Osama Bin Laden’s son and potential future al-Qaeda leader, Hamza Bin Laden has reportedly been killed in a military operation.
Bin Laden was killed at some point since Trump took office in a U.S.-involved operation, but the details on the when, the where and the extent of American involvement are scarce. The death of Osama’s son and putative heir deals a considerable blow to the terror group.
Bin Laden’s son dead
The son of one of the most evil and despised men in modern history, Hamza grew up surrounded by his father’s terror organization. He reportedly appeared in al-Qaeda propaganda videos in the 1990s, when Osama moved to Afghanistan and declared war on America.
The younger bin Laden was reportedly killed in an airstrike, but that’s virtually all that is known with any degree of certainty. U.S. officials told the New York Times, NBC News and other outlets that he was killed at some time in the last two years, but couldn’t provide more specific details. Hamza may have been somewhere on the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan, a volatile region where jihadi paramilitaries thrive, the Times reported.
The State Department announced a $1 million award for anyone with information on Hamza in February, but he was reportedly already dead by that time. His death was only confirmed later. Hamza’s last public statement came earlier this year when he threatened Saudi Arabia and urged a revolt against the oil-rich kingdom, from which the wealthy bin Laden family originates.
Although the group is now led by Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden was apparently being groomed to rise to the top of his father’s terror organization in the years since he was killed by Navy SEALs in 2011 at a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Hamza was not there during the raid, but Osama’s letters indicated that he wanted Hamza to someday lead the organization in some capacity.
For Hamza, terrorism very much ran in the family. He reportedly married the daughter of a 9/11 plane hijacker last year.
Iranian connection?
News of the killing comes amid rising tensions between America and Iran. The two countries have been at odds ever since the U.S. pulled out of the 2015 Iran nuclear accord.
Iran has denied accusations from Saudi Arabia of providing shelter to Hamza in the past. The younger bin Laden fled to Iran after 9/11, and was detained there for some time. While Iran is Shi’ite, al-Qaeda, like ISIS and Saudi Arabia, is aligned with Sunni Islam. But some terrorism experts say that Iran may have sheltered al-Qaeda in the past as a way to antagonize the U.S.
“It’s a marriage of convenience,” Bruce Hoffman, a senior fellow for counterterrorism and homeland security at the Council on Foreign Relations told the Times. Iran will do anything to “keep the Untied States off balance.”
U.S. officials have recently told Congress that that Iran and al-Qaeda are closely tied, but some are skeptical that such allegations are a played-up effort to instigate the Islamic regime amid the ongoing hostility between the two nations.
Al-Qaeda and ISIS, which is a splinter group of the terror network, are enemies. ISIS eclipsed al-Qaeda for several years before being largely decimated by the Trump administration in Iraq and Syria.
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