October 1, 2015: Iran recently released several al Qaeda leaders from captivity. This was done to obtain the release of an Iranian diplomat who had been kidnapped by al Qaeda in Yemen back in 2013. This sort of trade is nothing new and in the last few years Iran has released over twenty senior al Qaeda leaders or technical experts. Since 2012 Western intelligence services have detected several of the 13 high-ranking al Qaeda officials thought imprisoned by Iran suddenly leaving. Many al Qaeda leaders fled to Iran after the Taliban lost control of Afghanistan in late 2001. One of these recently freed al Qaeda men moved back to what he thought was sanctuary in his native Libya. That did not last long as he was seized by American commandoes in a 2013 raid. The others are showing up, briefly, in places where al Qaeda is operating but otherwise act like they are on the run. That is prudent, because the United States would very much like to capture or kill these guys. While not all of them were imprisoned while in Iran they were not allowed to move freely and most appear to have been under what amounted to house arrest.

Much more is now known about Iranian cooperation with al Qaeda. The 2011 raid in Pakistan that killed Osama bin Laden also captured lots of documents that shed some light on what happened to al Qaeda after they were chased out of Afghanistan in 2001. In 2012 some of those documents were released that revealed what had long been suspected; al Qaeda and Iran did not get along, despite having a common enemy (the West). Al Qaeda is a radical Sunni organization that considers Shia Moslems heretics.  Nearly all Iranians are Shia. Iran has long provided sanctuary for al Qaeda but kept all or most of them under house arrest and observation. Iran made it no secret that they wanted bin Laden dead because al Qaeda had slaughtered over 100,000 Shia in the last two decades. In that period most of al Qaeda's victims had been Moslems, most of them Shia. But at the same time Iran appreciated the successful attacks al Qaeda made (or sponsored) in the West. This is something Iran wanted but was reluctant to do itself as it feared Western retaliation.

The Iranian relationship with al Qaeda led to some strange side effects. Back in 2008 Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad publically claimed that the September 11, 2001 attacks were a ploy by Israel or the CIA to justify a war on Islam. Shortly after that assertion was first made public an al Qaeda leader, Ayman al Zawahri, rushed out an audio tape denouncing the Iranians for casting doubt about the fact that al Qaeda had planned and carried out those attacks. Although Shia Iran and Sunni al Qaeda occasionally cooperate, they are, in fact, bitter enemies. The bin Laden documents make this clear and provided lots of useful details.

Normally the Shia avoid al Qaeda but Iran has taken the position that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” and encourages it allies to work, when possible, with Sunni terrorists like al Qaeda. The strategy is not popular with a lot of Iranians, although the Iranian government openly approved of the fact that senior al Qaeda leadership (including those outside Iran) had, since at least 2006, advised their subordinates to not kill Shia women and children. That advice has been frequently ignored but Iran has continued to work with al Qaeda when it suited Iranian interests. Now Iran is allowing more al Qaeda leaders to leave in order to make al Qaeda, when has openly declared war on ISIL (al Qaeda in Iraq and the Levant), a more effective organization. That al Qaeda is also more active than ISIL in carrying out attacks in the West is simply a bonus.