Osama Now in Sabzevar

The Debkafiles are about as reliable as a supermarket tabloid so there's really no reason to believe this..but here it is:

debkafile's intelligence sources disclosed Monday night that Turkish prime minister Recep Erdogan and his intelligence chiefs are well aware that Bin Laden and Zawahiri are hiding in Iran. The leak to the Kuwait paper was intended to show the Obama administration that the Turkish leader's ties with Iran had grown intense enough for him to be fully in the picture of Iran's secret sanctuary for the authors of the 9/11 attacks on the United States.

Here's an overhead view of the beautiful Sabvezar, including a blow-up of their amusement park..


How about a MEMRI version:

The Kuwaiti daily Al-Siyassa reported on June 7, 2010, that Osama bin Laden, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, and five other high-ranking Al-Qaeda figures have been hiding for five years in the mountains of Sabzevar, a city in Khorasan province in northeastern Iran (220 km west of Mashhad).

According to Al-Siyassa, the information, which came from a source linked directly to Iranian security apparatuses, was that bin Laden and Al-Zawahiri had entered Sabzevar at the invitation of Iran and through the mediation of Lebanese Hizbullah.

Stories are saying they allowed the release of some of the terrorists through Syria, although Iran shares no border with Syria. So there's that. I've always been intrigued by this Porter Goss interview in 2005 where he was asked about bin Laden and responded:

"That is a question that goes far deeper than you know," he said. "In the chain that you need to successfully wrap up the war on terror, we have some weak links. And I find that until we strengthen all the links, we're probably not going to be able to bring Mr. bin Laden to justice.

"We are making very good progress on it. But when you go to the very difficult question of dealing with sanctuaries in sovereign states, you're dealing with a problem of our sense of international obligation, fair play.

Most figured he meant Pakistan, and he probably did, but the same could apply to Iran. Here's a previous 'bin Laden in Iran' story, including the mention of Falconry.

On some levels it might make sense for them to sanctuary there--after all, much of his family ended up there after Tora Bora, including his "late" son Saad, and there's no way we can put boots on the ground in Iran. But Tehran would be playing with serious fire by harboring the big boys. The Mullahs are nuts, but are they that nuts? Would this signal they are ready to rumble? Or is it just another bluff--Hillary said to expect a stunt in the next few days due to the prospect of more sanctions. She's right, every time they get sanctioned something seems to happen. So maybe somebody is trying to kneecap their stunt with this story.

As to the Kuwaiti paper, it's in Arabic. But we don't need it, we've got this entry in Wikipedia..




















Case closed..