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That a relationship exists between states and terrorism is not surprising. Some political theorists have even argued that the capacity to engender terror is intrinsic to all states,¹ and the modern era provides numerous examples of state terrorism and state-sponsored terrorism.² States have also enabled terrorist groups both wittingly and unwittingly, e.g., during the Afghan jihad, resulting in unanticipated blowback. Yet the contention that a group like Al-Qa‘ida, whose rejection of the legitimacy of nation-states is intrinsic to its core ideology, is amenable to act willingly to serve the agenda of Iran requires skepticism. The logical conclusion of such a contention underestimates the threat posed by groups like Al-Qa‘ida that are staunchly resistant to routine kinetic and non-kinetic pressure mechanisms at the disposal of states.

The Abbottabad documents examined in this study provide no evidence that Al-Qa‘ida’s ties with Iran involved operational collaboration. No familiar or friendly references are to be found in any of the documents examined for this study. Letters dated 2004, 2006, 2007 and 2010 through to 2011, just before UBL was killed, include explicit hostile references to Iran. These letters are authored by UBL, members of his family, and Al-Qa‘ida/jihadi operatives and leaders, including those trying to secure the release of UBL’s family and other Al-Qa‘ida personnel. UBL’s own letters make it clear that he had no close ties to Iranian officials. If Iranian authorities did facilitate Al-Qa‘ida’s activities, the internal communiqués examined in this study demonstrate that UBL did not know of such collaboration.

Future research on this issue would benefit from an additional examination of the entirety of the Abbottabad corpus to investigate Al-Qa‘ida’s contested ties with not just Iran, but also with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.