Al Arabiya, 11 November 2017 – Clifford May, president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said that days after the release of Osama bin Laden’s documents out of his residence in Abbottabad in Pakistan, it became obvious why US President Barack Obama didn’t publish those documents which links Al-Qaida with Iran and Qatar.
In an article published on The Washington Times on Wednesday, May said senior experts at the Defense for Democracies and other centers opposed the government’s decision not to publish Bin Laden’s documents over the years, and wanted all documents to be available to researchers, journalists, policymakers and public opinion.
According to May, Bin Laden in his memoirs praised Qatari media at the time, in addition to his emphasis on the impact of the Muslim Brotherhood group on his approach to adopt the ideology of global jihad.
The president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies said that the most important part of the current political debate is the assessment of 19 pages of Bin Laden’s dedicated documents on Iran.
It reveals that Iran has supplied al-Qaeda with “everything” from visas, money, weapons, as well as training in Hezbollah camps in Lebanon.
Iran has also provided a safe haven for al-Qaeda fighters “in exchange for striking US interests in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf,” according to the documents.
In a separate memorandum, bin Laden himself shows that by 2007 Iran had become the main source of funds, personnel and communications for al-Qaeda.
May asserts that al-Qaeda and Iran are not enemies but rivals, competing and fighting at the same time as they have profound doctrinal differences.
Mike Pompeo, the new Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (D/CIA), in Donald Trump’s government, made a major effort to publish 470,000 documents, photographs and computer files obtained from the Abbottabad hideout.
He criticized Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who worked for years through the Iranian lobby in the United States, for preventing the publication of those documents that show Iran’s support for the world’s largest terrorist organization as he considered Abbottabad documents fabricated.
