7, 2017 U.S. missile strike against a Syrian airbase near Homs, that followed dictator Bashar Assad’s use of sarin gas against his own people. Iran’s Foreign Minister, Javad Zarif, claimed that the strike against their ally, Assad, was evidence of the “U.S. military fighting on [the] same side as al Qaeda and ISIS.” It was time, Zarif exhorted, to stop the “cover-ups.” But it is the Islamic Republic of Iran that has a long, if seldom noted, history of boosting al Qaeda, including the Islamic States’ progenitor, al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI).

The evidence of al Qaeda’s relationship with Iran has been steadily building for years. In a recent report for West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center (CTC), terror analyst Assaf Moghadam highlighted the “tactical cooperation” between Tehran and the terror group.