WASHINGTON—As the sun was rising in Kabul on Sunday, two Hellfire missiles fired by a U.S. drone ended Ayman al-Zawahri’s decade-long reign as the leader of Al-Qaeda. The seeds of the audacious counterterrorism operation had been planted over many months.
U.S. officials had built a scale model of the safe house where al-Zawahri had been located, and brought it into the White House Situation Room to show President Joe Biden. They knew al-Zawahri was partial to sitting on the home’s balcony.
