Relevance of Al-Qaeda

Expelled with the Taliban from Afghanistan, rejected in Iraq, Osama died as a new Arab order that has nothing to do with jihad is struggling to be born.
In Iraq the USA defeated al-Qaeda and established a fledgling democracy in Iraq. Al-Qaeda, Iran and Syria had done their best to thwart the Iraqi project, but their efforts failed. Eventually, al-Qaeda was rebuffed in Iraq by the Sunnis it had come to help. They lost support from Shiites in Iran for supporting the Sunnis. In the decade that separates us from 9/11, the bin Laden legend has dimmed. It has lost its luster as a way back to the Islamic caliphate.
The killing of Shiites in Iraq was al-Qaeda’sundoing in the eyes of many Muslims. Islamic societies have a high tolerance for the use of violence. Bin Laden exploited the Islamic view of death for infidels as a moral obligation. Iraq was supposed to be where al Qaeda would break the spirit of the USA. Instead the carnage there, carried in all its gore by Arabic satellite channels, produced a backlash. There was a limit to the number of Shiite women and children that Sunni Arabs could see murdered. Blowing up hospitals, mosques and shrines, even Shiite ones, became too ghastly to sublimate into an acceptable war against the USA.
If the Taliban is allowed to win in Afghanistan, al-Qaeda could get a new lease on life. The Pakistani and Afghan Taliban movements have absorbed much of the ideology that ignited al-Qaeda in the early 1990s. The operational support of free passage and refuge that Iran gave to al Qaeda before and after 9/11 is probably still there if al Qaeda can organize itself into an effective strike force, especially against Saudi Arabia. Zawahiri is Iran's favorite Sunni holy warrior. He certainly has the ability and perhaps the means to maintain al Qaeda's global networks.