Baghdad ? The U.S. command announced on Wednesday the arrest of an al-Qaida leader it said served as the link between the organization’s command in Iraq and Osama bin Laden’s inner circle, enabling it to wield considerable influence over the Iraqi group.

The announcement was made as the White House steps up efforts to link the war in Iraq to the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, with a growing number of Americans opposing the Iraq conflict.

Khaled Abdul-Fattah Dawoud Mahmoud al-Mashhadani was the highest-ranking Iraqi in the al-Qaida in Iraq leadership when he was captured July 4 in Mosul, U.S. military spokesman Brig. Gen. Kevin Bergner said.

Bergner told reporters that al-Mashhadani carried messages from bin Laden, and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahri, to the Egyptian-born head of al-Qaida in Iraq, Abu Ayyub al-Masri.

He said al-Mashhadani had told interrogators that al-Qaida’s global leadership provides “directions, they continue to provide a focus for operations” and “they continue to flow foreign fighters into Iraq, foreign terrorists.”

The relationship between bin Laden and the al-Qaida in Iraq leadership has long been the subject of debate. Some private analysts believe the foreign-based leadership plays a minor role in day-to-day operations.

Even before al-Mashhadani’s arrest, U.S. military officials insisted that links existed between the Iraq group and the bin Laden clique. From time to time, officials have released captured letters indicating a flow of policy instructions to the group’s commanders in Iraq.

Although numerous armed groups operate here, al-Qaida in Iraq’s signature attacks – high-profile truck bombings against civilian targets – were largely responsible for unleashing the wave of sectarian slaughter last year that transformed the character of the conflict, U.S. officials say.

“What we’ve learned from not just from the capture of al-Mashhadani but from other al-Qaida operatives is that there is a flow of strategic directions of prioritization, of messaging and other guidance that comes from al-Qaida senior leadership to the al-Qaida in Iraq leadership,” Bergner said.

Al-Qaida in Iraq was proclaimed in 2004 by Jordanian-born Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. He was killed in a U.S. airstrike in Diyala province in June 2006 and was replaced by al-Masri.