Was Fly Dubai Al-Qaeda’s Comeback? Inside the 9/11-Style Attack on Israel

Also, Sarah, can you talk a bit more on from the social media front? Is the branding from Al Qaeda and ISIS like different when you watch these social media feeds, when you watch the language? Do they come across as as different like you knew this guy was Al Qaeda more than ISIS just by how it was portrayed?

I mean, you it's difficult to pin down brands just by like looking at the profile of the person.

But like also ISIS have not has not really been known for like aviation attacks as much as Al Qaeda has.

And also all of the Al Qaeda propaganda in the past couple of years, even even more so post withdrawal from Afghanistan has focused on aviation.

There was one video that Al Qaeda put out, which was under the banner of open source jihad.

And it was it was a video, 52 minute video in English.

I still have that video somewhere that shows you how Al Qaeda is all inspire.

And Al Qaeda literally says this is who we want to target and shows footage of United Airlines, Delta, and lays out who it wants to target by name, whether it's people, individuals.

I think Elon Musk is on one of those lists.

Bill Gates is one on one footage shown.

that there was a lot of imagery of aviation and commercial flights.

So for me, just the aspect of the MO of Al-Qaeda, it seemed this is an Al-Qaeda-inspired person just because of the aviation model.

And it's just not usually an ISIS feature to do.

And we've seen, which is I think what's also been discussed, we've seen a lot of ISIS-inspired attacks in the past, but this seems to be one of the newer attacks Al-Qaeda inspired attack, not directed.

The last one was 2019 with the Pensacola attack, but the guy was in communication with AQAP at that point.

But also it shows you that maybe Al-Qaeda is finally starting to bear the fruit of its decentralization process and its lone wolf inspiration and actor.

And I mean, to be also fair, going back to the Melbourne aspect and radicalization in the West, Anwar al-Awlaki was here in the West, in Virginia, and he was also the head of a mosque in Virginia before he had gone and done all the things.

And with all the geopolitical events that are happening, the 9-11 anniversary timeline, and the guy was inspired by 9-11, and the post-October 7th, and the U.S.-Iran war right now, it seems that Israel and the West and their allies are front and center when it comes to these groups.

And Bruce can talk about the ISIS versus al-Qaeda type of branding when it came to the pilot as well.

Well, you know, to me, what's also been so interesting about this is we've kind of forgotten about the terrorist threat to commercial aviation and assume that it was yesterday's threat.

But when we think about it, we had a 10-year run from 2004 until 2014 when all terrorist attempts to target commercial aviation were thwarted, including the 2000 attack.

Six liquid bombs plot on flights from the United Kingdom to the U.S. And this is why we can't carry liquids in air, you know, carry on bags that are larger than three ounces.

But it was ISIS actually in October 2014 that broke that perfect record when using an insider at the Sharm el-Sheikh airport in the Sinai Peninsula, Egypt, planted a bomb on a Russian metro jet, a charter flight that was returning to Egypt.

Actually, I believe it was en route to Ukraine.

And also twice in the past seven or eight years, al-Shabaab, which I would rank as al-Qaeda's least competent, at least technologically, franchise, has sent terrorists to undertake the same kind of training that the 9-11 pilot hijackers had undertaken before September 11th.