As the Middle East edges closer to another round of US-Israeli military confrontation with Iran, Afghanistan has become more important than ever for transnational militant groups like Al-Qaeda. Even as Al-Qaeda exploits Middle Eastern conflicts to incite lone-actor violence in the West, it is staying on the sidelines of the region’s wars to regroup, rebuild and conserve its energy for the day after. Its praise for Hamam Al-Hammami, the flydubai pilot who tried to hijack a Tel Aviv-bound plane and crash it into Ben Gurion Airport, shows both sides of this approach.

Al-Qaeda’s Yemeni and South Asian affiliates, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS), glorified the pilot and called for more such attacks. AQIS went further, putting the failed hijacking on the cover of its Urdu-language propaganda magazine, Nawa-i-Ghazwa-i-Hind, with a caption from its founder Osama bin Laden: “if our message does not reach you through words, we will send it through hijacked planes.”

The aftermath of the Middle East’s devastating conflicts will leave plenty of fault lines for Al-Qaeda to exploit. —Abdul Basit Khan

The aftermath of the Middle East’s devastating conflicts will leave plenty of fault lines for Al-Qaeda to exploit.

These two parallel trends reveal Al-Qaeda’s current paradox and strategic dilemma. On the one hand, the group wants to preserve its organizational capacity while it rebuilds its operational strength. It is investing in emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and commercial quadcopters, seeking financial self-sufficiency through decentralized........

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