Zawahiri's Brother at Cairo Embassy Assault

Ayman claims that al Qaeda’s “material power” is not comparable to that of the “Zionist alliance,” according to a translation prepared by the SITE Intelligence Group. However, Ayman claims that his group’s “message has spread amongst our Muslim Ummah, which received it with acceptance and responded to it.”

The video then cuts to a clip of Mohammed al Zawahiri, who has made similar arguments in his post-detention interviews. During an interview with CNN earlier this year, the younger Zawahiri said that al Qaeda’s strength is “not in its leaders but in its ideology.”

So, al Qaeda finds Mohammed al Zawahiri’s message to be on point.

If this isn’t enough to doubt Mohammed al Zawahiri’s peace-seeking sincerity, there is an additional observation that CNN astutely made when reporting on his supposed peace offer. “Osama bin Laden had a similar proposal in 2004, it was quickly followed a year later by the deadly 7/7 subway attack in London killing 52 people.”

Thomas Joscelyn is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.