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American Morning
Connection Between Hezbollah and Al Qaeda
Aired August 12, 2003 - 08:11 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: Well, the connection between Hezbollah and al Qaeda has been covered extensively by Jeffrey Goldberg of "The New Yorker" magazine and he joins us now from Jerusalem.
Greetings.
Thanks for being with us.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG, "THE NEW YORKER": Great to be here.
KAGAN: Tell us a little bit more about Imad Mugniyah, the second most wanted man in the world after Osama bin Laden. What more do you know about him besides what we heard in Mike Boettcher's piece?
GOLDBERG: Well, he is, his importance can't be underestimated. As a technician, he's considered one of the foremost -- one of the world's foremost bomb makers and planners. He invented a technique which we saw on September 11th, the simultaneous terrorist attack. In other words, he invented this technique whereby multiple targets are hit at once, which, of course, psychologically creates much greater terror.
He has been active for years and years. He's responsible for many other actions besides the Marine barracks bombing -- the hijacking of a TWA flight. He's thought to be responsible, in part, for the bombing of a Jewish community center in Argentina. His fingerprints are on a lot of different terrorist atrocities.
And it's fairly well known in the intelligence community that he is someone who will make temporary alliances with other groups, even groups that are not Shiite, as he is. And one more very important point, and this is a way of thinking of him, reframing the way we think of him. You shouldn't really think of him as an independent operative or as an independent terrorist. He really is an Iranian subcontractor. He reports directly to the Revolutionary Guard corps of the Iranian government.
So really he is functioning as a state terrorist.
KAGAN: Well, and how do you explain that link between him and the Iranian government, since he's Lebanese by birth?
GOLDBERG: Well, he's a Lebanese Shiite by birth and the Hezbollah, the party to which he is, to which he belongs, is, one might call it a wholly owned subsidiary of the Iranian Shiites. They, when you go into a Hezbollah office in Beirut, for instance, or in the Bekaa Valley, it is not the president of Lebanese whose picture is on the wall, it's Ayatollah Khomeini and Khameini, the current president or the current supreme leader of Iran. So they are completely merged in one sort of very large Shiite organization.
KAGAN: And what does this mean, especially the involvement of the Iranian government, in the U.S. war on terror?
GOLDBERG: Well, a blind spot is a good way of putting it. I'll give you an example. In the early days of the war against -- in Iraq, the Americans successfully, along with their Kurdish allies, pushed out of Iraq, northeastern Iraq, a group called Ansar al-Islam, which is an al Qaeda affiliate. Many of the members of that group who weren't killed by the American attack fled into Iran and have disappeared.
There have been, in the last couple of weeks, various reports I've heard that many of these men who escaped the initial attack are filtering back in through, over the border between Iran and Iraq, in order to attack American servicemen.
So -- and then, of course, the Iranians, as Mike Boettcher found, completely deny any knowledge of these activities. They say that various al Qaeda members have been arrested, but they've offered no proof of that and certainly intelligence agencies don't believe that at all.
KAGAN: And, Jeff, just because you're over there, I have to ask you, have you heard anything additional about today's suicide attacks in Israel on the West Bank?
GOLDBERG: No, I would just, I just think it's important to note that Hamas has officially claimed responsibility, that Hamas, which is a, you could call it, signatory to this cease-fire, has now openly claimed responsibility for one of these attacks. So it obviously means, you combine that with the Hezbollah attack this week over the weekend and you can, I'll give you a sense of it, that there's a feeling in Israel now that this cease-fire and that this general calm that's existed here is close to shattering.
KAGAN: And that is definitely unfortunate.
Jeffrey Goldberg from "The New Yorker" magazine, joining us from Jerusalem.
Thank you.
Appreciate your comments on all those topics.
GOLDBERG: Thank you.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
Aired August 12, 2003 - 08:11 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: Well, the connection between Hezbollah and al Qaeda has been covered extensively by Jeffrey Goldberg of "The New Yorker" magazine and he joins us now from Jerusalem.
Greetings.
Thanks for being with us.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG, "THE NEW YORKER": Great to be here.
KAGAN: Tell us a little bit more about Imad Mugniyah, the second most wanted man in the world after Osama bin Laden. What more do you know about him besides what we heard in Mike Boettcher's piece?
GOLDBERG: Well, he is, his importance can't be underestimated. As a technician, he's considered one of the foremost -- one of the world's foremost bomb makers and planners. He invented a technique which we saw on September 11th, the simultaneous terrorist attack. In other words, he invented this technique whereby multiple targets are hit at once, which, of course, psychologically creates much greater terror.
He has been active for years and years. He's responsible for many other actions besides the Marine barracks bombing -- the hijacking of a TWA flight. He's thought to be responsible, in part, for the bombing of a Jewish community center in Argentina. His fingerprints are on a lot of different terrorist atrocities.
And it's fairly well known in the intelligence community that he is someone who will make temporary alliances with other groups, even groups that are not Shiite, as he is. And one more very important point, and this is a way of thinking of him, reframing the way we think of him. You shouldn't really think of him as an independent operative or as an independent terrorist. He really is an Iranian subcontractor. He reports directly to the Revolutionary Guard corps of the Iranian government.
So really he is functioning as a state terrorist.
KAGAN: Well, and how do you explain that link between him and the Iranian government, since he's Lebanese by birth?
GOLDBERG: Well, he's a Lebanese Shiite by birth and the Hezbollah, the party to which he is, to which he belongs, is, one might call it a wholly owned subsidiary of the Iranian Shiites. They, when you go into a Hezbollah office in Beirut, for instance, or in the Bekaa Valley, it is not the president of Lebanese whose picture is on the wall, it's Ayatollah Khomeini and Khameini, the current president or the current supreme leader of Iran. So they are completely merged in one sort of very large Shiite organization.
KAGAN: And what does this mean, especially the involvement of the Iranian government, in the U.S. war on terror?
GOLDBERG: Well, a blind spot is a good way of putting it. I'll give you an example. In the early days of the war against -- in Iraq, the Americans successfully, along with their Kurdish allies, pushed out of Iraq, northeastern Iraq, a group called Ansar al-Islam, which is an al Qaeda affiliate. Many of the members of that group who weren't killed by the American attack fled into Iran and have disappeared.
There have been, in the last couple of weeks, various reports I've heard that many of these men who escaped the initial attack are filtering back in through, over the border between Iran and Iraq, in order to attack American servicemen.
So -- and then, of course, the Iranians, as Mike Boettcher found, completely deny any knowledge of these activities. They say that various al Qaeda members have been arrested, but they've offered no proof of that and certainly intelligence agencies don't believe that at all.
KAGAN: And, Jeff, just because you're over there, I have to ask you, have you heard anything additional about today's suicide attacks in Israel on the West Bank?
GOLDBERG: No, I would just, I just think it's important to note that Hamas has officially claimed responsibility, that Hamas, which is a, you could call it, signatory to this cease-fire, has now openly claimed responsibility for one of these attacks. So it obviously means, you combine that with the Hezbollah attack this week over the weekend and you can, I'll give you a sense of it, that there's a feeling in Israel now that this cease-fire and that this general calm that's existed here is close to shattering.
KAGAN: And that is definitely unfortunate.
Jeffrey Goldberg from "The New Yorker" magazine, joining us from Jerusalem.
Thank you.
Appreciate your comments on all those topics.
GOLDBERG: Thank you.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
