Crossfire War - Egypt Pres. Mubarak Marked for Assassination by Teheran

By Willard Payne

Crossfire War - TEHRAN WATCH - West Asia Theatre: Cairo/Tehran; Mubarak Marked for Assassination - Al-Qaeda (Iran) Unites with Egyptian Terror Group Jamaa Islamiya - Head of Group Younger Brother of Sadat Assassin

Night Watch: TEHRAN - In a video taped message aired on al-Jazeera Saturday, one of the heads of the Iranian controlled al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri stated, "We announce to the Islamic nation the good news of the unification of a great faction of the knights of the Jamaa Islamiya...with the al-Qaeda group." The head of the Egyptian group is Muhammad al-Islambouli, the younger brother of Khaled al-Islambouli, the assassin of Egypt President Anwar al-Sadat in 1981. [ALJAZEERA]

It is impossible for Tehran to have devised a greater insult to current Egypt President Hosni Mubarak. Not long before his assassination Sadat designated Mubarak, a former air force general, as his successor. Mubarak has always hated Islamic fundamentalism and its center the government in Tehran, established by the Ayatollah Khomeini, who named a street after the assassin. Khomeini also designated Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah to be the head of Hezbollah. The Shah of Iran, who was overthrown by Khomeini in 1979, was buried in Cairo in 1980 and in so many ways it buried any future relations between the two countries as long as both governments remain in place. They are poles apart in the Islamic world's political spectrum.

Mubarak is prominent in his isolation and in his contemptuous, patronizing non-support for the Jihad. He has always taken more seriously his economic and military contacts with the West. An alien world away as far as Iran and most of Islam is concerned, with whom hostile relations are best, unless you want to stage a diplomatic show of cooperative deception. The West is increasingly viewed as an insignificant international periphery and Mubarak feels at home with them. He has resisted countless overtures by Tehran to improve relations as well as countless overtures by virtually every Islamic capital to do something, anything to support the Jihad, even just to make excuses for it, but Mubarak has stubbornly refused, as if he were above such concerns. He even once threatened to attack Iranian warships in 1993 when they were about to make a call on Port Sudan in the Red Sea. That same year Mubarak embarked on a tour of Persian Gulf states in a futile attempt to isolate Iran.

Tehran is about to give him more reasons to attack. The announcement today by Tehran, through al-Zawahiri, is a virtual declaration of war and a message Mubarak will definitely understand. He knows it's Tehran who controls al-Qaeda and Tehran was stating that such a presence will no longer be tolerated. Mubarak's days are numbered. Tehran and the Islamic community know that removing Mubarak, and instituting a government in Cairo in step with the rest of the Islamic world, is more important than defeating Israel. A Cairo, with its crucial-strategic importance to Islamic history and thought, cannot be allowed to continue as a negligent government- administration that has become increasingly corrupt, oppressive and completely unresponsive to the democratic demands of the population, which sees Mubarak as hopelessly unrepresentative and out of step with the times.

Tehran and other Islamic captials realize that with a more representative government in Cairo there would be demonstrations in support of Hezbollah and Lebanon twice the size of the one just staged in Baghdad. Tehran has stated with that demonstration, and now through al-Zawahiri, that the period of healthy armed competition between Sunni-Shi'tes groups should now come to an end. With unity and less infighting Islam becomes more powerful and more targets can be hit, obstacles removed. Damascus-Tehran are about to provide an example of such unity on the battlefield. And they know the biggest obstacle to be removed in West Asia is not Israel but Mubarak, the biggest obstacle to Islamic unity.

I suspect, however, that his military is still loyal to him. If that is the case Mubarak can have them attack Iranian forces in the immediate area when Tehran joins the war against Jerusalem. It is also quite possible hostilities could break out before then if al-Qaeda makes an assassination attempt that fails. Or when al-Qaeda, using its bases on the Sinai peninsula, attack economic targets in Egypt and shipping in the Suez Canal. It was last October crossfirewar.com carried the Debka article that Tehran (al-Qaeda) controls one fifth of the Sinai peninsula.

That attack could have as much if not more impact on world financial markets than reducing the flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz. Even though Hormuz carries more oil than the Suez Tehran knows international markets are, even in the best of times, a chain reaction of panic, fueled by fear, speculation and rumors. And that would be a shock event-crisis no one even predicted. Tehran can cause the price of a barrel of oil to exceed $200 without even firing a shot in the Strait of Hormuz. They can also blame the "instability" in the Sinai-Suez Canal on Cairo-Washington-London, a result of schemes and plots engineered by the West. This is what Tehran and other Islamic media outlets will tell their populations and they'll believe it. They don't care what the West thinks.

Night Watch Information Service
http://www.crossfirewar.com

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