Mojtaba Khamenei using ‘bin Laden template’ to survive, learned from Abbottabad: analyst
Iran’s religious leader Mojtaba Khamenei He spent almost three months in hiding as tensions with the US escalated; Counterterrorism analysts say the disappearance reflects the final years of Al Qaeda mastermind Osama bin Laden.
The comparison comes amid a critical standoff between Washington and Tehran that has spurred the President into action Donald Trump Pausing the strike planned for May 19. On Wednesday, Trump told reporters he was “in no rush.”
Meanwhile, Khamenei appeared to make three posts on his official X account on May 18, but remained out of the public eye.
“For the first time in the history of the Islamic Republic United States “It has done to Tehran what it has done to Al Qaeda and ISIS for 20 years,” the counterterrorism expert said. Dr. Omer Muhammad he told Fox News Digital.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei is shown in a portrait photo.
(Fox News)
“The United States has dragged its leader into the same operational invisibility that bin Laden experienced in Abbottabad for 10 years,” he added.
“Both Mojtaba Khamenei and Bin Laden inherited their status thanks to an American operation, and both responded in kind: cessation of public existenceMohammed said before adding that bin Laden “stopped releasing videos dated around 2007 and limited himself to hand-held voice messages.”
Bin Laden founded Al Qaeda in the late 1980s and masterminded September 11, 2001. terrorist attacks against the United States.
After the US invasion AfghanistanBin Laden evaded capture for a decade by hiding in a fortified compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
Mohammed, an expert at the Antisemitism Research Initiative at George Washington University’s Program on Extremism, said he cut off his digital footprint and relied solely on his network of physical couriers to avoid Western electronic surveillance.
US intelligence eventually tracked one of these couriers to the compound, resulting in the 2011 incident. Navy SEAL The raid in which the Al Qaeda leader was killed.
Epic Operation Rage: How America’s Air Power Is Crushing Iran’s Regime of Terror
Portrait of former Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. Bin Laden was killed in a daring raid by SEAL Team 6 in Pakistan in 2011.
“Bin Laden escaped from the Abbottabad compound without any cables. The communication was handled manually by two reliable couriers, the Kuwaiti brothers,” Mohammed said. he said.
“Bin Laden remained hidden for the rest of his life because the moment he was revealed was the moment he died. Mojtaba’s incentives point in the same direction. Mojtaba Khamenei will not come forward,” he said.
“The lesson of Abbottabad, which Tehran will study closely, is that the safest hiding place is not a cave in Tora Bora, but a walled compound in a garrison town,” Mohammed added, recalling how US forces targeted bin Laden at the cave complex before he escaped.
Bin Laden also lived about a mile away from Pakistan’s top military academy and was clearly hiding behind high concrete walls and barbed wire, Mohammed noted.
“Logical Iranian equivalents hardened areas underneath or next to Revolutionary Guard facilities,” Mohammed added, referring to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and possible locations where Khamenei might be.
As previously reported by Fox News Digital, one of Khamenei’s several recent communications was an X post declaring a “holy war,” framing the geopolitical conflict as a mandatory religious obligation.
“I captured him before he captured me,” President Donald Trump said after Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and several senior leaders were killed in the US-Israeli Israeli attack on Tehran, called Operation Epic Rage.
“This is a religious leader Describing the narrative as a “bin Laden template, almost line by line,” Mohammed said, “From an undisclosed location, we call for holy war against America and the Jews, as their enemies have clearly sworn to kill them on sight.”
Mohammed also suggested that Khamenei’s retreat into the shadows was a turning point for Washington and the United States. The future of the Iranian regime.
His predecessor and father, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in February. During the US-Israeli airstrike on Tehran during Operation Epic Fury on September 28.
“This regime, which has projected its power for 47 years through a single Religious Leader appearing at the Friday prayer rostrum, I can’t produce this anymore figure on demand,” he said, calling it a “strategic turning point.”
“Previous ones were killed in US attacks and successors who cannot show their face. Real power is wielded by a security apparatus, not by a so-called extra.”
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“Now, one side announces its operations on three continents through its president; the other side is ruled by a man whose population on paper is unknown where his population is and which state he is in,” Mohammed said.
“The opposition is also about the optics of leadership during this war,” he added.
Original article source: Mojtaba Khamenei uses ‘bin Laden template’ to survive, learns from Abbottabad: analyst
