'Just because bin Laden is dead doesn’t mean Al Qaeda’s not on the rise,' Dan Senor said. Senor: Al Qaeda gaining strength

Ahead of Mitt Romney’s major foreign policy speech slated for Monday, a top foreign policy hand on the Republican’s presidential campaign insisted Al Qaeda was on the rise in the Middle East despite the death of Osama bin Laden

“Just because bin Laden is dead doesn’t mean Al Qaeda’s not on the rise,” Dan Senor said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “If you look throughout the Middle East today and throughout North Africa, Al Qaeda’s on the rise.”


In a speech Monday at the Virginia Military Institute, Romney will try to deliver a more detailed foreign policy critique of the president, linking the assault in Libya to the civil war in Syria and Iranian progress toward a nuclear weapon. All, Romney will argue, are the result of Obama administration weakness.

Senor wasn’t able to identify specific actions Romney would have taken differently than Obama, other than implementing a tough round of sanctions on Iran earlier. Those sanctions have caused major inflation in Iran, putting pressure on the country’s political leadership.

He did link the unrest in the Middle East to Obama administration’s much-hyped “pivot to Asia.”

“Look at events in recent years,” Senor said. “Iran closer to a nuclear bomb than ever before, Syria in chaos, you know, lots of tumult throughout the Middle East, the Arab Spring turning into some sort of dark winter, [Romney]’s taking a step back and looking at the world we live in. The president likes to talk about a pivot to Asia. The Middle East is really unsettling, unraveling.”

Besides the death of bin Laden, Obama is responsible for the expansion of U.S. drone war against Al Qaeda, resulting in the deaths of key leaders in both Yemen and Pakistan. The group’s branch in Libya has been linked to the assault on a U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya that resulted in the death of U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and four others.

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Dan Senor