Why Iran Misses Bin Laden – Analysis

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Reporting and official reaction in Iran over the death of Osama bin Laden last week was in many ways surprisingly mixed. Some Iranian officials were openly sceptical about the veracity of US claims that bin Laden was killed by Navy Seals in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Iranian Minister of Intelligence Heydar Moslehi was one of them, declaring soon after the news broke that the al-Qaeda leader had, in fact, ‘died of illness some time ago.’

Even some of those who accepted US claims that he had only just been killed were dismissive over the likely impact of bin Laden’s death, not least because of the still popular view amongst some Iranian politicians that bin Laden was actually a CIA agent. This view was reportedly voiced by Iran’s ambassador to Indonesia, Mahmoud Farazandeh, and echoed by former Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, who stated that the United States ‘could have killed Bin Laden 10 years ago, but didn’t.’ According to Mottaki, the decision to kill him now was taken because he was an ‘egg that was about to become rotten.’

Such views weren’t confined to the political class—Iranian news agencies chimed in with similar sentiments, including Seratnews, which somewhat outrageously suggested that CNN filmed bin Laden’s body being fed to sharks, with this footage then allegedly having been broadcast to US soldiers.

In a way, this is all a little puzzling. After all, Sunni bin Laden and his al-Qaeda outfit were enemies of Shiite Iran. Indeed, bin Laden’s affiliates in Kuwait even issued a fatwa against Iran in 2007. Bin Laden was fanatically anti-Shiite, and al-Qaeda and its affiliates have been responsible for the slaughter of thousands of Shiites, including in Iraq.

With this in mind, you’d think that Iranian officials and the media would be upbeat over bin Laden’s death. So what’s behind the gloom?

To Iran’s leaders, the country’s nuclear programme and its standing in the international community are more important than the safety of Iraq’s Shiites. So it’s to Iran’s dismay that bin Laden’s death has boosted the standing of another one of its foes, a man who has proved himself capable of hurting Iran’s nuclear efforts through sanctions and covert operations, while isolating it at the United Nations—Barack Obama.

Iran appears genuinely worried that the recent operation in Afghanistan could boost Obama’s re-election chances (and judging by some of the post-operation polls, they could be right). In fact, it’s hard not to get the sense that if Iran’s leaders could have chosen between anti-Shia bin Laden being killed or Obama losing the next presidential election, they’d have opted for the latter.

And there’s also the perceived military threat. Iran’s generals must be asking themselves if US helicopters can evade Pakistani air defences, how long will it be before they use the same technology to cross the border from Afghanistan into Iran?

This article first appeared in The Diplomat and is reprinted with the author’s permission

Meir Javedanfar

Meir Javedanfar has been described as “a respected, Iranian-born writer and analyst specializing in Israeli-Iranian relations” by TIME magazine; a prominent Iranian-Israeli analyst by The Daily Telegraph; “one of the best informed observers” by Asia Times; and as “one of the most objective analysts” by Negarkha, a leading reformist news blog based in Iran. Javedanfar runs the Middle East Analyst website, a subsidiary of The Middle East Economic and Political Analysis Company (meepas).

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