U.S. Spurned Iran Offers to Turn Over Bin Laden's Son

Photo: Sa'ad bin Laden was a prominent figure in the relationship between Iran and the al Qaeda terror network. Whitehotpix / ZUMA

From Time Magazine:

It may have been a case of hitting the target but missing the opportunity. Reports last week said Saad bin Laden, Osama bin Laden's fourth son and a mid-ranking al-Qaeda operative, was killed by a recent CIA Predator strike. But six years ago, the U.S. had an opportunity to get him alive, but lost it when the Bush administration decided to pull away from cooperation with Iran.

Saad's death has not yet been confirmed, but U.S. officials believe he was one of the victims of a missile strike earlier this year in northern Pakistan. A counterterrorism official tells TIME: "There are some indications that he may be dead, but it's not 100% certain."

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My Comment: Time Magazine's title is misleading. Iran clearly had a number of conditions that it wanted to be met if they were to deport him out of their country .... conditions that the U.S. could not accept. The U.S. refusal to accept these conditions is also not surprising. Iran does has a lousy history of keeping its agreements, and has done nothing to make the U.S. (or any other country for that matter) to trust its actions . It is tehrefore no surprise that when the Iranians realized that there was now no longer any value to keep him .... they dumped him in Pakistan.

Would Bin Laden's son be of value to U.S. Intelligence. I doubt it. He was out of the loop for a long time, and arresting him would have gleamed only information that he may have been privy to as a young man from his father before 9/11.