Iran is seen as new key threat
Intelligence officials testify on U.S. safety
WASHINGTON – Al-Qaida’s ability to conduct terrorist operations against the United States has diminished in the last year, but U.S. intelligence agencies said Tuesday that they now believe Iranian leaders are willing to launch attacks against American targets.
The top U.S. intelligence official, James R. Clapper, said at a Senate hearing that a purported Iranian plot to assassinate a Saudi diplomat in Washington in the fall convinced U.S. officials that leaders in Tehran are increasingly likely to support bombings on U.S. soil, especially if they feel that their hold on power is threatened.
“Some Iranian officials, probably including supreme leader Ali Khamenei, have changed their calculus and are now willing to conduct an attack in the United States,” said Clapper, director of national intelligence.
Tension with Tehran has risen sharply in recent weeks as the European Union and President Barack Obama’s administration have imposed punishing economic sanctions in an effort to persuade Iran’s leaders to abandon what they suspect is a nuclear weapons program.
Recent reports of bombings in Iran, the crash of a secret CIA surveillance drone there and the assassination of several Iranian nuclear scientists suggest a covert campaign by the West or its proxies is aimed at sabotaging the effort.
America’s most senior intelligence officials, including Clapper, CIA Director David H. Petraeus and FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III, testified at the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on worldwide threats against the United States. Iran was a major topic.
The officials provided no further evidence during the hearing to support their perception of a change in Iranian attitudes.
Iran is “keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons” and is “technically capable” of producing enough highly enriched uranium to fuel a nuclear weapon, Clapper said.
“We do not know, however, if Iran will eventually decide to build nuclear weapons,” he said. Inspectors from the United Nations nuclear watchdog agency are in Iran this week to gather further data on the country’s nuclear program. Iran says the effort is aimed at generating electricity, not building weapons.
The CIA believes that Iran is feeling the “increased bite of new sanctions,” Petraeus said, referring to the U.S. blacklisting of Iran’s central bank.