By Al-Fassel | 2024-03-01

A photo recently resurfaced online that shows al-Qaeda leader Saif al-Adel in Tehran in about 2015 gives credence to reports that Iran is actively sheltering the terrorist group and enabling al-Adel to command operations from its soil.

Al-Adel, a former Egyptian special forces officer and close affiliate of Osama bin Laden, was named as successor to Ayman al-Zawahiri after a significant interlude following the latter's death in a July 31, 2022, US air strike in Kabul.

The US Department of Justice is offering a $10 million reward for information leading to al-Adel's arrest. He is on the US Federal Bureau of Investigation's list of "Most Wanted" terrorists.

Al-Qaeda's third emir has "been working with the Iranians, on and off, for three decades," the George Washington University's Program on Extremism said in a February 16, 2023, report.

The delay in announcing al-Adel as al-Zawahiri's successor was largely due to his "continued presence" inside Iran, the report said, as this reality raised "difficult theological and operational questions" for al-Qaeda.

In a February 13, 2023, report, the United Nations (UN) Security Council pointed to various sensitivities that precluded al-Qaeda's naming of al-Adel as emir, including "the fact of Saif al-Adel's presence in the Islamic Republic of Iran."

"Our assessment aligns with that of the UN -- that al-Qaeda's new de facto leader Saif al-Adel is based in Iran," a US State Department spokesperson said on February 15, 2023.

After joining the Islamic Jihad in Egypt in the 1980s, al-Adel was arrested and then released, later joining al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.

He was charged by a US federal grand jury in November 1998 for his role in the August 7, 1998, bombings of the US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya.

He then moved to southeastern Iran and lived under the protection of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and in April 2003, Iranian authorities placed him under house arrest, along with other al-Qaeda leaders.

According to the Counter-Extremism Project, he was freed in 2015 in a prisoner exchange. It is around this time that the recently resurfaced photo was taken.

Al-Adel was still suspected of being in Iran in 2018, where he reportedly served as one of al-Zawahiri's key deputies.