New Delhi, Nov. 23 -- Masri had been in Iran's "custody" since 2003 but had been living freely in an upscale suburb of Tehran since 2015

On August 7, this year, Israeli operatives gunned down Al Qaeda's second-in-command. The Al Qaeda operative Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah, who was known by the nom de guerre Abu Muhammad al-Masri and reportedly masterminded the 1998 bombings of two US embassies in Africa, was gunned down by two men on a motorcycle in the streets of Tehran.

Masri was a likely successor to Al Qaeda's current leader Ayman al-Zawahiri. The role played by the US in the killing of the Egyptian-born militant is not clear, but the US authorities had been tracking Masri and other Al Qaeda operatives in Iran for years. The assailants ...