REMEMBER al-Qaeda? It might seem like only yesterday that the Islamist terror group first made its bloody mark on the world. Astonishingly though, 2018 will mark the 30th anniversary of its founding.

This week the CIA released a vast archive of documents belonging to the group’s leader Osama bin Laden, seized during that dramatic raid on his Pakistani compound back in 2011 when he was killed. Far from being “retired” when US Navy SEALS knocked down his door in Abbottabad that night, it seems Bin Laden was still very much in control and held fast to his long-term vision of using the United States as a unifying force for jihadists. The almost half a million files, memos and journals now released reveal a lot about bin Laden the man, and the organisation he headed.

But fascinating as all this is, even more curious is the timing of the documents’ release by the CIA. That too perhaps speaks volumes about the imminent direction of US foreign policy and the Trump administration’s intentions towards Iran.

Lo and behold, al-Qaeda appears to have had “secret dealings” with Iran. These dealings are summed up in a 19-page account purportedly written by a senior member of al-Qaeda some time back, detailing how the group had struck up a deal with Iran to attack American interests in “Saudi Arabia and the Gulf”. In return for al-Qaeda’s participation, Shia Iran is said to have offered some of al-Qaeda’s Sunni militants “money and arms” and “training in Hezbollah camps in Lebanon”.

Though in theory there’s never been any love lost between Shia Iran and Sunni groups like al-Qaeda, “secret and open” ties, as CIA chief Mike Pompeo calls them, have always existed between the two.

So why then does the release of such details by the CIA matter? Well, the short answer is that it comes just at the moment when the Trump administration, backed by a vociferous and pretty hawkish lobby, has been gunning for Iran.

Last month Mr Trump, to the horror of many European leaders, decided to decertify the Obama-era deal that would see Iran restrict its nuclear programme for at least 10 years in exchange for the loosening of economic sanctions.

Not content with this, Mr Trump has been pushing for the designation of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a foreign terrorist organisation and putting it on the same level as al-Qaeda and the Islamic State (IS) group.

Such moves when combined, say Mr Trump’s critics, would arguably be the most destructive foreign policy decision by a US administration since the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Some even go as far as to suggest it is part of making the case for war with Iran.

It’s against this manoeuvring towards a showdown with Tehran that the CIA’s release of the documents needs to be considered. Or to put it another way, the timing could not have been more fortuitous for those anti-Iran ultra-hawks within the Trump administration. Not surprisingly, they have seized upon the papers as proof of Tehran’s support for terrorism in the region.

While there is no doubt that Iran is one of numerous destabilising influences on the Middle East right now, the moves by Mr Trump and his hawkish allies only serve to make a bad situation worse.

As if this was not all dangerous enough, it comes too at a time when al-Qaeda itself, long overshadowed in term of international headlines by jihadist rival IS, is beginning to reassert its role as the pre-eminent Islamist terror organisation.

For the past three years IS has laid claim as the leading global jihadist movement, but its current decline in Syria and Iraq looks set to be al-Qaeda’s gain. Many analysts worry, with good cause, that over the past three years while IS has preoccupied global attention, al-Qaeda has been quietly regrouping and rebuilding.

In Syria while the US-led coalition and Russian-backed Syrian troops have focused on driving IS from the country’s east, al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS), has consolidated its control over Idlib province, transforming itself into the de-facto face of the country’s campaign against the regime of Syrian President Bashar-al Assad.

Right now the group is welcoming with open arms many of those IS fighters forced to retreat, thus reinforcing al-Qaeda’s overall capacity. By and large over the last few years al-Qaeda has concentrated on building its long-term support in the Islamic world. To that end it has benefited from a number of new so called "host environments", among them Syria, Libya and Yemen. But as al-Qaeda expert Jason Burke has pointed out, this may change.

“No one has forgotten how 9/11 grabbed global attention. If al-Qaeda decides to target the “far enemy”– the west – rather than Islamic opponents, it will be well placed,” he warned in an article earlier this year.

Mr Burke’s views are shared by some senior intelligence officials who believe that bolstered by recruits who were formerly with IS, al-Qaeda might be looking to return to Osama bin Laden’s strategy of attacking the West. Just last month Andrew Parker the director general of MI5 said that the threat from Islamist inspired terror was at the “highest tempo” he had seen in his 34-year career.

Thirty years on from its founding al-Qaeda may well be poised for resurgence. Its well-proven ability to establish widespread political legitimacy among jihadists through a refurbished image could very well propel the group through its fourth decade and beyond.

Seen from al-Qaeda’s perspective the Trump administration has thrown it a lifeline to return to the spotlight. The shrill, belligerent, threatening and ill-considered voices emanating from Washington right now are music to the ears of jihadist terrorists.

With his rash foreign and domestic policies Mr Trump has handed al-Qaeda the opportunity to re-portray the West as being involved in an existential war with Islam. Al-Qaeda and its ilk has always been adept at exploiting such opportunities and no doubt will do so again, to everyone’s hurt. It even has a potential future leader to help – Osama bin Laden left behind not just documents and journals, but a son called Hamza now 28 years old. It’s said he’s being groomed to take over where his father left off.