Thinking the Unthinkable: ISIS, Iran, Al Qaeda & Syria. Part One (a supplement to Axis of Opportunity Part 3, published by Defence Viewpoints 25th June 2014)

In a response to al Qaeda Emir Ayman al Zawahiri's latest attempt at reconciliation with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Sham, ISIS spokesman Abu Muhammad al Adnani made a startling admission: Al Qaeda has ordered its fighters and branches to refrain from attacking the Iranian state in order to preserve the group's network in the country. (Long War Journal, May 2014)

ISIS was established on April 8, 2013, when its subsidiary organisation, Jabhat al Nusra, merged with the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI), itself a successor to al-Qaeda in Iraq.

Thinking the Unthinkable: ISIS, Iran, Al Qaeda & Syria. by Nehad Ismail (See also Axis of Opportinity Part 3 published by Defence Viewpoints on 25th June 2014)

Part Two

That leading members of al Qaeda were based in Iran from 2002 onward was known to the U.S. government at the time. In a letter that bin Laden wrote just five days before he died, he described a document from his son Saad, who had lived in Iran for years. The document exposes the truth of the Iranian regime's relations with al-Qaeda.

A letter to bin Laden from his chief of staff, dated 11 June 2009, contains a detailed account of a group of "mid-level" al Qaeda members recently released by Iran, including three Egyptians, a Yemeni, an Iraqi and a Libyan. In Feb 2014, the Lebanese Daily Star reported that the Obama administration accused Tehran of assisting al-Qaeda operatives based in Iran to transfer Sunni fighters to Syria.

Somalia, Yemen, Afghanistan are countries tied together by a fragmented colonial past and a violent present - the hot-spots that international actors return to again and again. While their present woes are a complex intersection of the failure of domestic politics and the after effects of empire, one factor emerges repeatedly through the domestic chaos as a contributory factor : Tribalism.