The assassination of Al-Zawahiri may not have been a good idea

Zawahiri’s former deputy before Sayf Al-Adl, Abu Muhammad al-Masri, was assassinated by the Israelis in Tehran back in 2020. Many of Al-Qaeda’s present leadership has long had refuge in Iran, believed to be relatively safe from US drones. Its very probable that Al-Adl, the current number two in Al-Qaeda will take Zawahiri’s place. Al-Adl is domiciled in Iran and works very closely with the clerics. Al-Adl had a long active career within the Egyptian military, and organized the May 2003 bombings in Riyadh from Iran.

According to Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark’s 2017 book “The Exile”, Al-Qaeda has been working on a dirty-bomb for future attacks on the US, Israel, and other potential targets.

With Al-Adl in charge of Al-Qaeda in collaboration with Iran, there are possibilities the group will return to international terror attacks more frequently. Al-Qaeda within Iran, has state backing and resources they didn’t have before.

Although Zawahiri’s death will have little or no effect on current Al-Qaeda activities, a new leader with a jihadist void left with the decline of Islamic State provides opportunity. The Taliban in Afghanistan may be quietly happy the centre of Al-Qaeda may shift across to Iran, this will be Iran’s gain with an organization willing to attack its enemies.

This is not without its problems for Al-Qaeda. If Al-Qaeda strengthens their position in Iran, many Sunni groups across the Arabian Peninsula may lose trust in Al-Qaeda. This is an extremely important issue for Al-Qaeda to factor in when appointing the successor to Zawahiri. In addition, if Al-Adl becomes the next Al-Qaeda leader, there are very strong probabilities Israel would not stand idly by.

The Biden action to assassinate Zawahiri was engaged upon with the hope that it would raise his domestic popularity. It wasn’t an Osama Bin Laden moment that Obama received some years earlier. Americans have seemed to have moved on from 911.

However, what the Zawahiri assassination has done is to destabilize Al-Qaeda, forcing the organization to consider their future jihadist role. The future direction of Al-Qaeda will be dependent upon who the new leader will be.