Al Qaeda already gaming out war between Israel and Iran

Al Qaeda is warning its supporters and sympathizers to prepare for a new war in the Middle East, which it says will pit Israel against Iran. Al Qaeda’s franchise in Yemen, the self-styled al Qaeda in the Arabian Pennisula (AQAP), issued an audio message this month with a lecture by its second-in-command Saeed al Shehri in which he tells jihadists in the Middle East that “what is expected is for the war to begin by the Jews against Iran.” Israel will stage air strikes on Iran’s nuclear installations to start. Shehri expects the Iranian Shia regime to try to take advantage of an Israeli attack on its nuclear facilities to seize the holy cities of Mecca and Medina by blaming Saudi Arabia for helping Israel attack. In turn, the Israelis will seize territory in the Levant to establish “the greater state of Israel.” The Sunni Arab population of the Middle East will be caught between the “Jews in the Middle East and Iran in the Peninsula.”…

So why does al Qaeda want another war? Because it calculates an Israeli strike on Iran will prompt Iran to strike back against not only Israel but also the United States. Iran will attack American installations in the Gulf, encourage its proxies in Iraq and Afghanistan to attack Americans, and engage in a global terror campaign. In Lebanon, Hezbollah will start another war, raining missiles down on northern Israeli cities and towns and provoking Israeli airstrikes on Beirut and maybe even into Syria. Iran might even try to close the Strait of Hormuz and disrupt the global energy market. All this chaos and violence will make America even more unpopular in the Islamic world and open doors for al Qaeda to exploit. In this they are right, another war will be blamed on America rightly or wrongly. Shehri and his boss, Osama bin Laden, probably don’t really know if another war is in the making but they are almost certainly right that if it comes it will be good news for al Qaeda.