Khobar Towers Bombing - Attribution To Al Qaeda

Attribution To Al Qaeda

Abdel Bari Atwan writes:

In May 1996 Bin Laden and his entourage moved from Sudan to Afghanistan. As if to make the point that they might have been chased out of Sudan by Saudi Arabia and the US they were not leaving with their tails between their legs, al Qaeda struck again: The June bombing of Khobar Towers. The Saudi authorities were at pains to implicate Shi'i militants backed by Iran in this attack, since the embarrassing truth that they had their very own homegrown terrorism problem was inadmissible; they did not want to give the impression that there was domestic opposition to the deployment of US troops on Saudi soil.

In 2004, the 9/11 Commission noted that Osama Bin Laden was seen being congratulated on the day of the Khobar attack, and this raised the possibility that he may have helped the group, possibly by helping to obtain the explosives. According to the United States, classified evidence suggests that the government of Iran was the key sponsor of the incident, and several high-ranking members of their military may have been involved. A U.S. federal court speculated that the Khobar Towers bombing was authorized by Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran.

William Perry, who was the United States Secretary of Defense at the time that this bombing happened, said in an interview in June 2007 that "he now believes al-Qaida rather than Iran was behind a 1996 truck bombing at an American military base."

In addition to Secretary Perry, Saudi Prince Nayef, head of the Ministry of Interior and the lead investigating agency, has absolved Iran of involvement in the attack.

On June 25, 2009, Gareth Porter published an article on the website Antiwar.com stating that blaming Iran for the Khobar Towers bombing was a false leak released by U.S. officials and Saudi diplomats as sourced by the Washington Post article on April 14, 1997. This gesture as reported by Mr. Porter was a face saving gesture to the Saudi Arabian government for their complicity in allowing Osama Bin Laden to target U.S. military targets by using charities based in Saudi Arabia for funding purposes as long as Bin Laden did not target the government of Saudi Arabia.