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Once Matador was launched there were reports of insurgents fleeing across the nearby Syrian border. But after his visit to Ramadi, Zarqawi is believed to have travelled east to Iran, where Al-Qaeda militants with connections to hardline Iranian revolutionary guards were waiting to help him.

A US State Department report noted recently that Al-Qaeda members had found a “virtual safe haven” in Iran, adding that the country’s long rugged borders were “difficult to monitor”.

Reports of Zarqawi’s fate are being examined in Washington, where a senior official confirmed last week that after several months of hunting their most wanted terrorist, the Pentagon did not realise that it had wounded him.

“We’ve had a number of close shaves but no evidence that we got him,” the official said. In February US troops near Ramadi received a tip-off about Zarqawi’s supposed movements and stopped what they believed to be his car at a roadblock. But reports last month said that Zarqawi had sent a decoy car ahead of the vehicle he was using precisely because he feared such a ploy.

When the decoy car was stopped, Zarqawi turned round and fled. By the time US troops caught up with his vehicle, he had vanished. But the troops recovered $100,000 in cash and a laptop computer that was said to contain key information about Zarqawi’s associates, several of whom were arrested.

There have been several fleeting glimpses since, but nothing as substantial as the account of Zarqawi’s appearance at the hospital in Ramadi.

“People here have obviously been speculating about whether that was really him at Ramadi,” the Washington official added. “But we’ve not been able to tie it down.”

Recent statements on militant websites and conflicting reports of Zarqawi’s injuries have provoked disagreement in Washington. The official said some analysts suspected a deliberate campaign of Al-Qaeda disinformation to cover Zarqawi’s escape, while others believed the group was preparing Arab opinion for an announcement of his death.

“If he’s got to Iran there’s not much we can do,” another official said. “Tehran is never going to admit he’s there and our intelligence is not exactly perfect in Iran.”

The insurgent commander insisted that Zarqawi would return to Iraq. “We would like to inform all Muslims and mujaheddin that the condition of our sheikh is stable and that he will soon return to pursue the path until the last American occupier is booted out,” he said.

Yet he also acknowledged that a “substitute” leader had been appointed to command Zarqawi’s group, named as Abu Hafs al-Qarni, an Al-Qaeda veteran who was born in Saudi Arabia and trained in Afghanistan under Bin Laden.

Qarni is said to be 33 years old and hiding on the Saudi Arabian side of Iraq’s long and desolate southern border. “The battle must have a commander and it is not right for an army to be leaderless,” the Iraqi commander said.

Despite the US portrayal of Zarqawi as a terrorist mastermind, neither US nor British officials expect his departure or death to make a difference to the continuing insurgency.

“The operational impact of his going will be pretty minimal,” said a senior Washington official. “He had the clout within Al-Qaeda to get the money and he tended towards the ‘spectaculars’ (the biggest atrocities) if he could, but the nuts and bolts of the day-to-day insurgency didn’t rely on him.”

Brigadier General Carter Ham, who earlier this year commanded US troops in Mosul, said Zarqawi’s demise would not halt the activities of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, which is believed by military intelligence to be organising many of the suicide bombings by foreign volunteers. “Whether he’s killed or captured, it won’t cause the organisation to necessarily crumble,” Ham said.

At the same time, officials argued, Zarqawi’s eclipse might have a longer-term impact on the recruitment of foreign suicide bombers, whose activities remain the greatest threat to Iraq’s civilian regime.

While intelligence sources believe that Zarqawi may have been responsible for only a fraction of the assaults for which his group has been blamed, he became a mythical figure for the young jihadists (holy warriors) who are praying for America’s defeat.

“Take him out of the equation and the jihadists may not be burning quite so fiercely to get themselves to Iraq,” one official said.

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