U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo today (Tuesday) confirmed the assassination of al Qaeda’s number two, Muhammad al-Masri, who was reportedly assassinated in Iran, but did not specify who carried out the act. He added: “Al Qaeda has a new home – Iran.”
At a press conference today, Pompeo first publicly announced that al-Masri was assassinated on August 7 last year (the 22nd anniversary of the embassy attacks in which 224 people were killed). Pompeo added that al-Qaeda’s presence in Iran is not surprising, adding: “The presence of al-Masri’s organization inside Iran indicates the reason we are here today. Al-Qaeda has a new mother base: it is the Islamic Republic of Iran.”
The New York Times reported in November that al-Masri had been assassinated by Israeli agents in Iran, at the request of the United States. Iran denied the report, saying there were no al-Qaeda “terrorists” on its soil.
Al-Masri was shot dead by two assassins riding a motorcycle on the streets of Tehran. He was killed alongside his daughter, Miriam, who is the widow of Osama bin Laden’s son, Hazma, after intelligence indicated he was planning to carry out further attacks in the Middle East.