Geopolitics, Nuclear Weapons, and an Ambiguous Assassination in Tehran

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On August 7th, ‘a Lebanese academic called Habib Dawood…and his daughter, Maryam’ were driving in northern Tehran. It was night and they were in a fairly well-off section of the city. It likely came as a shock, then, when the residents of the neighbourhood heard gunshots and found these two unassuming characters dead, victims of an assassination. The assassins, two men on a motorcycle, had escaped. Except, according to the New York Times, Habib Dawood was actually a man named Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah (also known as Abu Mohammad al-Masri). Al-Masri was not an academic but the second-highest ranking member of al-Qaeda, and his daughter (actually named Miriam) had previously been married to Osama bin Laden’s son Hamza. Furthermore, the assassins were Mossad agents, acting ‘at the behest of the United States’.

This story, published by the New York Times on the 13th of November, set off alarm bells in the international community. For one, no one was actually cited in the story other than anonymous US intelligence officials, and neither the US nor Israel took responsibility for the shooting (or even claimed al-Masri was dead – his FBI most wanted page is still up, with a $10 million reward). Furthermore, Iran vigorously denied the story, calling it “Hollywood-style scenario-making” and blaming the US for al-Qaeda’s creation in the first place. And, even stranger, Iran is Shiite and al-Qaeda is Sunni. These two sides of a bitter historical divide still play out today, with Iranians and al-Qaeda fighting each other in proxy wars in Syria and Yemen. 

To be clear, none of this is to undermine the journalistic integrity of the New York Times, who do exceptional work and would not have published this story without credible sources. Rather, I want to highlight two questions that this bizarre situation raises. First, why now? Three months after this assassination, no word on it from either the US or Israel, total denial by Iran… what does all of this imply? Second, what business does al-Qaeda have in Iran, and what does the cover provided to Al-Masri by the Iranians indicate the future of Iran-al-Qaeda relations? 

The first question has a lot of moving parts, and requires a lot of speculation to answer, so I want to preface the discussion by saying this is merely my interpretation. That said, I would argue that this ‘why now’ question goes back to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), also known as the Iran nuclear deal. The deal, negotiated in 2015, had Iran agree to stop its nuclear program for a set amount of time in return for sanctions relief. It was hailed by many as a success, but not by everyone – many American conservatives saw the JCPOA as a mere delayal of the inevitable in return for cash. One of these conservatives was Donald Trump, who pulled out of the deal after the US elected him president in 2016. 

Despite this outrage, the deal worked; Iran halted its program. As such, the Americans needed to justify their unilateral pull-out, and did so with the aforementioned ‘delay’ rhetoric and some help from Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu saw the deal as Iranian appeasement and was against it from the beginning, which explains his vigorous push of the idea that the JCPOA was “built on lies.” In the end, the US pulled out of the deal and reinstated their sanctions on Iran. It looked like smooth sailing for Trump and Netanyahu, who hoped these actions would undermine future ‘appeasement’ efforts. 

Then Joe Biden was elected. Vice President when the JCPOA was signed, Biden promised after the election to get the US back in on the deal (or at least work on negotiating a new one). In this context, the timing of the al-Masri article makes perfect sense – connecting Iran to al-Qaeda has the dual impacts of frustrating Iranian leaders and undermining US confidence that a new deal can be struck. Iran’s reaction is case-and-point; they are absolutely furious, likely at both the assassination and its implications. Furthermore, working with Iran is hard enough, but if Tehran is seen to be covering for an al-Qaeda leader, negotiations become even harder to justify.  

This is not to say that the assassination was a political stunt – it wasn’t – or that the New York Times is controlled by the US government – it isn’t. The point is that Al-Masri was covertly assassinated in August and telling the world now undermines Biden’s future attempt at reviving the JCPOA. Importantly, this is not an isolated incident. Iran’s top nuclear scientist was also assassinated a few weeks after the Al-Masri story dropped. This all seems to show a concerted effort by Trump and Netanyahu to frustrate the Iranians while also undermining American will to negotiate with them. And Biden seems to think it’s working, publicly stating the challenges of reviving JCPOA in lieu of the scientist’s assassination in particular. 

Assuming this is true, Iran’s charge of ‘Hollywood-style scenario-making’ is surprisingly justified. Except the story, while potentially political in its release-date, is true. Al-Qaeda, according to some sources, confirmed the death not long after the article’s publication, despite official international silence. This leads into the second question – what is al-Qaeda doing in Iran? 

This question is a little easier to answer. Iran and al-Qaeda might not like each other, but they have worked together for years (for example, bin Laden and al-Masri were helped by Iran and Hezbollah in planning the 1998 US embassy attacks). And while we cannot know the motives behind this alliance for certain, it likely has to do with their common enemies, the US and Israel. It is a ‘marriage of convenience’, one that has cast a shadow on US-Iran relations and the American War on Terror for decades. In fact, Lydia Khalil, Research Fellow at the Lowy Institute, goes as far as to say Iran ‘played a significant role in keeping al-Qaeda’s fortunes alive’ after 9/11 by ‘sheltering… exiles from Afghanistan’. And while it is far from clear what Iran and al-Qaeda’s practical relationship looks like (was al-Masri under house arrest? Was he given total impunity?), there is clearly something more than antagonism between the two. 

What does this all mean? Well, combining the two implications – a concerted attempt to undermine future US-Iran negotiations and an important relationship between al-Qaeda and Tehran – points to a potentially terrifying future. Iran sponsors terrorism, this much is clear, but why they do so is more ambiguous. Regardless, it would be hard to argue that antagonizing Iran would make it less likely to do so in the future. That Iran works with al-Qaeda at all is a testament to its potential pragmatism, and if it continues to feel threatened by the US this partnership will likely continue. And that partnership, combined with its development of nuclear weapons, does not auger ‘Peace in the Middle East’. Biden has his work cut out for him.