In return for normalizing relations, sure. We weren't open to the deal, and so Iran drove on with their relationship with AQ.
Iran allows AQSL and their families to seek sanctuary from US targeting inside Iran, but keeps a lid on them. They have alternately held and released them into certain spaces at given times in order to create trouble for others (chiefly, us). This is confirmed by not only the CEM from Abottabad, but by numerous interviews with the families, and other reporting. This is a relationship that goes back to varying degrees for decades (
in 2007, for example, Zawahiri released a video praising Hezbollah and declaring they were partaking in a legitimate Jihad), after telling
Zarqawi to knock it off with targeting the Shia (Zarqawi ignored him. AQI/ISIS had a bloody, independent streak well before it split formally) . It was
Hezbollah who first taught AQ how to conduct car bombings, built on their success in the Lebanese Civil War.
From the
testimony of the AQ guys involved in the Africa Embassy Bombings, for example:
I was aware of certain contacts between al Qaeda and al Jihad organization, on one side, and Iran and Hezbollah on the other side. I arranged security for a meeting in the Sudan between Mughaniyah, Hezbollah's chief, and Bin Laden. Hezbollah provided explosives training for al Qaeda and al Jihad. Iran supplied Egyptian Jihad with weapons. Iran also used Hezbolla to supply explosives that were disguised to look like rocks...
Not really. Iran depends heavily on proxies, and AQ is a (somewhat problematic) proxy that was useful against the United States, especially in the early 2000's when they needed to drain US political will in order to avoid being the next regime to attract US attention for Regime Change.
Did you even read his byline at the bottom?
Then you are going to look silly. :shrug:
The media is actually fairly divided on this - there are a lot of folks still pretty invested in defending the Obama administration, who see no reason to think anything bad about Iran which might reflect negatively on a naive administration that gave them the moon.
Alright. I want you to think about your suggestion here that there is a massive conspiracy across the CIA and the media to produce reams of false reporting that won't be declassified for decades, but which may trick intelligence personnel who can't repeat what it says, combined with a massive covert operation to produce the physical evidence of such a relationship...
....and tell me that doesn't sound like conspiracy thinking. You literally just posited off-handedly a massive, entire new level of a conspiracy in order to explain why someone in a position to know says you are wrong, rather than taking new information into account.
Feel free to check with American, who once came to pick me up from an intel school I was going through to take me to a wine fest (he's a good guy, we had a good time hanging out). People on this board have known me for over a decade, people knew me when I was posting live from Fallujah, where I was a company level intel cell at the time (fun fact: that's where I started working on this problem, AQI in our area had a nasty amount of Iranian munitions).
