Iran International
Iran has spent two decades keeping al-Qaeda close as a partner it can deny, and could turn to it if the war with the United States escalates, a counterterrorism expert told Iran International. With Hezbollah and Hamas weakened, she said, it is the card Tehran has left.
Sara Harmouch, chief executive of H9 Defense and an adjunct professor at George Washington University, said the relationship is no longer a historical footnote.
"Who is better to rise as a secret proxy for Iran than al-Qaeda?" she said. "Al-Qaeda keeps a low profile and continues to maintain plausible deniability."
Intelligence circulating in the Middle East and among the Arab states of the Persian Gulf, which US and Western officials have not confirmed, suggests that Saif al-Adel, al-Qaeda's de facto leader, who has long been based in Iran, is preparing attacks if the war widens, Harmouch said. That would suit both sides, she said: Iran could deny involvement, and al-Qaeda could return to the world stage against Western interests.
"It's all possible, and it's not far-fetched," she said. Iran, she added, had helped with the operations, funding and logistics of the September 11 attacks. "So why wouldn't they now, especially if they're in such a difficult situation with the war?"
The 9/11 Commission found that Iran allowed several of the hijackers to transit its territory but found no evidence that Tehran knew of the plot. A US federal court later found Iran liable in a civil case brought by victims' families, a judgment Iran did not contest.
'Pragmatism always trumps ideology'
Washington, Harmouch argued, still treats the rivalry between Sunni and Shia Islam as a wall. In 2024 she wrote that al-Qaeda was becoming "Iran's ace in the hole," with Adel at the center. Western outlets turned the piece down, she said, because editors would not accept cooperation across the sectarian line.
"Someone who has not been to the region at all felt compelled to tell me, oh, but there's a Sunni-Shia divide," she said.
She made the argument instead on the podcast of Michael Morell, a former acting director of the CIA. Two years later, she said, the same pattern is being reported as news: al-Qaeda in Yemen has stopped fighting the Houthis, and the cooperation has spread to al-Shabaab in Somalia.
"Pragmatism always trumps ideology," she said.
As evidence of that shift, Harmouch pointed to a drone unit the Houthis helped al-Qaeda set up, a joint meeting of al-Qaeda in Yemen, al-Shabaab and the Houthis, and a claim that the Houthis paid al-Qaeda $65,000 in recent months for an attack carried out on their behalf.
Al-Qaeda has publicly rejected UN findings that it cooperates with the Houthis and has stepped up anti-Houthi propaganda, which she read as cover rather than a break.
The leader who avoids the camera
Adel, she said, is why the silence in Yemen was predictable. Al-Qaeda has never publicly named him leader because he is in Iran, and unlike Osama bin Laden he avoids the camera. A 52-minute al-Qaeda video released around this year's September 11 anniversary used old footage of Hamza bin Laden and quoted Adel's book without showing him. In that book, she said, the word "deception" appears 99 times.
In her account, the relationship took shape after 2001, when al-Qaeda figures fled Afghanistan for Iran. Tehran detained some and sent others home. It kept Adel, under what former CIA director George Tenet later called a loose house arrest. Adel stayed close to Qassem Soleimani, the Revolutionary Guards' Quds Force commander, and, Harmouch said, told him: "We are partners. We're not enemies. We are partners in changing the world."
She traced episodes that, she said, show the house arrest was never a cage: the 2003 Riyadh bombings, which US officials said were directed in part from Iran; a 2013 plot to derail a train between Toronto and New York, which Canadian police said had direction from al-Qaeda elements in Iran; and, after Abu Musab al-Zarqawi began killing Shia in Iraq, a turn from hospitality to coercion, including the holding of members of bin Laden's family.
In a 2007 letter, bin Laden called Iran "our main artery for funds, personnel, and communications" and warned against attacking it. In 2008, she said, Ayman al-Zawahiri praised the Revolutionary Guards for strengthening al-Qaeda in Yemen.
In Syria, she said, the relationship worked like a proxy arrangement. Iran released Muhsin al-Fadhli, who went on to move money and fighters into the Syrian war. In 2015 it freed Abu Khayr al-Masri and other senior figures in a prisoner exchange; Harmouch said the Quds Force used them to split the forces of Abu Muhammad al-Jolani, now Syria's president, Ahmad al-Sharaa.
Abu Muhammad al-Masri, al-Qaeda's second in command, remained in Iran until Israeli agents killed him in Tehran in 2020. The US Treasury has since sanctioned Iranian-based networks for supporting al-Qaeda.
After Zawahiri was killed in 2022, Adel's rise closed the circle, she said. Since the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023, he has told affiliates to stop hitting Iran's proxies. What unites them, in his words as she rendered them, is greater than what unites their enemies: one God, one qibla, the direction of prayer, and one political goal. His statements and Tehran's have lined up on the Red Sea, on protests at American universities, and on Afghanistan.
'There is no winning'
A deal, or a harder US campaign, would not end the problem, Harmouch said. Iran fights by attrition and will absorb losses the United States will not, and when it cannot control what happens outside its borders, it turns on its own population.
The cells inside the United States that are often cited as a threat have not produced a directed attack, she said. They may not exist, or Tehran may be holding them as leverage that disappears once used.
The likelier diversion, in her view, is an al-Qaeda attack Iran can disown, buying time to rebuild. A nuclear announcement is possible, she said, but less necessary since Iran's closure of the Strait of Hormuz showed what it could do to American gasoline prices.
"I don't think there is winning a war against Iran," she said. "As long as it's still in the fight, it is winning."
The Iran-backed group has seized Red Sea islands and expanded along Yemen's mainland coast in recent weeks, including taking the port city of Mokha, according to the report. It has also asserted control over the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, a key route for global trade and energy shipments.
The Houthis, estimated to have about 350,000 fighters, had prepared for the offensive for months, moving weapons and thousands of troops toward Mokha in August and using their control of telecommunications networks to monitor opponents, the Journal said.
Iranian technology at the core
The Houthis lack a conventional navy but use Iranian-designed missiles, explosive drones, sea mines, armed fast boats and drone boats to project power along Yemen's coast.
Their arsenal includes ballistic and cruise missiles, anti-ship weapons and drones drawing heavily on Iranian technology and components, according to the report.
Around 2015, Iran's Quds Force began sending components for Iranian-designed missiles and drones and dispatched trainers to help the Houthis build weapons themselves, the Journal said.
The assistance helped turn the group into a force capable of attacking Saudi oil infrastructure, disrupting Red Sea shipping and threatening US forces.
China becomes another supply source
"The Houthis now have a new source for the supplies they need to launch their attacks: China," the Journal reported.
Chinese companies are supplying dual-use goods that can serve civilian and military purposes, including components important to Houthi drone programs, according to UN reports and arms experts cited by the newspaper.
The shift comes as traditional Iranian smuggling routes have faced greater disruption. For years, Iran's Revolutionary Guards used small fishing boats to move arms, drone components and missile parts to the Houthis, but many shipments have been intercepted by US forces and Yemeni groups opposed to the Houthis.
Red Sea threat grows
The Houthis have also used Djibouti as a transit point for weapons and traded small arms with al-Shabaab in Somalia, according to UN reports cited by the Journal.
Since announcing a blockade on Saudi shipping on July 20, the group has struck seven vessels in the Red Sea and one in the Gulf of Aden, the report said. Four of the ships were Saudi-flagged.
The Houthis have also targeted Saudi energy infrastructure with missiles and drones, although Riyadh has reported no damage from those attacks.