Iraqi Intelligence Plotted to Use Zawahiri to Attack Saudi Arabia
This information was published during the time period when this website was non-functional due to technical (and financial) problems. In June 2008, a Kurdish newspaper published a 2002 Iraqi intelligence document where it discusses a plan to meet with Ayman al-Zawahiri, the second-in-command of Al-Qaeda, to discuss a “revenge operation” in Saudi Arabia called for by Saddam Hussein.
Zawahiri had ties to the Iraqis back from his days as head of Egyptian Islamic Jihad, which later merged into Al-Qaeda. In my research on state sponsorship of terrorism, he’s been at the center of such relations with Iraq and Iran (and according to Litvinenko, even Russia) far more frequently than Bin Laden.
Although I can’t prove it, it seems that Bin Laden and his ilk were more opposed to relations with states they viewed as non-Muslim than those of Zawahiri, and so the connections would be more on his end. It’s entirely possible for state sponsors of terrorism to maintain ties with this faction of Al-Qaeda and not the other.