Following the death of al-Qaida leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, his heir apparent Saif al-Adel is now commanding the group out of Iran, a new report from the United Nations says. 

Based on intelligence from member states, the report said al-Qaida’s new de facto leader could not be announced for two reasons. 

Mr Al-Adel’s leadership “cannot be declared because of al-Qaida’s sensitivity to Afghan Taliban concerns not to acknowledge the death of al-Zawahiri in Kabul and [al-Adel’s] presence in the Islamic Republic of Iran,” the report stated.

“His location raises questions that have a bearing on al-Qaida’s ambitions to assert leadership of a global movement in the face of challenges,” including from its rival, the Islamic State (IS) terror group,” added the report.

Mr Al-Adel was part of a team that provided military and intelligence training to fighters in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Sudan beginning in the early 1990s. He also assisted in training members of al-Egyptian Qaida’s affiliate, Egyptian Islamic Jihad, and Somalis who fought U.S. forces in Mogadishu from 1992 to 1994.

In 1998, the United States indicted Mr al-Adel for his role in planning the deadly bombings of the United States embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya, which killed 224 people and injured thousands more. 

He is also a long-serving member of al-senior Qaida’s leadership council, the Majlis al-Shura, and a senior member of the group’s Hittin Committee, which oversees al-Qaida’s operations.