In an audiotape posted on an Islamist Web site on April 22, Zawahiri denounced Tehran and its Lebanese ally, Hezbollah. According to him, claims made by Hezbollah and Iranian media that Israel was responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks are an attempt to deprive Sunnis of the "credit" for them. He also denounced Iran for expansionism and praised al-Qaida in Iraq, and the "Islamic State of Iraq" it claims to lead, as the primary force opposing Iranian ambitions there.
This tape appeared only 10 days after an explosion in the Iranian city of Shiraz at a mosque led by a Shiite cleric who is a particularly strident critic of Sunni fundamentalism. The Iranian authorities first suggested that the explosion was caused by a bomb, but then claimed it was due to an accident.
However, several of those present – including the cleric heading the mosque – insisted that the explosion was due to a bomb. Tehran's claim that it was not raises the possibility that it knows otherwise, but does not want to admit that Iran is under attack from al-Qaida affiliates. (Jundallah – a radical Sunni group in Iran allied to al-Qaida – has claimed responsibility for previous bombings inside Iran.)
Al-Qaida and Tehran represent competitive Islamic revolutionary movements. While there are far more Sunnis than Shiites in the world, Hezbollah's strong showing against Israel in the conflict between them during the summer of 2006 has resulted in many Arab Sunnis coming to admire it. There have been reports that Hezbollah's "victory" has even influenced some Sunnis to covert to Shiism (though how true these reports are is unclear).
Al-Qaida, by contrast, has been criticized by many Arabs for not mounting any attacks in the occupied West Bank or Israel proper. Iranian-backed Hezbollah, then, is looking more revolutionary than al-Qaida. And even though it is Sunni, Hamas (which now controls Gaza and is contesting Israel and Fatah for the West Bank) appears to have closer links to Tehran than to al-Qaida.
It should not be surprising, then, if al-Qaida has increasingly come to fear that Tehran, Hezbollah, and their allies are gaining on it in the battle for influence with radicalized Arabs. Thus, Zawahiri's warning about the "Persian" threat to the Arab world is an attempt to recast the contest with Tehran into ethnic Arab vs. Persian terms instead of being about who is most effective against Israel and the United States.
This rivalry between al-Qaida and Tehran for leadership of the Islamic revolutionary movement is reminiscent of the earlier rivalries between the USSR and China for the leadership of the Marxist-Leninist revolutionary movement and between Egypt and Syria for the leadership of the Arab nationalist revolutionary movement. In the Marxist-Leninist case, Moscow and Beijing became so fearful of each other that both sought détente with Washington in the early 1970s. Syria's relations with the United States has remained poor for decades, but Egypt and the U.S. became close partners from the 1970s on.
Does the al-Qaida-Tehran rivalry, then, presage a rapprochement between one or both sides with the United States?
It is highly doubtful that anything like this can or will occur with al-Qaida – especially if it does not take power anywhere and thus does not have to worry about losing it. The Islamic Republic of Iran, by contrast, is in power and wishes to remain so. If and when it becomes threatened enough by al-Qaida, it may well decide that improved relations with the United States would not be such a bad thing after all.
But this is not likely to occur any time soon. The Sino-Soviet rivalry that grew serious in the mid-1950s did not result in Soviet and Chinese rapprochements with the United States until the early 1970s. The Egyptian-American rapprochement of the mid-1970s did not occur until well after the deterioration in Egyptian-Syrian relations resulting from Syria's withdrawal from the Egyptian-dominated United Arab Republic in 1961 (and after both the 1967 and 1973 Arab-Israeli wars).
Rivalry between al-Qaida and Iran is not something new; it has actually been going on at least since shortly after 9/11 when, according to Zawahiri, Tehran gave support for the U.S.-led intervention of Afghanistan against the Taliban and al-Qaida. It may take years of intense rivalry between them – during which Iran and al-Qaida will each try to show that it is more hostile to America than the other is – before Tehran will be ready for rapprochement with the United States.
Indeed, it is not clear that this will ever occur. But continued criticism of Iran by al-Qaida leaders such as Zawahiri as well as more bombings and other attacks by al-Qaida affiliates inside Iran increase the likelihood that Tehran will eventually turn to Washington for support against their common enemy.
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Mark N. Katz is a professor of government and politics at George Mason University.