Somewhere north of Tehran, living perhaps in villas near the town of Chalous on the Caspian Sea coast, are between 20 and 25 of al-Qaida’s former leaders, along with two of Osama bin Laden’s sons.
Men such as Saif al-Adel, the former military commander of al-Qaida, and Suleiman Abu Ghaith, the bespectacled bin Laden spokesman, are not in hiding but rather in the care — or custody — of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.
We don't hear much about this. Why? Perhaps our government doesn't want to press the point so that it becomes "old news" when we go after Iran.
In a related point, the article notes that we do have a reason for keeping the MEK around in Iraq. We refused a proposed prisoner exchange with Iran involving them:
Saddam Hussein had financed, trained and armed the MEK, even building the group a 5,000-man training facility in Fallujah (now being used by the U.S. Marines) and used them in the Iran-Iraq War and in cross-border attacks after the war.
“The exchange was never formally proposed, but several general offers were made through third parties, not all of them diplomatic,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.“One reason nothing came of it was because we knew that there were parts of the U.S. government who didn't want to give them the MEK because they had other plans for them … like overthrowing the Iranian government.”
I have to believe we are getting ready to nail Iran. I simply cannot believe our policy is to accept a nuclear-armed, mullah-controlled Iran.
One wonders, after so many over here protested that overthrowing Saddam was not justified because Saddam had no easily documented connection with al Qaeda, what they will say when this link is publicized? There's always the old reliable standby of needing to solve the Palestinian problem before we do anything else if they can't think of any other reason to leave the mullahs alone.
