On August 7, Habib Daoud, a Lebanese professor of history in Iran, was gunned down on a street in northern Tehran. Killed alongside him was his 27-year-old daughter Maryam. The assassin was riding a motorbike, and escaped without being identified.
Reports suggest that Daoud's killing was carried out by Israeli spies. It fits the profile of those carried out by Israeli agents in Iran in previous years. Past targets, however, were mainly Iranian nuclear scientists. Daoud was a different kind of enemy to Israel. He was said to be affiliated with the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, which is funded by Iran. At least, that was the story reported by the Iranian press.
Three months later, news reports in the United States and Saudi Arabia told a different story, in which the man Iranian authorities identified as Habib Daoud never actually existed. While the assassins were still likely to be Israeli agents, Daoud's identity was a cover.
There is a strong likelihood, rather, that the man assassinated in Tehran that day was a senior operative in one of the world's most notorious terrorist organisations – one that has long claimed to be an enemy of Iran's government.
The man has been identified by US and Israeli officials as Abu Muhammad Al Masri, second-in-command of Al Qaeda.
On this week's Beyond the Headlines, host Sulaiman Hakemy looks at Iran's covert and counterintuitive relationship with Al Qaeda.
The biog
Age: 23
Occupation: Founder of the Studio, formerly an analyst at Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi
Education: Bachelor of science in industrial engineering
Favourite hobby: playing the piano
Favourite quote: "There is a key to every door and a dawn to every dark night"
Family: Married and with a daughter
The biog
Family: wife, four children, 11 grandchildren, 16 great-grandchildren
Reads: Newspapers, historical, religious books and biographies
Education: High school in Thatta, a city now in Pakistan
Regrets: Not completing college in Karachi when universities were shut down following protests by freedom fighters for the British to quit India
Happiness: Work on creative ideas, you will also need ideals to make people happy
Stormy seas
Weather warnings show that Storm Eunice is soon to make landfall. The videographer and I are scrambling to return to the other side of the Channel before it does. As we race to the port of Calais, I see miles of wire fencing topped with barbed wire all around it, a silent ‘Keep Out’ sign for those who, unlike us, aren’t lucky enough to have the right to move freely and safely across borders.
We set sail on a giant ferry whose length dwarfs the dinghies migrants use by nearly a 100 times. Despite the windy rain lashing at the portholes, we arrive safely in Dover; grateful but acutely aware of the miserable conditions the people we’ve left behind are in and of the privilege of choice.
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The specs
Engine: 1.5-litre 4-cylinder petrol
Power: 154bhp
Torque: 250Nm
Transmission: 7-speed automatic with 8-speed sports option
Price: From Dh79,600
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