NOTE: I have been receiving feedback from readers who are under the impression that Iran is claiming giving up Zarghawi as a whitewash and distraction.
Quite the contrary - Iran has been caught with its pants down for betraying one of their own assets and supporting someone who has slaughtered so many Shi-ites.
A couple of days ago a car was gunned down and two Iranians killed. The Iranian consulate in the South was attacked by Shias who were incensed that Iran had been supporting Zarghawi while he slaughtered Shias.
The Islamic Regime of Iran does NOT want credit for Zarghawi. Their usual treachery has begun to bite them in the butt! Or stab them in their gut.
They would love this story to disappear.
Zarghawi's Last Words
"Prepare My Virgins"
IRAN TOLD HAMAS, HAMAS TOLD THE JORDANIANS, THE JORDANIANS TOLD THE AMERICANS (Washington D.C.) - and the Americans invited the Iraqis to join in to bolster the new government's ministerial positions.
Nobody really knows exactly why "anything" but speculation can be reasonably accurate. Might the cash-strapped Hamas have been angling for the $25 million bounty on which to operate?
Or was this a gift from Hamas to the West aimed to potentially reinstate Jordan as the land of the Palestinians as was originally intended long ago and now so feared a possibility - with 60% of Jordanians of Palestinian descent - that Jordan has requested a halt or slow down to American efforts to form a Palestinian State.
Did Iran offer Zarghawi as a precursor to their dubious offer to help the USA in Iraq if the nuclear matter of sanctions were dropped?
Iraqi Security Adviser Mouwafak al-Rubaie offered this English translation of a document captured from Zarghawi, which contains multiple reasons Iran decided the liability of using Zarghawi over shadowed his usefulness after becoming a double edged sword cutting both ways:
"The situation and conditions of the resistance in Iraq have reached a point that requires a review of the events and of the work being done inside Iraq. Such a study is needed in order to show the best means to accomplish the required goals, specially that the forces of the National Guard have succeeded in forming an enormous shield protecting the American forces and have reduced substantially the losses that were solely suffered by the American forces.
This is in addition to the role, played by the Shi'a (the leadership and masses) by supporting the occupation, working to defeat the resistance and by informing on its elements.
As an overall picture, time has been an element in affecting negatively the forces of the occupying countries, due to the losses they sustain economically in human lives, which are increasing with time. However, here in Iraq, time is now beginning to be of service to the American forces and harmful to the resistance for the following reasons:
1. By allowing the American forces to form the forces of the National Guard, to reinforce them and enable them to undertake military operations against the resistance.
2. By undertaking massive arrest operations, invading regions that have an impact on the resistance, and hence causing the resistance to lose many of its elements.
3. By undertaking a media campaign against the resistance resulting in weakening its influence inside the country and presenting its work as harmful to the population rather than being beneficial to the population.
4. By tightening the resistance's financial outlets, restricting its moral options and by confiscating its ammunition and weapons.
5. By creating a big division among the ranks of the resistance and jeopardizing its attack operations, it has weakened its influence and internal support of its elements, thus resulting in a decline of the resistance's assaults.
6. By allowing an increase in the number of countries and elements supporting the occupation or at least allowing to become neutral in their stand toward us in contrast to their previous stand or refusal of the occupation.
7. By taking advantage of the resistance's mistakes and magnifying them in order to misinform.
Based on the above points, it became necessary that these matters should be treated one by one:
1. To improve the image of the resistance in society, increase the number of supporters who are refusing occupation and show the clash of interest between society and the occupation and its collaborators. To use the media for spreading an effective and creative image of the resistance.
2. To assist some of the people of the resistance to infiltrate the ranks of the National Guard in order to spy on them for the purpose of weakening the ranks of the National Guard when necessary, and to be able to use their modern weapons.
3. To reorganize for recruiting new elements for the resistance.
4. To establish centers and factories to produce and manufacture and improve on weapons and to produce new ones.
5. To unify the ranks of the resistance, to prevent controversies and prejudice and to adhere to piety and follow the leadership.
6. To create division and strife between American and other countries and among the elements disagreeing with it.
7. To avoid mistakes that will blemish the image of the resistance and show it as the enemy of the nation.
In general and despite the current bleak situation, we think that the best suggestions in order to get out of this crisis is to entangle the American forces into another war against another country or with another of our enemy force, that is to try and inflame the situation between America and Iran or between America and the Shi'a in general.
Specifically the Sistani Shi'a, since most of the support that the Americans are getting is from the Sistani Shi'a, then, there is a possibility to instill differences between them and to weaken the support line between them; in addition to the losses we can inflict on both parties. Consequently, to embroil America in another war against another enemy is the answer that we find to be the most appropriate, and to have a war through a delegate has the following benefits:
1. To occupy the Americans by another front will allow the resistance freedom of movement and alleviate the pressure imposed on it.
2. To dissolve the cohesion between the Americans and the Shi'a will weaken and close this front.
3. To have a loss of trust between the Americans and the Shi'a will cause the Americans to lose many of their spies.
4. To involve both parties, the Americans and the Shi'a, in a war that will result in both parties being losers.
5. Thus, the Americans will be forced to ask the Sunni for help.
6. To take advantage of some of the Shia elements that will allow the resistance to move among them.
7. To weaken the media's side which is presenting a tarnished image of the resistance, mainly conveyed by the Shi'a.
8. To enlarge the geographical area of the resistance movement.
9. To provide popular support and cooperation by the people.
The resistance fighters have learned from the result and the great benefits they reaped, when a struggle ensued between the Americans and the Army of Al-Mahdi. However, we have to notice that this trouble or this delegated war that must be ignited can be accomplished through:
1. A war between the Shi'a and the Americans.
2. A war between the Shi'a and the secular population (such as Ayad 'Alawi and al-Jalabi.)
3. A war between the Shi'a and the Kurds.
4. A war between Ahmad al-Halabi and his people and Ayad 'Alawi and his people.
5. A war between the group of al-Hakim and the group of al-Sadr.
6. A war between the Shi'a of Iraq and the Sunni of the Arab countries in the gulf.
7. A war between the Americans and Iran. We have noticed that the best of these wars to be ignited is the one between the Americans and Iran, because it will have many benefits in favor of the Sunni and the resistance, such as:
1. Freeing the Sunni people in Iraq, who are (30 percent) of the population and under the Shi'a Rule.
2. Drowning the Americans in another war that will engage many of their forces.
3. The possibility of acquiring new weapons from the Iranian side, either after the fall of Iran or during the battles.
4. To entice Iran towards helping the resistance because of its need for its help.
5. Weakening the Shi'a supply line.
The question remains, how to draw the Americans into fighting a war against Iran?
It is not known whether America is serious in its animosity towards Iran, because of the big support Iran is offering to America in its war in Afghanistan and in Iraq.
Hence, it is necessary first to exaggerate the Iranian danger and to convince America and the west in general, of the real danger coming from Iran, and this would be done by the following:
1. By disseminating threatening messages against American interests and the American people and attribute them to a Shi'a Iranian side.
2. By executing operations of kidnapping hostages and implicating the Shi'a Iranian side.
3. By advertising that Iran has chemical and nuclear weapons and is threatening the west with these weapons.
4. By executing "exploding operations" in the West and accusing Iran by planting Iranian Shi'a fingerprints and evidence.
5. By declaring the existence of a relationship between Iran and terrorist groups (as termed by the Americans).
6. By disseminating bogus messages about confessions showing that Iran is in possession of weapons of mass destruction or that there are attempts by the Iranian intelligence to undertake terrorist operations in America and the west and against Western interests."
Speculation also abounds on multiple aspects pinpointing this terrorist's location and his last moments, ranging to opposite ends of the spectrum. This includes Coalition Forces beating him to death instead of acknowledging their medic tried to keep him alive (much more useful to us than dead) and 'he rolled off the stretcher to escape', was replaced, then died mumbling something nobody could decipher.
Was it "Prepare my Virgins"? As good a phrase as any to indicate he addressed Allah, though as the half-witted thug born and raised in a Palestinian refugee camp in Jordan, he may well have simply cursed his captors unprintably with his last breath.
One vengefully satisfying fact is certain. Before he died, he had full defeated knowledge of capture by his enemy. His mind must have raced asking who had betrayed him, never thinking his own murderous viciousness had delivered him to his foes. Or that the $25 million reward dangled by the USA had cemented his final betrayal by a colleague. Iran was the conduit for his betrayal but his savage slaughter of Shiites tipped the scales for them to consider giving up a useful tool.
Again, speculation abounds that the Sunnis made a deal with Iraqi Prime Minister Al-Maliki to deliver Abu Musab Al-Zarghawi to him in return for appointing a Sunni Minister of Defense. Though this may have possibly played a role, it was the terrorist's savage brutality and his ruthless, gleeful killing, which contributed to his ousting from under an established insurgent veil of secrecy. Nobody liked him.
Others posit that Al Qaeda may have tired of his thirst for blood and been instrumental in passing the word to their senior man in Iraq, Waliya Arbili to either rein in Zarghawi or remove him to prevent further erosion of support for insurgents in Iraq. Specially of the non-Iraqi ilk. Zarghawi screaming abuse at Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad in a tape released June 6th, 2006, criticizing the empty words of "destroying Israel off the map" but in fact doing nothing to achieve this.
Remember, Zarghawi was a Palestinian. He came from a refugee camp in a town called al-Zarghaa in Jordan but was not a Jtrue ordanian. His prime objective as a Palestinian was always and remained the destruction of Israel.
Human error in white also contributed to Zarghawi's capture - his white truck. Jordanian security forces amazingly provided a location for him from his gun-jamming video in the middle of nowhere.
How could anyone recognize the desert area from the little view provided? Probably nobody, but a white truck shown in the video and seen by Jordanian spies operating in and around a certain area, could have been the end of the ball of string, which later unraveled. Jordanian Special Forces were involved though their exact role has not been clarified.
HAMAS, for its part, appeared to have leapt at the opportunity to soothe recent tensions with the Jordanian Government. April and May 2006 had seen a series of arrests in the Kingdom of HAMAS operatives captured with weapons and explosives which were alleged to have been used against Jordanian Government targets throughout the country.
According to the Jordanian Government, the HAMAS weapons caches included automatic weapons, submachineguns, ammunition, hand-grenades, mines, different types of explosives, GRAD missiles, LAW anti-tank missiles, and Katyusha rockets (some of which were reportedly Iranian made).
With his spiritual mentor and advisor Sheikh Abd al-Rahman fingered and then cross-linked with various sightings of the white truck, the end became almost inevitable. Here comes the human error. Not repainting the truck, even with cans of spray paint, every so often to change its appearance. Factory white looked good, so white it remained. Nobody in the town where Zarghawi grew up considered him any brighter than a half-wit, so little wonder.
Interestingly enough in the first Gulf war, we knew where Saddam Hussein was at any given time after we discovered he was using a bus to move around and transmit his public messages. Luckily for him our policy at the time did not include terminating him.
Additionally, Zarghawi's rising star inside Iraq, his growing operational control and involvement in European terrorist actions and nascent activities in Canada and potential strikes in the USA itself, using East European/Balkan Moslems, Hispanic, specially Puerto Rican gangs, African-American Moslems and eventually rising to prominence above Ossama Bin Laden himself, may have been dominos in his downfall. Dominos which Ayman Al-Zawahiri, Ossama's second in command in Al Qaeda might well have been happy to set up, as he too, was being overshadowed.
Two days before he was killed Al-Jazeera televison lauded Zarghawi as a prominent leader, as a key and highly important person in the struggle against the Coalition and the West and the Al Qaeda prince of the region. An hour after news of his death reached them they did a 180 and began saying that Zarghawi getting killed was no big deal since he was an unpopular, low level maverick and not truly important to Al Qaeda's cause in Iraq.
Though Shia Iran continued to train and fund Zarghawi, having had a track record together through the pro-Iran Ansar Al-Sunna, located mostly in the North Eastern Iraq, on both sides of the Kurdish border, his indiscriminate killing of both Sunnis and Shias, specially Shias like the school children he took off a minibus and executed, made his usefulness a double edged sword. And finally pushed Iran to deep six him when negatives outpaced his positives.
True, he was fomenting major trouble for the Coalition Forces and a possible sectarian if not civil war, but he had also crossed that invisible line that separates even terrorists from a sheer evil very few can stomach. And, he was having major disagreements with Al Qaeda's second most senior representative in Iraq, Waliya Arbili to the point Bin Laden had to appoint a local resident, Abdulhadi al-Iraqi, over both their heads to maintain some semblance of order.
Abdulhadi's difficult task of preventing a bloody power struggle among Al Qaeda factions, foreign insurgents and Iraqi born ones, inside Iraq, may have become much more difficult with the demise of not only Zarghawi, concurrently with several of his top aides and two female intelligence personnel, but also because of the intelligence garnered and operatives arrested in 17 immediate raids by combined Coalition and Iraqi forces - between the attack on Zarghawi and the announcement of his death.
Some 39 related raids the next day and over 400 after that, further poked large holes in the torn fabric of the terrorist insurgency, leaving the field open for leaderless younger "militants" wanting to follow Zarghawi's ideals to struggle for positions of recognition in Iraq's terror organizations. Thereby, triggering a surge in intelligence from Iraqis with little, less or no respect for the newer, young Ansar al-Islam operatives appearing on the scene.
Abdulhadi may need all the help he can get from Bin Laden's reported choice of replacement of Zarghawi, a little known operative named Abdullah bin Rashid Al-Baghdadi. However, other reports state the Egyptian, Al-Mesri, claims to have been selected to fill the void. This in itself creates a potential conflict while they vie for position in the new hierarchy, offering leaks and intelligence coups. Al-Jazeera reports of an unknown person with a pseudonym of al Muhajer (the Immigrant) as the new boss of the Ansar al-Islam show part of the turmoil Al Qaeda faces.
Positively speaking, the rips in the Iraqi organizations and the intelligence feasts from the 56 locations may force Al-Zawahiri and Bin Laden to reveal themselves as their need to communicate faster to repair the gaps, clashes with their need for secure concealment. Over 150 later raids and a massive 40,000 person campaign by the new Iraqi government with some 7,000 US military personnel backing them up, may deal an insurmountable blow to Iraq's insurgency.
With so many missing from the old structure, Iran appears t have decided to move more forcefully into the game. With much bigger fish to fry than just Iraq and with a wealth of senior Al Qaeda members as guests inside Iran, including Bin Laden's son, Iran may upgrade its efforts from acting by proxy to more definitive, direct intervention. They are already more deeply involved in Al Qaeda activity in North Africa than is generally known.
Inside Iraq, Iran has an estimated 40,000 specially trained agents, Iranian nationals or Iranian-Iraqi citizens, scattered among the major cities, infiltrated into Shia mosques and blended into Moqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi militia in Southern Iraq.
Though, with Zarghawi gone, much of the incentive to join the Mehdi militia may disappear as sectarian violence fomented by Zarghawi will diminish and the need to protect Shias from his slaughter will no longer be a recruiting call that everyone will heed.
Taking a leaf from Khomeini's revolution inside Iran, where mosques became hubs for his take over plans, Iranian intelligence agents have additionally set up Islamic libraries in many major cities in Iraq, through which they recruit, fund, organize and control anti-Coalition and anti-Iraqi government activity. This set up, while technically secular, provides cover for Islamic jihadist meetings, indoctrination, safe houses and similar clandestine needs.
Generally considered an unintelligent child and later a mindless, minor thug as he was growing up in Jordan, Zarghawi operated on his cultural background and upbringing as a Palestinian refugee camp denizen. Like Arafat, who was thrown out of every Arab country for fomenting trouble against his host government, Zarghawi had no allegiance to Jordan and probably never formally received Jordanian citizenship.
His indiscriminate killing of Iraqis, specially of the Shia persuasion, reviled as they are by Sunnis, was in keeping with his feeling no allegiance to anyone in Iraq either. Anymore than he did toward Jordanians when he blew up a wedding party in a hotel or tried to use a dirty bomb to attack Jordanian Security.
After all, he was not killing his fellow Palestinians, who were the only ones for whom he might feel any affinity. Like the paramilitary Basiji in Iran, mostly mercenary Arabs, Palestinians or Taliban Afghans, having no hesitation or compunction in killing Shia Iranians to suppress street or student demonstrations, Zarghawi took pleasure in killing Iraqis, Jordanians and Westerners. With no other claim to fame, since he used others for strategic or tactical brainpower, ruthless spilling of blood gave him the notoriety he sought to recruit a following. He was death personified, which in the terrorist world provides a loathsome charisma.
Various other matters continue to roil in Iraq, Syria, Jordan and Iran.
The new government's confrontation with the insurgency while Al Qaeda has been disrupted extends to also warning Syria to stop permitting insurgents to enter or flee Iraq by way of that country, including a warning that Iraqi military will not hesitate to make incursions into Syrian territory in pursuit of insurgents or to suppress their operations near the border regions on the Syrian side.
With Iraq also concerned by Iran and Iran's Palestinian allies in Hamas and Syrian support of them, Iraq and Jordan have established a new alliance to face the Palestinian threat – mostly to Jordan – and to co-operate on capturing and killing foreign insurgents using Jordanian territory as border crossing points.
Provocative operations into Jordan from HAMAS bases in Syria would not have occurred without approval from Damascus. Equally, Damascus would not have undertaken such levels of attempted strikes — the second of their kind attempted and foiled in the Kingdom in as many years from Syrian bases — without serious consultation with their most important strategic partner, Tehran.
The Iranian Government deliberately selling out one of its former assets — even though Zarqawi was nominally an al-Qaida leader — has direct parallels to the deliberate selling out of the al-Qaida leader in Saudi Arabia, Saleh al-Oufi, in August 2005.
When Saleh al-Oufi disobeyed al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and persisted with attacks on Saudi oil infrastructure instead of supporting the major effort of the time, to escalate the Iraq conflict, the bin Laden leadership leaked al-Oufi’s whereabouts to the Saudi security forces. Saleh al-Oufi and several of his colleagues were killed in firefights with Saudi security forces on August 18, 2005.
The direct parallels between the al-Oufi and Zarqawi incidents raise the question once again of the depth of Osama bin Laden’s links with Iran, and whether bin Laden himself is still in Iran and coordinating his actions with those of Iran.
Meanwhile, intelligence indicates major, still unspecified terrorist plans are being put into place against Western targets but despite the nearly 500 targetted raids inside Iraq and capture of a treasure trove of information, pinpointing where the now looming clouds will drop their rain, continues to a mystery intelligence forces of many nations pursue with great diligence.
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