Tariq Al-Homayed

Okaz

Hassan Nasrallah came out accusing Iraqi Kurds and asked the people of the Gulf to thank Qasem Soleimani for his alleged fighting of terror. But fortunately this coincided with the publication of an important article titled: “The sinister genius of Qasem Soleimani” by the American-Iranian researcher Karim Sadjadpour, in The Wall Street Journal newspaper.

The article is significant not only because of its analytical strength, but also because of the fact that it was based on the book titled “The Exile: The stunning inside story of Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda in flight,” written by investigative journalists Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark.

In an article published in “The Atlantic” in November 2017, these authors said that if they had a say then this book would have been converted into a documentary film.

Sadjadpour says that Soleimani’s plan, since the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, had been that of embracing Al-Qaeda after its defeat in Afghanistan. The writer describes Soleimani as the architect of Iran’s plans for “regional hegemony.”

After the US invasion — despite the concern of some — Soleimani realized that Iran could take advantage of the situation.

“Under Soleimani’s command, Iran became the only country in the region capable of harnessing both Shiite extremism and at times, Sunni radicalism too.”

Then he says, and read this slowly dear readers, “Soleimani’s sinister genius in bridging sectarian divides has given Iran an enormous asymmetric advantage over its great Sunni Arab rival in the Gulf, Saudi Arabia.”

The writer then continues: “All Shiite extremists are willing to fight for Iran, while most Sunni extremists — including Al- Qaeda and the Dash (so-called IS) — want to overthrow Saudi Arabia...”

Returning to the book “The Exile...,” it relies on interviews with some of Bin Laden’s sons and wives, as well as on thousands of documents acquired by America after the assassination of Osama.

In their brief article, the two journalists revealed how Iran received the leaders and families of Al-Qaeda on its soil, including Bin Laden’s wives and sons as well as the Egyptian terrorist and explosives expert Saif Al-Adel, who received special attention from Soleimani.

And that reached even to a point that he had access to a sports complex in a posh Tehran neighborhood, where he swam laps alongside Western diplomats.

Immediately after the arrival of Al-Adel, who lived in District 9, in Tehran, he supervised the targeting of three compounds in Riyadh in 2003, which killed more than 35 people.

Similarly, Iran also hosted Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, the future leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq. Tehran facilitated Zarqawi’s entry into Iraq to target the Shiite sites, which contributed to the hardening of the Shiites’ stance toward Sunnis there and their subsequent embracing of Soleimani and Iran.

A senior Arab official told me personally about the beginning of Al-Zarqawi’s terrorism in Iraq: “We spotted Al-Zarqawi moving freely between the Iran-Iraq border.”

There are many details, of which the two articles and the book themselves are a treasure of knowledge and a serious media work. The bottom line is that Hassan Nasrallah was lying, and he knows that we know he was lying. And it is time for moderate Shiites to know the fact that he was lying just like Iran’s extremists.