Qaeda Chief Zawahiri Accuses Iran of Collaborating with USA

Al-Qaeda number two Ayman al-Zawahiri has launched a vitriolic attack on Iran, accusing it in a video message broadcast by Al-Jazeera on Monday of collaborating with Washington in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The Qatar-based satellite television station said the video, more than an hour and a half long, was entitled "Seven Years of Crusades," and was made to mark the seventh anniversary of the September 11 attacks on the United States.

Several others said to be Al-Qaeda leaders also featured in the video.

"The leadership in Tehran is collaborating with the Americans in their occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan," Zawahiri said in the extract broadcast by the channel.

"It recognises the subservient (to Washington) governments of these two countries, while at the same time pledging death and destruction to any state which dares touch Iranian soil," added the Egyptian deputy to Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

Neither Washington nor Israel has ruled out a military strike against Iran because of its nuclear ambitions, which the West fears may be weapons-related rather than peaceful.

Zawahiri cited an example of what he called collusion between Shiite religious leaders and the Americans.

"There was been no fatwa (religious edict) from Iran or Iraq calling for jihad in Iraq or Afghanistan," while there have been many issued on Lebanon and the Palestinians.