al Qaeda's Leader Is Dead. Now What?

President Joe Biden announced Monday that the United States had killed al-Qaeda leader Ayman Al-Zawahri in a drone strike over the weekend.

Zawahri, who was an Egyptian doctor, replaced Osama bin Laden after he was killed by U.S. Navy SEALS in May 2011. He was listed as the FBI’s “Most Wanted Terrorist” and helped to plan the September 11 terrorist attacks.

“Zawahri has been a high-level target of the United States, one of the most wanted people in the world for over 20 years,” Jeff Smith, a research fellow in the Asian Studies Center at The Heritage Foundation, says. (The Daily Signal is Heritage’s multimedia news organization.)

Smith joins a bonus episode of “The Daily Signal Podcast” to discuss the significance of Zawahri’s death, the future of al-Qaeda, who might replace him, and counterterrorism operations in the Middle East.

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