[Senate Hearing 112-606]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 112-606
IRAN'S SUPPORT FOR TERRORISM
IN THE MIDDLE EAST
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON NEAR EASTERN AND
SOUTH AND CENTRAL ASIAN AFFAIRS
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
JULY 25, 2012
__________
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COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
JOHN F. KERRY, Massachusetts, Chairman
BARBARA BOXER, California RICHARD G. LUGAR, Indiana
ROBERT MENENDEZ, New Jersey BOB CORKER, Tennessee
BENJAMIN L. CARDIN, Maryland JAMES E. RISCH, Idaho
ROBERT P. CASEY, Jr., Pennsylvania MARCO RUBIO, Florida
JIM WEBB, Virginia JAMES M. INHOFE, Oklahoma
JEANNE SHAHEEN, New Hampshire JIM DeMINT, South Carolina
CHRISTOPHER A. COONS, Delaware JOHNNY ISAKSON, Georgia
RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois JOHN BARRASSO, Wyoming
TOM UDALL, New Mexico MIKE LEE, Utah
William C. Danvers, Staff Director
Kenneth A. Myers, Jr., Republican Staff Director
------------
SUBCOMMITTEE ON NEAR EASTERN AND
SOUTH AND CENTRAL ASIAN AFFAIRS
ROBERT P. CASEY, Jr., Pennsylvania, Chairman
BARBARA BOXER, California JAMES E. RISCH, Idaho
ROBERT MENENDEZ, New Jersey BOB CORKER, Tennessee
BENJAMIN L. CARDIN, Maryland MIKE LEE, Utah
CHRISTOPHER A. COONS, Delaware MARCO RUBIO, Florida
TOM UDALL, New Mexico JOHNNY ISAKSON, Georgia
(ii)
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Byman, Dr. Daniel, senior fellow and director of research, Saban
Center for Middle East Policy, Brookings Institution, and
professor in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown
University, Washington, DC..................................... 8
Prepared statement........................................... 10
Casey, Hon. Robert P., Jr., U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania,
opening statement.............................................. 1
Jeffrey, James F., former U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, Alexandria, VA 5
Prepared statement........................................... 6
Levitt, Dr. Matthew, senior fellow and director, Stein Program on
Counterterrorism and Intelligence, Washington Institute for
Near East Policy, Washington, DC............................... 22
Prepared statement........................................... 23
Pletka, Danielle, vice president, Foreign and Defense Policy,
American Enterprise Institute, Washington, DC.................. 16
Prepared statement........................................... 19
Risch, Hon. James E., U.S. Senator from Idaho, opening statement. 4
Additional Material Submitted for the Record
Kerry, Hon. John F., U.S. Senator from Massachusetts, prepared
statement...................................................... 2
(iii)
IRAN'S SUPPORT FOR TERRORISM
IN THE MIDDLE EAST
----------
WEDNESDAY, JULY 25, 2012
U.S. Senate,
Subcommittee on Near Eastern and
South and Central Asian Affairs,
Committee on Foreign Relations,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:07 a.m., in
room SD-419, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Robert P.
Casey, Jr. (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Present: Senators Casey, Menendez, Cardin, Udall, Risch,
Corker, and Lee.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. ROBERT P. CASEY, JR.,
U.S. SENATOR FROM PENNSYLVANIA
Senator Casey. The hearing will come to order.
Thank you very much, everyone, for being here with us this
morning. And I am sorry I am running a little bit late.
Today the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and its
Subcommittee on Near Eastern and South and Central Asian
Affairs meets to examine the grave implications of Iran's
support for terrorism and militant movements in the Middle
East. Iran's support for terrorism is well known and documented
and has become an established fact over all these years. Iran
provides political and military support to militant movements
like Hezbollah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad, and directly conducts
terrorist acts throughout the Middle East to advance its
interests. Over the past year alone, there appears to have been
a sharp spike in Iranian-sponsored terrorism around the world.
The international community has been clear in its resolve
against Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon. We must also, however,
unite in opposition to Iranian use of terrorism, an effort that
will require heightened intelligence cooperation with countries
around the globe and enhanced efforts to discredit the Iranian
Quds Force and its patrons.
The committee today meets to examine at least three
fundamental questions. How does Iran's use of terrorism
directly impact the national security of the United States of
America and our allies in the region, including the state of
Israel? No. 2, what have the historic political changes in the
region and ongoing violence in the Middle East meant for Iran's
position in the region and its use of terrorism to project
force? No. 3, if Iran were to develop a nuclear weapons
capability, how would this impact its behavior and
relationships with terrorist organizations?
Since its founding in 1979, the Islamic Republic of Iran
has sought to compensate for its conventional disadvantage by
resorting to the use of terrorism and support for terrorist
groups.
There are three areas that I would like to highlight where
the support has been most significant and done the most damage:
the support that Iran has provided to Hezbollah, Iraqi Shiite
militant groups, and the Assad regime in Syria.
The primary beneficiary of Iran's support for terror has
been Lebanese Hezbollah, and as a member of this committee, I
have tried to bring sustained attention to this relationship
and what it means for U.S. interests. In June 2010, I chaired a
hearing in which former Assistant Secretary Jeff Feltman and
Ambassador Daniel Benjamin noted in joint testimony that ``in
2008 alone, Iran provided hundreds of millions of dollars to
Hezbollah and trained thousands of its fighters at camps in
Iran. Iran continues to assist Hezbollah in rearming and
violating Security Council Resolution 1701. Iran has also been
found to be in violation of U.N. Security Council Resolution
1747 which prohibits it from exporting arms and related
material. In 2009, U.N. member states reported to the U.N. Iran
Sanctions Committee three instances in which Iran was found to
be transferring arms and related material to Syria, a regional
hub for Iranian support to terrorist groups such as
Hezbollah.'' That is what the Ambassador and the Assistant
Secretary said in 2010.
This threat to Iran came into very sharp focus last week in
Bulgaria where five Israeli terrorists and a Bulgarian bus
driver were murdered in a vicious act of terrorism. I and other
members of the committee, offer our condolences to the victims'
families and also to the people of Israel as they mourn this
loss. The United States will assist Bulgaria and Israel in any
way we can to help bring those responsible to justice.
Without objection, I would like to submit a statement for
the record on behalf of Chairman John Kerry which expresses
some of these same sentiments.
[The prepared statement of Senator Kerry follows:]
Prepared Statement of Hon. John F. Kerry,
U.S. Senator From Massachusetts
Every American heart feels for the families of those killed in last
week's vicious and cowardly murder of five innocent Israelis and a
local bus driver in Bulgaria. Our prayers and sympathy are with the
people of Israel and Bulgaria in these days of immense grief.
As the smoke clears, one thing is clear: This terrorist attack was
an act of hate, and it should stiffen the spines of free people
everywhere. History is full of painful reminders that acts of hatred,
left unchallenged, can grow to envelop whole societies--exposing the
ugliest side of humanity. We must stand strong against the cruel sting
of bigotry, anywhere and everywhere it rears its head.
Too many don't realize the global reality of anti-Semitism today.
Too many don't realize that a witches' brew of old prejudices, new
political grievances, and economic troubles not seen since the 1930s
have created dangerous new openings for extremism.
The United States is committed to the security of Israel and to
that of our Bulgarian partners. In addition to words of condolence and
condemnation, America should offer every assistance to Israel and
Bulgaria in dealing with the aftermath of this tragedy. I expect we
will see--and we must see--a thorough investigation and close
cooperation among our three governments to learn more about this
deplorable incident and to bring to justice anyone connected to this
horrific act.
The fragility of a just society imposes on all of us a moral
obligation to be eternally watchful against the forces that could
scratch away at it, or tear it down altogether. While these attacks
remind us that the fight is far from over, they also strengthen our
resolve to stand together for the right of free people everywhere to
live their faith in a peaceful world. We cannot rest until the job is
done.
Senator Casey. The authorities we know are continuing the
investigation, but Israeli officials have publicly accused
Hezbollah of conducting the attack. This is the latest and most
deadly of a string of attempted attacks allegedly perpetrated
by Hezbollah and Iran. Although both have not been definitively
linked to all of these attacks, many are pointing to the string
of plots as an escalation of Iran's terrorist activities abroad
and its growing antagonism to the state of Israel.
The United States does not differentiate between
Hezbollah's political and militant wings, nor should our
allies. More countries should recognize Hezbollah for what it
is, a terrorist organization, and stand with the United States
against Hezbollah in all its forms.
Over the past year, I and others have grown increasingly
concerned about Hezbollah's increased level of terrorism
activity abroad while it has consolidated its political
position at home in Lebanon. I hope that more of our allies
will recognize this reality and work to address this threat
posed by Hezbollah.
In Iraq, Iran has provided Iraqi Shiite militants and
terrorists with funding, weapons training, and guidance in
order to protect Iran's strategic interest and threaten the
remaining United States presence in Iraq. We can never forget
the scores of United States troops who died in Iraq because of
Iranian-supported militant groups. The United States should
continue to support the Iraqi Government as it resists undue
influence from Iran and fights terrorism within its borders.
Syria remains Iran's key ally in the region. Iran continues
to support the Assad regime despite the terrible violence--the
massacre of thousands--it is inflicting on the people of Syria.
We know that Iran has sent weapons and equipment to bolster the
regime. Several shipments were intercepted in 2011. The Quds
Force is reportedly advising Syrian security forces on tactics
to crush the unrest.
In response, the Treasury Department has sanctioned the
Quds Force for human rights abuses in Syria. Tehran, we know,
has few friends around the world. I and others have called for
Assad to step down as long ago as August 2011.
For the sake of the Syrian people and Iran's position in
the region, the international community should maintain
pressure on the regime for political transition as soon as
possible.
Finally, this committee must examine the relevant influence
of Iran amid the political changes that have swept the region
since the beginning of 2011. Iran has clearly grown more
aggressive as it lashes out against Israel and United States
interests. But what is not clear is Iran's ability to influence
countries in the region that have increasingly rejected Iran's
form of authoritarian government and use of violence. I look
forward to hearing from the witnesses about how Iran will seek
to exert its influence in this increasingly uncertain regional
environment.
In closing, we are all very concerned about a nuclear Iran.
If past behavior is any indication, a nuclear Iran would act
more aggressively to exert its influence across the Middle
East. Even if it did not ever use an atomic weapon, a nuclear
Iran would feel empowered to conduct more terrorist attacks
against United States and Israeli targets, provide more lethal
assistance to Hezbollah and Palestinian militant groups, and
give the Quds Force greater freedom to support terrorist groups
across the Middle East.
I look forward to hearing the views of our witnesses on
these issues.
We are, indeed, honored to be joined by four distinguished
experts to help us assess these issues and evaluate policy
options.
First, we welcome Ambassador Jim Jeffrey who recently
retired from the Department of State after a long career of
public service. Thank you, sir, for being here. Ambassador
Jeffrey served as U.S. Ambassador to Turkey and most recently
as Ambassador to Iraq until June of this year.
Second, Dr. Matthew Levitt is a senior fellow and director
of the Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence at the
Washington Institute for Near East Policy, as well as a
lecturer at Johns Hopkins University Nitze School of Advanced
International Studies. From 2005 to early 2007, he served as
Deputy Assistant Secretary for Intelligence and Analysis at the
U.S. Department of Treasury. Dr. Levitt is the author of a
forthcoming book, ``Hezbollah: The Global Footprint of
Lebanon's Party of God.'' Thank you so much, Doctor.
Third, we welcome Dr. Daniel Byman, senior fellow and
director of research at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy
at the Brookings Institution, as well as professor in the
Security Studies Program at Walsh School of Foreign Service at
Georgetown. Thank you very much.
And finally, we welcome Ms. Danielle Pletka, vice president
for Foreign and Defense Policy Studies at the American
Enterprise Institute and expert on the region's complex
politics. Ms. Pletka is a former staff member of the Foreign
Relations Committee and testified at our 2010 hearing on
Hezbollah. Welcome back to our committee.
We thank our witnesses and look forward to their insights
today on this very important topic.
And I would like to turn now to our distinguished ranking
member, Senator Risch, for his opening statement.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JAMES E. RISCH,
U.S. SENATOR FROM IDAHO
Senator Risch. Well, Mr. Chairman, thank you so much. This
is an important hearing. I am happy to participate in this.
What is happening today, I think, around the world--there
is a tremendous amount of focus on Iran and its nuclear
program, and that seems to be really dominating the
conversation. Even before that happened, Iran has been a
sponsor of terrorism. They continue to be so, and they are
getting bolder at it from time to time. So it is important that
we underscore this. It is important that we bring a focus on
this.
We have a distinguished panel. I am anxious to hear from
them, and I am particularly interested in hearing their views
about how the collapse of Syria, which I think everyone is in
agreement will happen at some time in the hopefully not too
distant future, will affect Iran's conduct of its support for
terrorism.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Casey. Thank you, Senator Risch.
We will now turn to opening statements from our witnesses.
I would encourage all of our witnesses to keep their remarks
brief and succinct. Your entire statement will be made part of
the record, but if you could summarize, that would help us. We
will try to keep it between 5 and 7 minutes. I have a gavel not
a gong, but we will try to exercise restraint.
I think we will start with Ambassador Jeffrey. Thank you
for being here.
STATEMENT OF HON. JAMES F. JEFFREY, FORMER U.S. AMBASSADOR TO
IRAQ, ALEXANDRIA, VA
Ambassador Jeffrey. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman,
Senator Risch, Senator Corker. It is a privilege to be back
here.
I agree with everything that you said already on Iran. What
I would like to do is to focus for the moment on Iraq, both our
experiences there and whether there are lessons that we can
draw more generally.
One of the major fields, as you indicated already, of
troublesome Iranian activity within the larger context is its
behavior in Iraq. Iran's interests in Iraq range from those
with some rationale, avoiding a repeat of the devastating 1980
Iraqi attack on Iran, to those which we must resolutely resist,
using the whole gamut of Iran's capabilities for its strategic
advantage, arming the Shia militias that are under its tutelage
and using them for terrorist activities, putting the Iraqi
Government under constant pressure, and looking at the Shia
population of Iraq as not an independent element of a sovereign
state, but rather as potential Iranian vassals.
Thus, a major element of our policy toward Iraq and Iran
should be, and has been, to counter this Iranian campaign,
including but going beyond its use of terror.
Here we can usually count on the Iraqi people and
government as our allies. In various polls, we have seen that
the Iraqi people reject close relations with Iran. They want to
have a neighborly relationship, but Iran is very unpopular in
all the polls we have seen. It has not been successful in
penetrating the Shia religious center in Najaf, and its
commercial and investment activities in Iraq, although
significant, have not led to any dominance of the Iraqi
economy.
Meanwhile the Government of Iraq, despite Iranian pressure,
has struck out at Iranian-backed militias repeatedly, increased
crude oil exports significantly over the past 18 months, thus
helping to balance the reduction of Iranian exports on world
oil markets due to the sanctions. The government has cooperated
with us in the past year on a solution to the Mujahideen-e-
Khalq, the MEK situation of Iranians that are located within
Iraq. It has supported the Arab League position on Syria, and
it has stopped likely arms flights from Iran to Syria.
I would thus characterize Iran's current posture toward
Iraq as one of an economy of force. Iran is comfortable with
the overall political situation in Iraq. It has good relations
with all the Shia and Kurdish parties. It does not see Iraq as
threatening Iran at the moment. But in return, it has not
sought seriously to challenge the various things that Iraq has
done, which I just enumerated, nor the United States close
relations, particularly military and FMS relations, with Iraq,
including over $10 billion in FMS sales and eventually 36 F-16
fighters.
Furthermore, several times Iran has pulled back its support
for terror and for these armed militias which it has set out to
utilize when we and the Iraqi Government have resisted strongly
through military, diplomatic, and other actions.
I do not want to overstate the resistance of Iraq to
Iranian influence. Many Iraqis have personal ties with Iranian
leaders. There is the religious connection between Najaf and
Qom within the larger context of Shia Islam. As then Senator
Biden said in 2008, ``The idea that we can wipe out every
vestige of Iran's influence in Iraq is a fantasy. Like it or
not, Iran is a major regional power and it shares a long border
and a long history with Iraq.''
To sum up, first in Iraq, our overall strategy there,
including stemming strategic Iranian dominance of the country,
has been successful, despite the massive cut in resources, a
cut that I supported, over the past 2 years, withdrawal of
troops, drop in our assistance. This is a policy that we should
continue bearing always in mind that this success is fragile
and should not be placed at risk for wider policies. If Iranian
pressure increases, we have tools to counter it, but absent
such an increase, we have far more promising ways and places to
challenge Iran strategically: Syria, as you indicated, the oil
portfolio, and U.N. sanctions on the nuclear portfolio.
More generally, the lessons you can draw from this, first
of all, are that Iran sees terror not the way we see it, but
simply as one of the many tools it uses in asymmetrical
campaigns to achieve its own influences.
Second, based upon my experiences in Iraq, when we push
back hard, including hard militarily, Iran usually pulls in its
claws and assumes a defensive posture, but that is usually when
it is doing something of an adventuresome nature. Whether it
would do the same when it sees its core interests challenged is
another question.
So I will stop there, Senator. Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Ambassador Jeffrey follows:]
Prepared Statement of Ambassador (Ret.) James F. Jeffrey
Senator Casey, members of the subcommittee, it is an honor to
appear before you, and to be back before the Senate, although this
marks the first time I have been here as a private citizen.
Iran is obviously a serious threat to security throughout the
region. Its pursuit of nuclear weapons, support for terrorism, and
hostility to Israel, make it rightly the single greatest cause of
concern in the region at present.
One field of worrisome Iranian activity in this larger context is
Iraq. Iran's interests in Iraq range from those with some rationale--
ensuring no second devastating attack like that of 1980 ever is
launched against Iran from Iraq, to those we must resolutely resist--
using the whole gamut of its capabilities for its own strategic
advantage, from the arming of militias and encouraging their terrorist
attacks, to pressuring the Iraqi Government politically, and refusing
to accept the Iraqi Shia as truly one element of an independent state,
but rather as potential Iranian vassals.
Thus a major element of our policy toward Iraq should be, and has
been, to counter this Iranian campaign, including but going beyond
terror.
Here we can count on the Iraqi people as our allies. To quote
recent remarks by Vice President Biden's National Security Advisor,
Tony Blinken: ``Baghdad repeatedly has acted contrary to Iran's
interests, including with its support for the Arab League and U.N.
General Assemby Resolution on Syria; its pressure on Iranian backed
militias to dramatically reduce attacks; and the patience it has thus
far shown, despite repeated urging from Teheran, during efforts to
relocate the MEK residents of Camp Ashraf.'' The Government of Iraq has
also increased markedly oil exports, and imposed Security Council
strictures on Iranian overflights possibly carrying weapons, both of
which run counter to Iranian interests. We thus should not consider
Iran to be ``10 feet tall'' in Iraq. The popularity of Iran among the
Iraqi people, including the Shia, has remained low. Iranian
interference with the Najaf Shia Islamic center is deeply resented.
Iranian commercial dominance of Iraq has not been successful. Even
supposed allies of Iran, such as Muqtadah al-Sadr, have shown
considerable willingness to take on Iran directly, as we have seen in
the recent no confidence vote debate against PM Maliki.
I would thus characterize Iran's current posture toward Iraq as one
of an ``economy of force.'' Iran is comfortable with the current
political order in Iraq dominated by Shia and Kurdish parties, with
whose leaders Iran has had generally good relations for decades. It
does not fear attack by Iraqis, and since the United States withdrew
combat forces, it does not fear a U.S. attack out of Iraq. But in
return it has not sought seriously to check the extraordinary U.S.
military training and equipping effort in Iraq, including over $10
billion in FMS programs and eventually 36 F-16 aircraft.
Several times Iran has pulled back its support for terror and
instability when faced with strong resistance by the United States, the
Iraqi Government, or both.
During the Najaf fighting in 2004, Iran withdrew its support from
Muqtadah
al-Sadr. Likewise, in 2008, when PM Maliki supported by the United
States seriously challenged the Sadrists and other militias in Basrah,
the Iranians backed down rather than upping the ante. In mid-2011, we
faced increasingly lethal attacks against our forces in Iraq by
Iranian-backed militias. The U.S. responded militarily, complemented by
diplomatic and military action by PM Maliki, which eventually ended the
attacks. Clearly, Iran received the message. Some argue that the Iraqi
decision not to keep a small U.S. military presence in Iraq post-2011
was due to Iranian pressure. The Iranians of course didn't want such a
presence. But in October all the Iraqi parties but the Sadrists agreed
formally on the need for one. What blocked it was their decision not to
grant that presence legal immunities. However regrettable, the reasons
for that decision go far beyond Iran.
I do not want to overstate the resistance of Iraq to Iranian
influence. Many Iraqis have personal ties with Iranian leaders, and
despite friction, close religious ties exist between Iranian and Iraqi
Shia. Iran also has considerable economic and investment presence. As
then Senator Biden said in 2008: ``The idea that we can wipe out every
vestige of Iran's influence in Iraq is a fantasy. Even with 160,000
American troops in Iraq. Like it or not, Iran is a major regional power
and it shares a long border--and a long history--with Iraq.''
But the United States must remain on its guard, to ensure that Iran
does not try to exploit its inevitable strengths in Iraq. Secretary
Clinton in remarks on Meet the Press in October laid out the U.S.
policy well: ``Iran's strongman should not miscalculate America's
resolve to stoke democracy in Iraq even after our troops leave. We have
paid too high a price to give the Iraqis this chance, and I hope that
Iran and no one else miscalculates that.''
That is the policy that we followed during my tenure in Iraq, and I
believe it is a good one. Given Iran's considerable clout and
proximity, we cannot eliminate Iran's influence on Iraq. The Iraqis
will from time to time make common cause with Teheran, as we recently
saw at the OPEC meeting. Within limits, that is inevitable, and we live
with it. If we give the Iraqis a ``with us or against us'' choice, I
can assure you that they will not move further toward us. Our quiet
success in constraining various Iranian initiatives has been based on
our flexibility. Where it's important, we cajole and act. Where it's
not important, we watch closely.
Most Iraqis understand this. Some, often seeking U.S. support in
their domestic political battles, argue that the United States is too
lenient regarding both the Iranians and those who on occasion work with
them. I disagree. At present, our overall strategy in Iraq, including
stemming strategic Iranian dominance of the country, has been
successful, despite a massive cut in our resources committed. That is a
policy we should continue, bearing always in mind that this success is
fragile, and should not be placed at risk for wider policies. If
Iranian pressure increases, we have tools to counter it. But absent
such an increase, we have far more promising ways and places to
challenge Iran strategically, from Syria to oil to U.N. sanctions.
Thank you again, and I would be happy to answer any questions.
Senator Casey. Mr. Ambassador, you are off to a really good
start here. On time. We usually do not have people that keep
time like that. That is great.
Dr. Byman.
STATEMENT OF DR. DANIEL BYMAN, SENIOR FELLOW AND DIRECTOR OF
RESEARCH, SABAN CENTER FOR MIDDLE EAST POLICY, BROOKINGS
INSTITUTION, AND PROFESSOR IN THE SCHOOL OF FOREIGN SERVICE AT
GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY, WASHINGTON, DC
Dr. Byman. Thank you. I will try to follow the Ambassador's
model.
Senator Casey, members of this distinguished committee,
thank you for the opportunity to be here to testify before you
today.
As you know, Iran has not only been a longstanding
supporter of terrorism, but its activities seemed to have
increased in the last year especially against Israel. Driving
this, in part, has been the developments of the Arab Spring.
The Arab Spring shook Iran, especially the events in Syria.
Tehran has few allies really anywhere in the world, but Syria
is one of these, and the loss of Syria would be a huge blow to
Iran, reducing its ability to meddle in Lebanon and in the Arab
Israeli arenas. From Iran's point of view, the campaign against
Syria is also part of a broader campaign against Iran.
Also negative from Iran's point of view has been a shift in
Palestinian politics. Hamas has largely left Syria, going to
Egypt and other countries, and some Hamas leaders have
criticized the Assad regime's crackdown and, in so doing,
implicitly criticized Iran's support for Damascus. So Iran has
lost influence with its most important Palestinian partner and
lost support among Palestinians in general.
Tehran also sees Israel and the United States as on the
offensive. The killing of Iranian nuclear scientists,
explosions that destroyed Iranian missile facilities, a cyber
attack that set back Iran's nuclear program, and other covert
measures are considered part of a low-level, but nevertheless
real war that the United States and Israel are engaged in. From
Iran's point of view, its own violence is a response to this
war that is already being waged against the clerical regime.
Yet, even as Iran feels this pressure, it also believes it
can fight back. Iranian officials see the United States as on
its heels in many ways because of the United States withdrawal
from Iraq and coming withdrawal from Afghanistan. In both these
instances, the United States initially vowed to transform these
countries and isolate pro-Iranian voices. In both cases, the
United States is leaving without achieving these very broad
goals, especially with regard to Iran, and from Iran's point of
view, one of the lessons is simple which is if you keep the
pressure on the United States, it will back down.
Let me talk briefly about the nuclear program. From a
counterterrorism point of view, the question of how to respond
on the nuclear program is fraught with problems. The shadow war
between Iran and Israel has created a retaliatory dynamic with
Iran responding to what it feels is Israeli aggression, and as
long as these low-level attacks continue, we can expect an
Iranian terrorist response. If Israel and/or the United States
did a direct military strike on Iran's suspected nuclear
facilities, we should expect a considerable Iranian response
through terrorism. This would be around the world with both
Iranian assets directly and also Hezbollah, and Tehran would
also try to call in other favors from groups like the
Palestinian Islamic Jihad and also al-Qaeda with whom it
maintains ties, though not exactly friendly relations. And we
would also expect to see Iran step up support for anti-American
forces in neighboring Afghanistan.
But as you mentioned, Senator, in your opening remarks,
should Iran acquire a nuclear weapon, the picture could get
much worse. The nuclear weapon could provide Iran an umbrella
giving it a sense of security from conventional attack that
emboldens it to work even more with a range of substate groups
and encourages them to be more aggressive.
The silver lining, if we can call it that, is that under
current circumstances, Iran would not be likely to pass a
nuclear weapon to terrorist groups. Iran would not be likely to
trust such a sensitive capability to a terrorist group, and
even a very bold Iran would recognize that Israel and the
United States would see this as a tremendous risk and danger
and that many of the constraints that have so far characterized
United States and Israeli behavior would go out the window
should this happen. One indication of Iran's caution on this
score is that it has not transferred much less lethal weapons
such as chemical weapons, even though these have been in Iran's
arsenal for over 25 years.
In my written testimony, I have a number of policy
recommendations. Let me just make a few points right here.
One is that one of the challenges for the United States is
that given the pressure on Iran's nuclear program, which to me
should be the priority in the United States-Iran relationship,
that this pressure makes it harder to do additional escalation
specifically related to terrorism. There are efforts that can
be done against particular entities and should be done, but
that said, there is already tremendous pressure on Iran itself
because of efforts to stop the nuclear program and it is hard
to dramatically escalate solely on the terrorism front.
On Syria, the fall of the Assad regime is desirable for a
whole variety of reasons and would reduce Iran's influence, but
this would not dramatically change Iran's support for terrorist
groups. And in fact, even though the Lebanese Hezbollah would
lose an important patron should the Assad regime change, Iran
would be likely to double down on Hezbollah and that Hezbollah
would become even more important. Iran would have fewer assets
in the Arab world that have credibility, and this relationship
would be even more important. Unfortunately, even though Syria
is an important transit point for weapons to Lebanon, Lebanon
is not a particularly difficult place to smuggle things in and
out of, and I would not expect to see a dramatic change overall
in Hezbollah's arsenal.
In the end, Iran's lack of strategic options and desire to
respond with what it sees as a hostile world will lead Tehran
to continue to work with a range of terrorist groups. U.S.
policy can reduce the scope and the scale of this, but it is
not likely to end it altogether.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Byman follows:]
Prepared Statement of Daniel Byman
Chairman Kerry, Ranking Member Lugar, members of this distinguished
committee, and committee staff, thank you for the opportunity to
testify today.
Iran has long been one of the most important and dangerous sponsors
of terrorism in the world. Although the Islamic Republic's motivations
have varied over the years, its leaders have consistently viewed ties
to and support for a range of terrorist groups as an important
instrument of national power. Disturbingly, Iran's support for
terrorism has become more aggressive in recent years, motivated by a
mix of fear and opportunism. Iran could become even more aggressive in
the years to come, exploiting the perceived protection it would gain if
it developed a nuclear weapon or, if thwarted through military force or
other means, using terrorists to vent its anger and take revenge.
However, under current circumstances Tehran still remains unlikely to
carry out the most extreme forms of terrorism, such as a mass-casualty
attack similar to 9/11 or a strike involving a chemical, biological, or
nuclear weapon.
The United States should work with its allies to continue and
expand an aggressive intelligence campaign to thwart Iran and its
terrorist surrogates. After 9/11, the United States engaged in a
comprehensive campaign against al-Qaeda: a similar global approach is
needed to combat Iranian-backed terrorism. However, as the United
States is already exerting tremendous pressure on Tehran via sanctions
and diplomatic isolation because of Iran's nuclear program, there are
few arrows left in America's quiver and thus the United States will
find it hard to place additional pressure on Iran due to terrorism.
In this statement I first lay out Iran's motivations for supporting
an array of terrorist groups. I then offer explanations for how, and
why, Iran is becoming more aggressive in its use of terrorism in
response to a rapidly changing region. I then detail the dilemma
regarding terrorism and Iran's nuclear program: allowing Iran to get
the bomb is dangerous in and of itself and may make Tehran more
aggressive in supporting terrorists, but a military strike to destroy
the program is likely to lead Iran to use terrorism to take revenge. I
conclude by presenting implications and recommendations for U.S.
policy.\1\
iran's motivations for supporting terrorism
Since the 1979 Islamic revolution that toppled the Shah's
government, Iran's clerical leadership has worked with an array of
terrorist groups to advance its interests. Over 30 years later, this
use of terrorism has continued and remains an important foreign policy
instrument for Iran in its confrontation with its neighbors and with
the United States. In his 2012 testimony, Director of National
Intelligence (DNI) James Clapper warned that Iran continues ``plotting
against U.S. or allied interests overseas.'' \2\
Iran's most important, and most well-known, relationship is with
the Lebanese group, Hezbollah. Iran helped midwife Hezbollah and has
armed, trained, and funded it to the tune of well over $100 million a
year--perhaps far more, depending on the year and the methodology used
for the estimate. Iran's military aid included not only small arms and
other typical terrorist weapons, but also antitank guided missiles,
antiship cruise missiles, and thousands of rockets and artillery
systems, making Hezbollah one of the most formidable substate groups in
the world. Iranian personnel and Hezbollah operatives have even done
joint operations together.
Although Hezbollah was long subservient to Iran, this relationship
has gradually evolved. Increasingly, Hezbollah is a partner to Tehran--
its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, has considerable stature in the Arab
world, and the group's military resistance to Israel is widely admired.
Hezbollah makes its own decisions with its own interests in mind.
Despite the increasing parity in the relationship, Tehran continues
to work closely with Hezbollah's leaders, and its intelligence and
paramilitary personnel are tightly integrated with Hezbollah's external
security apparatus. Hezbollah officials see their organization as
Iran's ally, and Tehran's considerable financial and military support
give it considerable clout with its friends in Hezbollah.
Iran, however, has also backed a wide range of other groups. In
Iraq it has worked with an array of Shia factions. Tehran also has ties
to Sunni groups including Iraqi Kurdish organizations, Palestine
Islamic Jihad, and Hamas. Perhaps most striking, Iran has even allied
at times with al-Qaeda and the Taliban even though these groups are
often violently anti-Shia and see Iran's leaders as apostates.
One motivation for backing many of these groups is and remains
ideological. At the creation of the Islamic Republic, Iran's leaders
made no secret of their desire to extend Iran's revolution throughout
the Muslim world. Iran's first Supreme Leader and founding ideologue,
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, declared that Iran ``should try hard to
export our revolution to the world.'' \3\ Khomeini's goal is embedded
in Iran's Constitution and the charter documents of key organizations
such as the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
To this end, Iran worked with a variety of Shia groups, most
successfully the Lebanese Hezbollah but also Shia militants in Iraq,
Bahrain, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, organizing them against
rival groups and often against their host governments. Iran did this in
part because it wanted to spread its revolutionary ideology, and it
found some receptive adherents among embattled and oppressed Shia
groups throughout the Muslim world, particularly in the years
immediately after the revolution when the charismatic Ayatollah
Khomeini was able to inspire many Shia communities to support his
leadership, or at least admire his new regime.
As its revolutionary fervor has worn off, Tehran increasingly
employed terrorists for an array of strategic purposes. These include
non-Shia terrorist groups with whom it gains little ideological
sympathy. In addition, Iran has used even its closest terrorist allies,
such as the Lebanese Hezbollah, for strategic purposes. These purposes
include:
Undermining and bleeding rivals. Iran has regularly used
terrorist groups to weaken governments it opposes. This has
included bitter enemies like Saddam Hussein's Iraq and also
lesser foes like the rulers of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Tehran
also backs a wide array of insurgent groups that also use
terrorism in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. These groups may
advance Iran's interests in key countries or, at the very
least, undermine the position of rivals.
Power projection and playing spoiler. Tehran has a weak
military and only limited economic clout. Its ideological
appeal at the height of its revolutionary power was limited,
and today it is paltry. Nevertheless, Iran's regime sees itself
as a regional and even a world power, and working with
terrorists is a way for Iran to influence events far from its
borders. Iran's support for the Lebanese Hezbollah, Palestine
Islamic Jihad, and Hamas make Iran a player in the Israeli-
Palestinian and Israeli-Arab disputes. This in turn gives Iran
stature and sway in the broader Middle East. Iran has supported
groups whose attacks disrupted Israeli-Palestinian and Israeli-
Syrian peace negotiations--a victory for Iran, which sees the
negotiations as a betrayal of the Muslim cause and as a means
of isolating the clerical regime. Tehran has also repeatedly
assassinated opponents of the regime who lived in exile in
Europe or in other supposedly safe areas, using its own
operatives and those of terrorist allies like Hezbollah to do
so.
Gaining a voice in opposition councils. For Iran, it was
often important not just that an enemy regime lose power or be
weakened, but that particular strands within an opposition get
stronger. So in Lebanon, Iran undermined Amal, a Shia militia,
because it did not share Iran's ideology and interests. Tehran
helped found Hezbollah to replace it--a risky gamble that paid
off but could have easily backfired on Iran. In general, Iran
has used weapons, training, money, and other support to try to
unify potential militant allies and otherwise improve its
position among the opposition.
Deterrence. By having the ability to work with terrorists
and to subvert its enemies, Iran is able to press them to
distance themselves from the United States or to refrain from
joining economic or military efforts to press Iran. Such
efforts, however, often backfire: because these states see Iran
as meddling in their domestic affairs and supporting violence
there, they often become more, not less, willing to support
economic or even military pressure directed at Tehran.
Preserving options. As a weak state--one with little ability
to coerce via military or economic pressure--in a hostile
region, Tehran also seeks to keep its options open. Iranian
leaders recognize that in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other
turbulent countries, those in power today may be on the
sidelines tomorrow and vice versa. In addition, they may want
cordial relations with a neighbor at present but understand
that circumstances may change in the future. So Iran courts and
supports a range of violent groups even when it does not seek
to exploit their capabilities under current circumstances.
These groups can then be employed should Iran want to ratchet
up pressure or punish an enemy.
Because Tehran's logic is often more strategic than ideological,
Iran is willing to work with avowed enemies, though mutual mistrust
limits the closeness of any relationship. So although many al-Qaeda
supporters loath Iran, and some of them have killed Shia in Iraq,
Pakistan, Afghanistan, and elsewhere with abandon, Iran has worked with
al-Qaeda, at times allowing its operatives to transit Iran with little
interference. Tehran has also given some al-Qaeda operatives a limited
safe haven, though at the same time it often curtails their movements
and has even turned some over to the custody of their home governments.
Using a similar logic, Tehran at times work with the Taliban, with
which Iran almost went to war in 1998, because they have mutual enemies
and to preserve Iran's options.
By working through terrorist groups like Hezbollah or using its own
operatives in a clandestine way, Tehran has been able to distance
itself from attacks and thus often evade responsibility. Even in cases
like the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing, where Iran was ultimately found to
be responsible, the time involved in proving Iranian culpability made
it far harder to gain political and diplomatic support for a robust
response. So deniability also makes terrorism an attractive option,
allowing Iran to strike back but avoid the consequences of open
aggression. So Iran is less likely to use mines and antiship cruise
missiles to try to close the Strait of Hormuz, but could instead use
terrorist attacks can be hard to trace directly to Tehran.
Although it is always tempting to attribute a strategic motive to
all of Iran's behavior, Iran's leaders have at times used terrorism
simply to take revenge on their opponents. Tehran struck at France and
the Gulf States in the 1980s, for example, because they supported
Baghdad during the Iran-Iraq war. Similarly, some Iranian attacks on
Israeli targets may in part be spurred by Iran's belief that Israel is
behind the killing of Iranian nuclear scientists--Iran's actions may be
as much about revenge as they are about any putative deterrence.
Hezbollah, Iran's close ally, has also vowed revenge for the killing in
Damascus in 2008 of the leader of its operations wing, Imad Mughniyah,
believed to be at Israeli hands.
how and why iran is changing
Iran aggressively supported an array of terrorist groups in the
1980s, especially the Lebanese Hezbollah. Since the 1990s, Iran also
championed Palestinian groups like Palestine Islamic Jihad and Hamas,
supporting their efforts to carry out attacks in Israel and in the
Palestinian territories. Tehran also worked with anti-U.S. insurgent
groups in Afghanistan and Iraq. In terms of support for terrorism
outside these theaters, however, the last Iranian-organized anti-U.S.
attack was the 1996 strike on Khobar Towers, which killed 19 Americans.
Yet Tehran has shown a renewed emphasis on terrorism outside the
Israel/Lebanon/Palestine theater or war zones like Iraq and Afghanistan
in the last year. Israel has been a particular focus, but Saudi Arabia
and the United States also appear to be in Iran's sights:
On July 18, 2012, a suicide bomber blew himself up on a bus
carrying Israeli tourists in Bulgaria, killing five Israelis,
the driver, and himself and wounding over 30. Israeli officials
blamed Iran, though investigations to determine culpability are
still underway;
Several days before the Bulgaria attack, a Lebanese
Hezbollah operative was arrested in Cyprus, where he was
believed to be planning attacks on Israeli targets;
In 2012, Iranian-linked plots against Israel linked were
thwarted in Thailand, Georgia, and Azerbaijan;
In 2012, Iran carried out bombings in India and Georgia. In
New Delhi, an explosion wounded the wife of the Israeli defense
envoy and other passengers in her car;
Kenya authorities arrested two Iranian men believed to be
IRGC members in June 2012. The men admitted they were planning
attacks. Possible targets included American, Israeli, Saudi, or
British personnel and facilities;
In October 2011 the United States disrupted a plot to kill
the Saudi Ambassador in Washington by bombing the restaurant
where he often ate lunch. According to U.S. officials, the
planned bombing was orchestrated by Iran. Had the bomb gone off
as planned, it would also have killed many U.S. citizens dining
at the restaurant;
Israeli security officials claim that in the last 2 years
Iran and Hezbollah have plotted attacks in more than 20
countries.
The aggressive pace of attacks against Israel, taken together with
the plot against the Saudi Ambassador in Washington, indicates that
Iran's use of terrorism is becoming more aggressive. In the past,
Iranian-backed groups like Hezbollah did not strike in the United
States, seeing it instead as a place to raise money and gain valuable
specialized equipment, such as night-vision goggles. Now, however, Iran
appears willing to risk this access as well as the wrath of the United
States. As DNI Clapper contended, ``The 2011 plot to assassinate the
Saudi Ambassador to the United States shows that some Iranian
officials--probably including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei--have changed
their calculus and are now more willing to conduct an attack in the
United States in response to real or perceived U.S. actions that
threaten the regime.'' \4\
A mix of fear and opportunism are driving Iran. As with other
countries in the Middle East, the Arab Spring shook Iran. At first,
Tehran tried to portray the revolution as a victory for Islamist and
anti-U.S. forces, given that key allies of the United States like
Mubarak fell during the turbulence. The new movements, however, evince
little sympathy toward Tehran though some new leaders want to normalize
relations to a greater degree. Indeed, some of the Islamist movements
that are rising to power are exceptionally critical of Iran's form of
Islamic governance.
Most important to Iran, however, has been the crisis in Syria
where, slowly, Bashar al-Assad's regime has been pushed to the wall.
Tehran has few allies in the Arab world, and indeed in the world in
general, but Syria is a true friend. The loss of Syria would be a huge
blow to Iran, reducing its ability to meddle in Lebanon and in the
Israeli-Palestinian and Israeli-Arab arenas. From Iran's point of view,
the campaign against Syria is also part of the broader campaign to
weaken Iran. Iranian and Hezbollah officials have made repeated
statements blaming the United States and Israel for the unrest in
Syria, though it is not clear how much they believe their own rhetoric.
Palestinian politics have also shifted markedly and for the worse
from Tehran's point of view. After Hamas' founding in 1987, the
relationship between Iran and Hamas was polite but limited. Hamas
received money, arms, and training from Iran and Hezbollah, but Hamas
kept Tehran at arms' length, as its leaders were determined to avoid
dependence on foreign sponsors, which had often doomed other
Palestinian organizations. Ties became far stronger when Hamas seized
power in Gaza in 2007 and, facing international isolation, sought more
aid from Iran as well as weapons systems. Now this relationship has
frayed. Open ties to Iran, always unpopular among many Sunni Islamists,
are further tarnished because of Tehran's support for the regime
oppression in Syria. Hamas' leadership has largely left Syria, going to
Egypt and other countries. Some Hamas leaders have also criticized the
Assad regime's crackdown and, in so doing, implicitly criticized Iran's
support for Damascus. So Iran has lost influence with its most
important Palestinian partner and lost support among Palestinians in
general.
Tehran also sees Israel and the United States as on the offensive.
The killing of Iranian nuclear scientists, explosions that destroyed
Iranian missile facilities, the cyber attack that set back Iran's
nuclear program, and other aggressive, but covert, measures are
considered part of a low-level but nevertheless real war that the
United States and Israel are engaged in--one that has escalated in
recent years. From Iran's point of view, its own violence is a response
to the war that is already being waged against the clerical regime.
The impressive sanctions the United States and its allies have
orchestrated against Iran have hit the regime hard. Regime officials
have admitted that the sanctions are causing Tehran serious economic
problems, a rare public confession that U.S. policy is having an
impact, as opposed to the usual rhetoric of defiance. In addition, the
cutback in oil purchases from Iran's important customers has led to a
plunge in the price and volume of Iran's most important export and
lifeblood of the Iranian economy. Beyond the economic impact, the
success of these measures also reinforces Tehran's sense of diplomatic
isolation.
Yet even as Iran feels the pressure, it also believes that it can
fight back. Iranian officials see the United States as on its heels
given its withdrawal from Iraq and the coming drawdown in Afghanistan.
In both instances, the United States initially vowed to transform the
country and isolate pro-Iranian voices. In Iraq, Iran today is the most
influential outside power, particularly in Shia areas though Iran also
has sway in the Kurdish north. Iran is less powerful in Afghanistan,
where Pakistan is the dominant force backing anti-U.S. and antiregime
elements. However, there, too, the United States is leaving without
achieving its proclaimed objectives, and anti-U.S. forces may fill the
void. In both cases, the violence in these countries--supported in part
by Iran--was a major factor influencing U.S. decisions to reduce its
commitment. So from Iran's point of view, the lesson is simple: hit the
United States hard and persistently, and it will back down.
A shift in domestic politics may also explain Tehran's more
aggressive policies. Since the early 1990s, it has been common to
divide the complex Iranian political scene and describe it as a battle
between ``hardliners'' and ``pragmatists.'' And during the tenure of
President Mohammad Khatami (1997-2005) and the so-called ``Green
Revolution'' (2009) there was hope that Tehran would reform and embrace
a more moderate foreign policy or even that the clerical regime as we
know it would collapse. In crushing the reformist movement and the
Green Revolution, Iran's hardline camp has narrowed the Iranian
political scene. Within elite ranks, there are fewer voices that
question the value of ties to terrorists. In recent years hardliners
from the IRGC have entered politics in greater numbers and assumed more
important positions in the national security bureaucracy. For the most
part these individuals are not fanatical, but they have a worldview
that sees revolutionary violence as valuable for its own sake and an
important tool of state.
the nuclear dilemma
From a counterterrorism point of view, the question of how to
respond to Iran's nuclear program is fraught with problems. The so-
called ``shadow war'' between Israel and Iran, as the Bulgaria attack
may indicate, has created a retaliatory dynamic, with Iran feeling
compelled to respond to what it sees as Israeli aggression. This
sentiment comes from a desire to prove to the Iranian population at
large that its government is responding, anger within key elite
audiences (particularly the IRGC) and a sense of humiliation, and a
strong belief in revenge. So as long as Israel and other states use
low-level attacks on Iran and maintain a high degree of economic and
political pressure, Iran is likely to attempt terrorist attacks as a
response.
If Israel and/or the United States did a direct military strike on
Iran's suspected nuclear facilities, the Iranian terrorist response
would be considerable. Because Iran supports terrorists in part to keep
its options open, now would be the time for Tehran to call in favors.
We could expect attempted terrorist attacks around the world--Iran and
Hezbollah have shown a presence in every inhabited continent. Tehran
would also try to call in favors from groups like al-Qaeda, Palestine
Islamic Jihad, and others with whom it has relationships, though these
groups would be far less dependable and their personnel are less
skilled than those of Hezbollah. In addition, Iran would be
particularly likely to step up support for anti-U.S. forces in
Afghanistan and elsewhere in its neighborhood. The scope and scale of
the response would depend on the level of casualties from any attack
and the political circumstances of the regime in Tehran at the time the
attack occurred. However, Iran would be likely to attempt multiple
attacks, and it would also consider strikes on the American homeland as
well as American diplomatic, military, and civilian institutions
worldwide.
Should Iran acquire a nuclear weapon, however, the picture is
likely to change considerably. To be clear, Iran acquiring a nuclear
weapon is bad for the United States and its allies in a host of ways,
and preventing this should be a top goal of any U.S. administration. If
U.S. policy fails and Iran does acquire a nuclear weapon, it is
difficult to predict how Tehran would behave. Some scholars have argued
the theoretical point that, in general, nuclear weapons make states
more cautious as they fear the potentially catastrophic escalation that
a nuclear crisis could bring about. Thus Iran, more secure due to the
nuclear weapons and more cautious because of the associated risks,
would be more restrained in its foreign policy.\5\ More likely, though
hardly inevitable, is that Tehran might become emboldened by a nuclear
weapon. Currently the threat of U.S. conventional retaliation is an
important check on Iranian behavior, as Tehran recognizes that its
forces are no match for the United States. A nuclear weapon, however,
would give Tehran the ability to threaten a devastating response should
it be attacked with conventional forces. This ``umbrella'' would then
enable Iran to be more aggressive supporting substate groups like
Hezbollah or opposition forces against various Arab enemies. The model
here would be Pakistan: after acquiring a nuclear capability, and thus
it believed a degree of immunity from India's superior conventional
forces, Islamabad became more aggressive supporting various insurgent
and terrorist groups in Kashmir and fighting New Delhi in general.
The silver lining is that Iran is not likely to pass a nuclear
weapon to terrorist groups except under the most extreme circumstances.
Tehran would not be likely to trust such a sensitive capability to a
terrorist group--too much could go too wrong in too many ways. In
addition, even a more emboldened Tehran would recognize that the United
States and Israel would see such a transfer as a grave threat and would
dramatically escalate their pressure on Iran, perhaps including
significant military operations. In addition, the United States might
be able to gain international support as almost all states, including
China and Russia, fear such transfers. Moscow and Beijing have their
own terrorism problems. While deniability might stay the U.S. hand from
retaliation for a limited conventional attack, this would not be so for
a more dramatic chemical attack, to say nothing of a catastrophic
nuclear one. After an attack using unconventional weapons, all bets
would be off. One indication of Iran's caution on this score is that it
has not transferred much less lethal and controversial chemical weapons
to Hezbollah, despite having these in its arsenal for over 25 years.
Groups like Hezbollah, for their part, would fear the consequences of
going nuclear, recognizing that this could lead to U.S., Israeli, and
other countries' military actions that could threaten its position in
Lebanon. In addition, these groups have proven quite capable in using
rockets, explosives, and small arms to achieve their objectives.
However, should the clerical regime believe itself to be facing an
imminent threat of regime change from the United States and its
allies--a situation comparable to what Saddam Hussein faced in 2003
say--then the calculus would change dramatically. From Tehran's point
of view, the United States and others would have already escalated
beyond the point of no return. Tehran would have nothing to lose, and
at least a chance of intimidating or deterring the United States, by
such transfers. They might also fear that preemptive U.S. strikes would
stop them from being able to launch their deterrent so transferring
some items to a terrorist group would enable them to keep open the
threat of a response even if much of their country were occupied. In
addition, Iranian leaders may seek revenge or simply want to vent their
rage and use terrorists to do so.
policy recommendations
Because Iran's use of terrorism often follows a strategic and
rational logic, U.S. policy can affect Tehran's calculus on whether to
support groups, and on how much to do so.
A first U.S. step is to expand efforts with allies to fight
Iranian-backed terrorism, including by Hezbollah. Too often Hezbollah
has gotten a free pass with U.S. allies because it also engages in
political and social welfare activity, leading some states to try to
distinguish between its ``legitimate'' and ``illegitimate'' sides. By
making it clear that any use of or support for terrorism by Hezbollah
is illegitimate, allies would push the Lebanese organization toward
ending or at least reducing its use of violence.
In addition, the intelligence and police campaign against Hezbollah
and Iran could be ramped up, leading to more investigations, arrests,
and disruptions that make it far harder for the group and for Iranian
officials to conduct successful attacks. Allies should also be
encouraged to reduce the size of the Iranian diplomatic mission, as in
some countries many of its true activities are related to intelligence
gathering and support for militant organizations.
The United States has long made Iran's subversive networks and ties
to Hezbollah an intelligence priority. However, given the global reach
of this adversary, a global response is necessary. This requires
working with allies around the world, just as the United States has
done against al-Qaeda. Indeed, these friends are often, though not
always, the same allies who are partners against al-Qaeda, but it is
vital to ensure--with financial and other support as appropriate--that
they are also targeting Hezbollah and other Iranian-backed groups.
Hezbollah, however, is seen as legitimate by many governments, or at
the very least is not loathed by all as is al-Qaeda. So it will be hard
to conduct as comprehensive a campaign without considerable and
sustained efforts.
Making the challenge harder, the United States has relatively few
additional means of pressure to deploy directly against Iran because it
is already using most of them to stop Iran's nuclear programs.
Sanctions--targeted and broad--are already implemented against an array
of Iranian targets. They have been expanded dramatically under the
Obama administration and this effort should continue, but it will be
hard to do much more under current political circumstances. Any
terrorist actions or aggressive ones on the nuclear front, however,
should be leveraged for the other issue. So when a terrorist attack
does occur, Washington should press for more to be done on the nuclear
front, as such actions create an opportunity for political engagement.
The United States must also set clear ``redlines'' regarding
terrorism. For example U.S. officials should emphasize that attacks on
the American homeland will meet with a severe response. Vital to the
success of this, however, is deciding in advance what a response would
be if a redline were crossed and then having the will and ability to
carry out the response should this happen. On Iran's nuclear program
and on its actions in Iraq and Afghanistan, Tehran repeatedly crossed
U.S. redlines in the last decade with relatively few consequences,
reducing the credibility of future U.S. threats. If the United States
is not serious about a response, it is better not to threaten at all.
Another priority is trying to sever the links between Iran and al-
Qaeda. In contrast to Hezbollah, al-Qaeda is not ideologically close to
Tehran and does not appear to have done joint operations. On the other
hand, al-Qaeda is far more willing to conduct large-scale
indiscriminate attacks, including the use of chemical, biological, or
nuclear weapons should they ever fall into the hands of Zawahiri's
organization. At the same time, Iran has become more important to al-
Qaeda in recent years as regime pressure on the organization there has
eased and the drone program in Pakistan has made that country a more
difficult haven. Tehran, however, has largely gotten a free pass on the
significant al-Qaeda presence in its borders.
Limited military strikes, which often fail against terrorist groups
or quasi-states like the Taliban's Afghanistan, have more of a chance
of succeeding against countries like Iran, that have a real military
and economic infrastructure. Demonstrative uses of forces, such as the
1987 and 1988 U.S. operations (Nimble Archer and Praying Mantis,
respectively) that sank part of the Iranian navy, can reinforce U.S.
deterrence if Iran crosses redlines. Because of Iran's severe economic
difficulties, even the threat of such strikes would be taken seriously
by Iranian leaders.
The fall of the Assad regime in Syria is desirable and would reduce
Iran's influence, but it would not dramatically change Tehran's support
for terrorism and may even increase Iran's reliance on substate groups.
Although Hezbollah would lose an important patron should the regime in
Damascus change, and it would be harder to ship weapons to Lebanon via
Syria, the importance of Hezbollah would grow for Iran. It remains
relatively easy to send weapons to Lebanon without transiting Syria,
and Hezbollah's role in the Lebanese Government (and control of
Beirut's airport) makes it almost impossible to stop the flow of
weapons there. So Iran may end up doubling down on substate groups if
it loses its main regional ally.
In the end, Iran's lack of strategic options and desire to respond
to what it sees as a hostile world will lead Tehran to continue to work
with a range of terrorist groups and selectively use violence.
Successful U.S. policy can reduce the scope and scale of Iranian
violence, but it is not likely to end it altogether.
----------------
End Notes
\1\ This testimony draws extensively on two of my books: Deadly
Connections: States that Sponsor Terrorism (Cambridge, 2005) and ``A
High Price: The Triumphs and Failures of Israeli Counterterrorism''
(Oxford, 2011). Also relevant to my testimony and to this hearing are
my articles, ``Iran, Terrorism, and Weapons of Mass Destruction,''
Studies in Conflict and Terrorism Vol. 31 (2008), pp. 169-181 and ``The
Lebanese Hezbollah and Israeli Counterterrorism,'' ``Studies in
Conflict and Terrorism,'' Vol. 34 (2011), pp. 917-941.
\2\ James Clapper, ``U.S. Intelligence Community Worldwide Threat
Assessment,'' January 31, 2012. http://www.cfr.org/intelligence/
clappers-testimony-worldwide-threat-assessment-january-2012/p27253.
\3\ As quoted in Anoushiravan Ehteshami, ``After Khomeini''
(Routledge, 1995), p. 131.
\4\ Clapper, ``U.S. Intelligence Community Worldwide Threat
Assessment.''
\5\ See most prominently Kenneth N. Waltz, ``Why Iran Should Get
the Bomb,'' Foreign Affairs (July/August 2012), http://
www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/137731/kenneth-n-waltz/why-iran-should-
get-the-bomb.
Senator Casey. Thank you, Doctor.
Ms. Pletka.
STATEMENT OF DANIELLE PLETKA, VICE PRESIDENT, FOREIGN AND
DEFENSE POLICY, AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE, WASHINGTON, D.C.
Ms. Pletka. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Senator Risch, Senator
Corker. I say it every time and I mean it every time. It really
is an honor for me, a special honor, to come back to the
committee. I consider it really a pleasure.
I think we all agree on a lot of the basics here. Iran is
probably the most important state sponsor of terrorism in the
world today. There have been, in addition to the attack in
Bulgaria last week, an attempted attack in Cyprus the week
before, seven additional recent attempted attacks by Iran
against a variety of targets around the world, not just in the
Middle East, in recent months. So it is clear that Iran is
stepping up its terrorist activity and not too worried, by the
way, about the consequences.
It is important to underscore that Iran's relationship with
terrorist groups, which it manages through the IRGC, the
Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, and through the Quds Force
is not just one of support. It is operational. It is financial.
It is political, and it is military. The Iranian Government
really does actually manage some of the attacks that it
conducts through its proxies. The best example and the one that
we have the most detailed public information about was the
attack by Saudi Hezbollah on our troops at Khobar Towers. There
is an indictment in the Eastern District Court in Virginia that
details the Iranian operational command for that attack.
Nothing has ever happened as a result.
Iran also foments conflict like the one between Hezbollah
and Israel in 2006. But there is another thing that it does
that has been very important during the Arab Spring, and that
is that they are free riders on Shia grievances throughout the
region. The Shia are largely oppressed in Sunni-dominated Arab
governments, and the Iranians have very cleverly managed to
free ride on their legitimate grievances in places like Bahrain
and in Saudi Arabia, among the Houthi rebels in Yemen and in
many ways discredit the legitimate claims of those Shia
minorities, which has been opportunistic and really a serious
problem for those of us who see the importance of supporting
those minorities.
In terms of the depth and the financing and the
interconnectedness, I think we have all made clear, as did you,
Mr. Chairman, in your opening statement, that Hezbollah is the
most important terrorist proxy for Iran. It is unclear at this
moment, I think, to many of us how far Hezbollah would be
willing to go to support Iran. So, for example, in the event of
an Israeli strike on Iran, none of us are exactly sure what
Hezbollah would do. On the one hand, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah,
who is the spiritual leader of Hezbollah, has said in a speech
last year that Iran would never ask Hezbollah to do anything on
its behalf in the event of an Israeli strike. On the other
hand, just a couple of nights ago, Nasrallah gave a huge speech
in which he extolled the virtues of their Syrian sponsors and
of Iran. So I think it is pretty unclear what any groups would
do in the event of an Israeli strike on Iran.
That does bring us to the question of Iran and the Arab
Spring, and I agree with my colleagues. In large part, the Arab
Spring has been bad news for Iran rather than good. You know,
they have tried to lay their mantel over it and call the Arab
Spring an Islamic Awakening, and absolutely nobody has either
taken up that name, nor have they frankly latched onto the
Iranians as a model.
Their biggest hopes, I think, centered on Egypt, and in the
immediate wake of Mubarak's fall, there was really quite a lot
of talk about renewing Egyptian-Iranian ties. So you heard it
from the Egyptians, from both the military and from the Muslim
Brotherhood. Yes, why not? Very positive, a lot of nice
statements, promises for mutual visits. But the bottom line is
none of that has happened. Now, we can suggest that that was
because of gulf pressure or because of U.S. pressure, but at
the end of the day, none of that rapprochement that I think the
Iranians were pretty desperately hoping for--and they made a
number of very public, very clingy, desperate statements that
made it clear they had their hopes vested in the new Egyptian
Government. None of that has happened.
Syria. Again, I agree. I think we have a real consensus
around the fact that the fall of the Assad regime would be bad
news for the Iranians. That is really their only important Arab
ally remaining. I think there is some disagreement about what
the impact would be after the fall of Assad, and I am happy to
talk about that afterward. But it does seem clear that Syria
has been the conduit for weapons supplies to a whole variety of
terrorist groups, Hezbollah, but also Hamas, Palestinian
Islamic Jihad, and others. Without that conduit, it is exactly
right. They would have to use Lebanon, and that has very
complex implications for Lebanon. Lebanon enjoys a different
relationship with the United States right now than Syria did. I
am not sure they wish to become the new Syria in the region.
But whether it is the IRGC presence in Syria--they also
have done joint training on chemical weapons, weaponization.
They may have cooperated on nuclear weapons work. Just trade
and economic ties, clearly that was a very, very important
relationship.
The problem for us is that just as the tide has turned
against Iran's fortunes in the region and we have begun to ramp
up sanctions against Iran because of their nuclear program, the
United States is perceived to be pulling back in the region.
And so that has real implications for us and our ability to
leverage the Iranians on any number of questions, whether it is
interference in Iraq, whether it is interference in Syria, or
anything else.
If we look at the Iranian nuclear program, it seems pretty
clear that it will certainly embolden the Iranians on their
support for terrorism rather than the reverse. I do not think
that they are going to let go of these groups because of the
nuclear sanctions, and even if we manage to come to some
agreement, there seems no reason for them to abandon their
support for terrorist groups because they have never done so
before and because they have never really paid a high price for
supporting those groups. Even in the case of the loss of up to
1,000 servicemen's lives in Iraq, the Iranians have paid very
little price.
I am just going to take an additional couple of seconds and
talk about specific steps we might be able to take to help
counter Iranian support for terrorism in the Middle East.
It seems, first of all, that Syria is in fact much more
important than many will allow. We should be doing more to
hasten the fall of Assad, not just talking about a transition
but in fact doing more to support those who are fighting
against him.
Second, on Lebanon, our Assistant Administrator for the
Middle East was just in Lebanon. Our aid programs to Lebanon
have continued unabated despite the fact that Hezbollah
dominates the government. That may be the right choice, but it
is still something worth discussing particularly if the
Lebanese-Iranian relationship ends up ramping up. We have not
fought Iran on any of the ground that it works on in the Middle
East, its support for the Palestinians. I mean, seriously, who
has done more for the Palestinians? Iran or the United States?
Yet, you do not hear us engaging in those kinds of arguments.
We are not fighting Iran on the territory that it has sought to
take for itself. So I think it is time for us to try and fight
Iran at its own game and do it more effectively, more vocally,
let people be aware that we are not willing to tolerate this
continuing throughout the region, throughout the world.
Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Pletka follows:]
Prepared Statement of Danielle Pletka
Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, I say it every time, and
mean it every time: It is always a special honor for me to testify
before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, on which I served as a
staffer for so many years.
Iran is the most significant state sponsor of terrorism in the
world today. The Islamic Republic has held that title for many years,
and as the attacks last week in Bulgaria against an Israeli tourist
group, an attempted attack the week before in Cyprus, several failed
attacks earlier this year against Israeli targets in Asia and a litany
too long to read of incidents both directed by and perpetrated by Iran
over the last three-plus decades make clear, nothing is slowing them
down.
As a technical matter, Iran's relationship with terrorist groups is
generally managed through the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, and
more specifically by its Quds Force headed by Qassem Soleimani. But
that tasking should in no way be construed as separate from the Supreme
Leader and Iran's Government. The IRGC acts for the regime.
Iran's relationship with terrorist groups--about which I will be
more specific below--is operational, financial, political and military.
Iranian Government officials have been known to direct, manage, and
support attacks throughout the world. Nor have Israelis been Iran's
only victims; at the hands of Iranian-supported special groups in Iraq,
more than a thousand American soldiers lost their lives. At the hands
of Hezbollah, we have lost diplomats, CIA officials, servicemen, and
civilians. Iran was directly behind the attacks on Khobar Towers in
Saudi Arabia in 1996 that killed 19 U.S. servicemen. Even now, Iran is
arming the Taliban in Afghanistan even as it opposes the group for
political reasons.\1\
The Iranian Government foments conflict, such as the one between
Israel and Hezbollah in 2006, but also free rides on legitimate Shia
grievances in a region overwhelmingly dominated by Sunni Arabs. As a
result, we see Iran's hand in the recent Bahraini uprising--something
that has discredited a legitimate quest for equal rights for the
Bahraini Shia; we have seen Tehran supporting Houthi tribes on the
Saudi-Yemeni border; and most prominently at the national level, we
have seen IRGC forces working hand in hand with the Syrian regime to
take down the Syrian rebellion and protect their most important ally in
the region, Bashar al-Assad.
The groups with which Iran is most prominently associated right now
are Hezbollah, both a political party that now dominates the Lebanese
Government and a terrorist group with years of vicious attacks to its
credit; Hamas, which governs the Gaza Strip and has also been
responsible for the death of hundreds of civilians; and Palestinian
Islamic Jihad, a smaller group operating in the Palestinian
territories. Over the years, Iran has also supported numerous other
terrorist groups such as Saudi Hezbollah, the Popular Front for the
Liberation of Palestine, the Popular Front for the Liberation of
Palestine-General Command, and others.
In terms of depth, financing, and interconnectedness, Iran's
relationship with Hezbollah is clearly the most important. Hezbollah
was created with Iranian sponsors in 1982, and continues to be--for the
most part--loyal to its patron. Directly because of Iran, Hezbollah is
now the most lethal terror group in the world, armed with long-range
missiles capable of carrying chemical munitions and using guidance
systems to hit a target.\2\ This despite U.N. Security Council
Resolution 1701 which, in the wake of the 2006 war with Israel, forbade
the transfer of arms to the group.
It is unclear just how far Hezbollah would go for its friends in
Tehran; Hassan Nasrallah, the group's spiritual leader, has claimed
that Iran would never ask Hezbollah to step in in the event of an
Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear facilities. On the other hand, he has
been increasingly frank about the depth of Hezbollah ties to Iran in
recent years, and the group has certainly proven itself willing to
fight for its friends: witness Hezbollah's role in Syria, and
Nasrallah's speech last week extolling the virtues of the Assad
regime.\3\
This brings us neatly to the question of Iran and the Arab Spring.
On balance, whatever you may choose to call this moment in history--the
Arab Spring, the Arab Awakening, the Arab Revolts--one thing is clear:
It has been bad for Iran. Ironically, in the case of Libya, Tunisia,
Bahrain, Yemen, and especially Egypt, the Tehran government has tried
almost desperately to claim that the popular revolutions that have
swept the Arab world are inspired by Iran. The regime has tried without
success to popularize the term ``Islamic Awakening'' for the events of
the last 2 years.
Iranian hopes for the Arab Spring have centered on Egypt. Some in
the West and many in Tehran believed that the overthrow of the Mubarak
guard in Cairo and the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood would mean an end
to the animosity that has existed between the two countries since the
Islamic revolution. And at the outset, there was indeed a lot of talk
of renewing ties, mutual visits, new beginnings and beautiful
rapprochement. Iranian military vessels were permitted to pass through
Suez for the first time, and have passed through since.
But none of the anticipated flowering of Egyptian-Iranian
relations--none--has come to pass. No visas, no mutual visits, no
nothing. Indeed, it's safe to argue that the Muslim Brotherhood
dislikes Iran about as much as its predecessors in Egypt's Presidential
Palace.
And then there is Syria, Iran's most important relationship in the
region. There has clearly been little applause in Tehran for any
``awakening'' in Damascus. Remember, the Assads have toed Tehran's line
for many years; even when Hamas decided to abandon its longtime perch
in Damascus, Tehran was unswayed. Damascus has been the conduit for
most weapons flows from Iran to Hezbollah, its most important
diplomatic friend; even when, in 2009 and 2010, there were suspicions
that Damascus would defect to the West and make a separate peace with
Israel, it was only a small blip in an otherwise congenial relationship
between Tehran and Damascus.
Whether it was the IRGC presence in Syria, joint training on
chemical weapons and weaponization, possible cooperation on nuclear
weapons work, or simply mundane trade and economic cooperation, the two
countries have maintained the appearance and many of the trappings of a
strong partnership. Tehran will work hard to preserve the Assad regime.
It will fail, in my opinion, but it will work hard. Even as it has
become clear that Assad is on his way out, the Iranian leadership has
stuck by him.
Ironically, just as the tide has turned against Iran's fortunes in
the region, and just as we have begun to seriously ramp up sanctions
because of its nuclear weapons program, the United States appears to
have drawn back from the Middle East. Yes, we have several carriers in
the gulf, and yes, various Cabinet Secretaries have wended their way
through both the gulf and the Levant in recent months; nonetheless, the
perception in the region (among Arabs and Israelis), in Europe and
among many here in Washington is that the United States has disengaged
from the Middle East.
Strategic guidance from the White House has insisted upon the so-
called ``pivot'' to Asia, which is taken by most--including inside the
administration--to mean a turn away from the last decade, and with it
the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. As a result, at a moment when
Iran is arguably as isolated as it has been in its history, the United
States is talking up the Pacific.
We don't know what will happen in the coming months; there could be
a military strike against Iran's nuclear program. If there is not, most
credible analysts agree that Iran will soon have sufficient low
enriched uranium to fashion more than one nuclear weapon in fairly
short order.
There has been a sterile debate in Washington about whether Iran
will ``break-out'' with its nuclear weapons program or content itself
with the knowledge that it can ultimately break-out with an enhanced
second strike capability. We have no idea which option Iran will
choose, though intelligence agencies reportedly lean toward the latter.
No matter the trajectory of its nuclear program, it seems clear
that Iran will not abandon its terrorist proxies. Tehran has shown no
sign that it is rethinking support for any group, though among
Palestinians it is clear that Hamas is in bad odor for having abandoned
the Assad regime. Nonetheless, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which has
received substantial amounts of what passes for love from the Islamic
Republic in recent months, has insufficient capacity to be Iran's sole
proxy in the battle against Israel.
So how will Iran behave once it possesses either a nuclear weapon
or the capacity to fashion one or two in short order? None of us can
predict, but we have ample indication from past history to guess how
Iran will behave. The use of proxies has been immensely rewarding for
Tehran. The regime has paid a very low price for sponsorship of
terrorist attacks from the Marine Barracks bombing in 1983 to the
attacks of this last week. Iran has the capacity to attack from
Argentina to Venezuela, in Asia, in Europe, and throughout the Middle
East. It seems naive to believe it does not have the capacity to launch
attacks in the United States.\4\
Iran has rarely seen justice for its support for terrorism: an
indictment for the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing sits uselessly in U.S.
District Court.\5\ It has hardly paid a price for flouting Security
Council strictures on exporting weapons to Hezbollah.
It has never paid a price for the 1,000 U.S. servicemen's lives
taken by Iranian groups in Iraq.\6\ Would Tehran really feel less
empowered once it has a nuclear weapon or the materiel to create one?
Does that mean that nukes would be on the way to Hezbollah or Hamas
or others? Certainly, the sophistication and range of weaponry Iran has
been willing to supply to Hezbollah has been remarkable, and has
escalated dramatically in recent years. But no one can answer that
question with any reliability. There are some who are persuaded that
the Syrian nuclear weapons program that was attacked by Israel in 2007
was, at least in part, pursued in cooperation with Iran,\7\ though we
have not seen any public evidence to confirm that's the case.
Ultimately, we have no reason whatsoever to believe that Iran
understands there are consequences to its behavior. And it is only such
a belief that would comprise a credible deterrent to a nuclear Iran.
In terms of options for the United States, it is clear that
disengagement at this time is exactly the wrong choice. More than ever,
there are democrats in the Middle East who are clamoring for our
support--whether moral, political, or economic. The right choice is to
double down on democratic revolutions--even those that do not result in
governments we would ourselves choose. We are interested in rule of
law, not specific rulers.
Regarding specific steps we could take to counter Iranian support
for terrorism in the Middle East, first and foremost let's look at
Syria. Many disagree about what to do about the fighting there. One
thing few disagree about is that the fall of the house of Assad would
be devastating to Iran. So we clearly have an interest in Syria's
future.
Second, it seems only natural that Iran will turn to Lebanon as its
only remaining option for a proxy in the Arab world. There are
constraints on Hezbollah that could prevent it from making Lebanon the
new Syria, including powerful opposition groups; but you would never
know it to listen to U.S. policy. Our aid programs of more than $100
million per annum have continued unabated. Our silence regarding
illegal weapons transfers to Hezbollah has rightly been taken as
indifference to the fate of the Lebanese state.
Nor have we fought Iran on its own ground on the issues it hold so
dear. Who is the tribune of the Palestinian people? Iran? Really? We
have done more for Palestinians over the last decades than Iran ever
did. We could begin to further undercut groups like Hamas and
Palestinian Islamic Jihad by insisting that Palestinians begin moving
out of refugee camps and by emphasizing rule of law and institution
building, rather than the peace process.
We could rethink our decision to cede Iraq to Iranian influence and
begin to embrace the notion of Iraq as the Shia leader of the region
rather than Iran.
The time has come to undercut Iran at its own political game, all
the while holding Tehran responsible for the terrorism it sponsors. If
Hezbollah wants to continue as Iran's proxy, then aid to Lebanon needs
to be reconsidered. If some among the Palestinians wish to continue to
play footsie with Iran, then we, and the Arabs, and the Europeans need
to ensure that Iran is their only donor.
Our policy is one, in effect, of tolerance for Iran's sponsorship
of terrorism. Tehran will only be more emboldened by advanced weapons.
Neither Supreme Leader Khamenei nor President Ahmadinejad are persuaded
we will truly fight back. Perhaps it's time to consider doing just that
on every possible front.
----------------
End Notes
\1\ ``Hague fury as `Iranian arms' bound for Taliban seized,'' BBC
News, March 9, 2011,http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12694266.
\2\ Thomas Donnelly, Danielle Pletka, and Maseh Zarif. ``Containing
and Deterring a Nuclear Iran'' (Report by American Enterprise
Institute, December 2011), 22.
\3\ ``Nasrallah Hails Slain Syrian Officials as `Martyrs,' says
Relation with Aoun Strategic,'' Naharnet Newsdesk, July 19, 2012,
http://www.naharnet.com/stories/en/47064.
\4\ Suzanne Kelley, ``Experts: Hezbollah positioned for attack in
US,'' CNN.com, March 21, 2012. http://security.blogs.cnn.com/2012/03/
21/house-panel-hears-testimony-on-hezbollah-in-u-s/.
\5\ United States District Court Eastern District of Virginia,
Alexandria Division. Khobar Indictment. June 2001. http://
www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/khobar/khobar_indictment.pdf.
\6\ Michael Christie, ``Quarter of US Iraq Deaths due to Iran-
groups envoy,'' Reuters, August 26, 2012, http://www.reuters.com/
article/2010/08/26/idUSLDE67P22D.
\7\ Avi Issacharoff, Barak Ravid, and Amos Harel, ``Syria: There
are no N. Korea-Syria nuclear facilities whatsoever,'' Haaretz,
September 12, 2007, http://www.haaretz.com/news/syria-there-are-no-n-
korea-syria-nuclear-facilities-whatsoever-1.229277.
Senator Casey. Thanks very much.
Dr. Levitt.
STATEMENT OF DR. MATTHEW LEVITT, SENIOR FELLOW AND DIRECTOR,
STEIN PROGRAM ON COUNTERTERRORISM AND INTELLIGENCE, WASHINGTON
INSTITUTE FOR NEAR EAST POLICY, WASHINGTON, DC
Dr. Levitt. Thank you, Chairman Casey, Ranking Member
Risch, Senator Corker. It is a pleasure to be here.
The advantage to going last is that so much has been said
already that I agree with that I should be able to keep under
the 5 minutes. Let us see if I can hold to that.
Iranian state sponsorship of terrorism can be broken down
into two basic baskets. First, its support to other groups,
especially in the Middle East, such as Hamas, the Palestinian
Islamic Jihad, the Gulf militants, but potentially groups
beyond the Middle East such as Somali Shabaab, as the U.N. has
noted. The second consists of its direct attacks, carried out
either by its own agents in the IRGC and the Quds Force or by
its primary proxy, Hezbollah. In fact, as my collegues have
stated, Hezbollah is central to both of these activities.
My colleagues have also correctly stated the fact that this
is not a new phenomenon. Iran's use of terrorism is embedded in
its foreign policy; it is an extension of its foreign policy,
going back to the very beginning of the revolution. The CIA
noted in the 1980s that while Iran's support for terrorism was
meant to further its national interests, it also stemmed from
the clerical regime's perception that it has a religious duty
to export the Islamic revolution and to wage, by whatever
means, a constant struggle against the perceived oppressor
states.
Just a few years later in 1989, the CIA noted several
factors that made Iran more likely to take increased risks in
support of terrorism, factors that might have faded somewhat in
the mid-1990s but are now coming back with a vengeance
pertaining to internal politics. The first was the dominance of
radical elements within the clerical leadership, which
translated into significant Iranian hostility toward the West.
Back then, as is true today, there was little chance more
pragmatic leaders would come to the fore.
Furthermore, igniting tensions abroad shifted popular
attention away from domestic problems, while asymmetrical
warfare provided Tehran with a potent weapon at a time when its
military and economy were weak. Even its support for Hezbollah,
which reportedly runs up to approximately $200 million a year
at times, has faded by as much as 40 percent in periods over
the past few years in large part because of our sanctions
programs.
Hezbollah is not only a key conduit of arms, training, and
know-how to Iran's other proxies, especially the Palestinian
groups. It is also the sharp end of the spear complementing the
Quds Force, sometimes working closely together with the Quds
Force, sometimes in somewhat of a competition with them to see
who can strike first in terms of carrying out the types of
attacks we have seen, amounting to at least nine in the past
year or so.
Consider Iran's Unit 1800, which is its dedicated unit to
support the Palestinian groups; its Unit 3800, the dedicated
unit with Ali Mussa Daqduq and others in Iraq to support the
Iraqi Shia militants there. Consider Hezbollah and Iranian
activities in Africa, Southeast Asia, North and South America,
et cetera.
I would like to give you just one example before I give you
some ideas of some of the things we need to focus on, and that
is the example of Fauzi Ayub. It is a great example of how
someone can serve in both these two baskets.
Fauzi Ayub was involved in an attempted hijacking in
Romania years ago. Later Hezbollah sent him to Canada where he
obtained Canadian citizenship. He got married and lived in
Dearborn, MI, for a time. There is an American indictment out
for him. Hezbollah then took advantage of his Canadian
documentation to infiltrate him into Israel on the West Bank
for the purpose of supporting Palestinian groups there and
attempting to carry out a bombing attack there as well. In his
trial in an Israeli court, the judge asked if he had ever
informed the Canadians about his past history as a Hezbollah
hijacker in Romania, to which he responded that he hadn't, and
that the Canadians had neglected to ask. The fact is that these
baskets are not distinct, and Hezbollah does not make them so.
This is not the manner in which Iran uses its proxy.
I do believe that in the event of a nuclear strike on Iran,
we should expect to see a significant increase in the types of
asymmetric international terrorist attacks that we have seen. I
think what we are seeing now is child's play compared to what
we would see then, both by Iranian agents and by Hezbollah. I
do not believe for a moment that if there were an attack on
Iran, that Hezbollah would not respond.
I believe that the Arab Spring, as my colleagues said, has
been a tremendous setback for Iran. It is very difficult for
Iran to claim that the Arab Spring is a wonderful thing and
support protestors when talking about Bahrain, only to then
oppose similar protests in Syria, where Iran has helped the
Assad regime crack down on its own people. The only entities
that continue to support Syria today are Hezbollah and Iran.
I think the connection between Iran's nuclear program and
terrorism goes byond their use of terrorism were there to be a
strike on the nuclear program. I equate a nuclear Iran to an
Iran on steroids. Iran is already extremely aggressive. We in
the West, in contrast, tend to be very risk-averse, especially
when it comes to Iran. If this is how Iran behaves now, imagine
how it would behave if it had a nuclear weapon.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Levitt follows:]
Prepared Statement of Matthew Levitt
Chairman Casey, Ranking Member Risch, and distinguished members of
the committee, I thank you for the opportunity to appear before you
today to discuss Iran's support for terrorism in the Middle East. In
fact, Tehran's support of terrorism includes both the sponsorship of
Middle Eastern (and other) terrorist groups and acts of terrorism
carried out by its own IRGC Quds Force.
iran on offense
World attention on Iran centers on the threats to international
security posed by the country's nuclear program. As Iran presses on in
its efforts to become a nuclear power, the regime in Tehran also
employs an aggressive foreign policy that relies heavily on the
deployment of clandestine assets abroad to collect intelligence and
support foreign operations. The world's most active state sponsor of
terrorism, Tehran relies on terrorism to further Iranian foreign policy
interests.
Today, Iran feels itself under increasing pressure from the
international community by both diplomatic and economic sanctions. From
the Stuxnet virus to the assassination of Iranian scientists and the
defection of Iranian agents, Iran feels increasingly targeted by
Western intelligence services in general and Israel and the United
States in particular. Hezbollah and Iran each have their own reasons
for executing terrorist attacks targeting Israeli or other Western
targets--Iran seeks to avenge attacks on its scientists and sanctions
targeting its nuclear program, and Hezbollah seeks to avenge
Mughniyeh's death. This convergence of interests strengthens their
longstanding and intimate relationship, making their combined
operational capabilities that much more dangerous.
Over the past 7 months, a spate of terrorist plots targeting U.S.
and Israeli foreign interests has illustrated Iran's propensity for
sponsoring attacks abroad. Some were thwarted, including plots in
Thailand, Bulgaria, Singapore, Kenya, Cyprus, and Azerbaijan. Others
were not, including bombings in India and Georgia. Some of these
operations were carried out by Iranian agents, others by Iran's primary
proxy, Hezbollah. A few were joint operations executed by Hezbollah
operatives working with Iranian intelligence or members of the Quds
Force, an elite branch of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps
(IRGC). Consider that a plot in Turkey involving four members of the
Quds Force targeting diplomatic missions in Istanbul was reportedly
foiled by Turkish security authorities this March. Some, like one of
the plots in Azerbaijan, leveraged relationships with local criminal
networks to execute an attack. The most brazen, and bizarre, was the
October 2011 plot to assassinate the Saudi Ambassador to Washington.
This Quds Force plot against the Saudi diplomat, Director General of
MI5 Jonathan Evans told a crowd in June 2012, ``leads straight back to
the Iranian leadership. . . . [A] return to State-sponsored terrorism
by Iran or its associates, such as Hezbollah, cannot be ruled out as
pressure on the Iranian leadership increases.'' Of the more recent
attacks in India, Azerbaijan, and elsewhere, he noted, ``we also face
uncertainty over developments in Iran. In parallel with rising concern
about Iran's nuclear intentions, we have seen in recent months a series
of attempted terrorist plots against Israeli interests.'' \1\
Most recently, Israeli officials have linked Hezbollah and Tehran
to the suicide bombing that left six Israelis and one Bulgarian dead in
Burgas, Bulgaria, last week. Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin
Netanyahu, told reporters, ``We have unquestionable, fully
substantiated intelligence that this was done by Hezbollah backed by
Iran.'' He highlighted the similarities between the Bulgarian bombing
and a plot foiled in Cyprus earlier this month in which Cypriot
authorities arrested a Hezbollah operative conducting preoperational
surveillance on Israeli flights and tour buses.\2\
This should not surprise as Iranian agents have traditionally
supported the efforts of trusted proxy groups in attacks spanning the
globe, especially when Tehran was under serious international or
domestic pressure. Consider that Iran's record of supporting terrorist
attacks includes the 1983 and 1984 bombings targeting U.S. and French
forces in Beirut, the 1992 and 1994 attacks against Israeli interests
in Argentina, the 1996 bombing against U.S. forces in Saudi Arabia, and
a host of other attacks targeting American, French, German, British,
Kuwaiti, Bahraini, and other interests in plots from Europe to
Southeast Asia to the Middle East.
tehran's fingerprints
In the past, major acts of Iranian state sponsorship of terrorism
have ultimately been linked back to the most senior elements of the
Iranian leadership. When such cases have led to major law enforcement
investigations and prosecutions, the links have been made public.
Consider, for example, the June 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers
housing complex that was home to American, Saudi, French, and British
servicemembers in Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province--the last time
Iranian agents carried out an attack targeting both U.S. and Saudi
interests. In that case, Iranian agents teamed up with Saudi and
Lebanese Hezbollah operatives to carry out the attack. According to the
testimony of a former CIA official, arrangements for the Khobar Towers
attack began around 1994, including planning meetings likely held in
Tehran and operational meetings held at the Iranian Embassy in
Damascus, Syria. It was in 1994, according to this account, that the
Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, gave the order for the
attack on the Khobar Towers complex.\3\
While planning the attack on Khobar Towers, Shia extremists
continued to carry out other plots, including the hijacking of a Saudi
Airbus flight, also in 1994.\4\ According to former FBI deputy director
for counterterrorism, Dale Watson, evidence the FBI collected to
determine Saudi Hezbollah carried out the attack at Iran's behest
included not only forensics and the statements of detained conspirators
but also ``a lot of other types of information that I'm not at liberty
to discuss.'' \5\ According to Watson, whose tenure at the FBI spanned
24 years and included a stint as chief of the Iran-Hezbollah unit at
FBI headquarters, Hezbollah does not carry out terrorist attacks
internationally on its own. ``It must be sanctioned, it must be
ordered, and it must be approved and somebody has to fund it,'' Watson
noted in explaining Iran's role in the Khobar attack.\6\ According to
former CIA officer, Bruce Tefft, the Khobar Towers attack was planned
and overseen by the IRGC and the Ministry of Intelligence and Security
(MOIS), ``acting on the orders of the Supreme Leader of Iran.'' \7\
Authorities came to similar conclusions in the case of the
investigation into the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center
in Buenos Aires. Based on the testimony of Iranian intelligence
defector, Abolghasem Mesbahi, among others, prosecutors would
ultimately conclude that Iran's Supreme National Security Council held
a meeting in Mashhad on Saturday, August 14, 1993, where senior Iranian
leaders approved the bombing plot and selected the AMIA building as the
target. The meeting, chaired by then-president, Akbar Hashemi
Rafsanjani, began promptly at 4:30 p.m. and ran for 2 hours.\8\
According to the FBI, around the time of this August meeting,
intelligence reports indicated Hezbollah was ``planning some sort of
spectacular act against Western interests, probably Israeli but perhaps
against the United States.'' \9\
terror as a tool of foreign policy
In April 2008, Gen. David Petraeus testified before the Senate
Armed Services Committee about the flow of sophisticated Iranian arms
to Shia militants in Iraq. The military's understanding of Iran's
support for such groups crystallized, Petraeus explained, with the
capture of a number of prominent Shia militants and several members of
the Quds Force operating in Iraq as well.\10\
In case it was not already clear to General Petraeus that Quds
Force chief, Gen. Qasem Soleimani, was calling the shots for Iran in
Iraq, the head of the Quds Force reportedly sent the commander of
coalition forces a message in early 2008 to make the point. Conveyed by
a senior Iraqi leader, the message came just as Iraqi and coalition
forces initiated Operation Charge of the Knights, a concerted effort to
target Iraqi Shia militias in Baghdad and Basra. The text message read:
``General Petraeus, you should know that I, Qassem Suleimani, control
the policy for Iran with respect to Iraq, Lebanon, Gaza, and
Afghanistan. And indeed, the ambassador in Baghdad is a Quds Force
member. The individual who's going to replace him is a Quds Force
member.'' \11\
Perhaps the message should not have come as such a surprise, coming
from a man known for being aggressive in the belief that ``offense is
the best defense.'' \12\ The crux of the message, however, was no
surprise at all. Several months earlier, in October 2007, Petraeus
confirmed to the press that he had ``absolute assurance'' that several
Iranians detained by coalition forces were Revolutionary Guardsmen.
``The Quds Force controls the policy for Iraq; there should be no
confusion about that either,'' he noted, adding that ``The ambassador
is a Quds Force member.'' \13\
One might assume Iran would behave more cautiously today, at a time
when it has come under increasing international pressure over its
rumored pursuit of nuclear weapons, its suppression of human rights at
home, and its support of terrorism abroad. Indeed, the U.S. Government
designated the Quds Force as a terrorist group in 2007 for providing
material support to the Taliban, Iraqi Shia militants, and other
terrorist organizations. Most counterterrorism experts, myself
included, expected that future acts of Iranian terrorism would occur in
places like Europe, where Iranian agents have long targeted dissidents,
and not in the United States, where carrying out an attack would risk
severe countermeasures, including the possibility of a U.S. military
reprisal had the attack been successfully executed and linked back to
Iran.
Iran's use of terrorism as a tool of foreign policy, however, goes
back as far as the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Writing in 1986, the CIA
assessed in a now-declassified report titled ``Iranian Support for
International Terrorism'' that while Iran's support for terrorism was
meant to further its national interest, it also stemmed from the
clerical regime's perception ``that it has a religious duty to export
its Islamic revolution and to wage, by whatever means, a constant
struggle against the perceived oppressor states.'' \14\
A 1989 CIA report highlights several factors that made Iran more
likely to take increased risks in support of terrorism--factors that
faded somewhat after the mid-1990s but that are now coming back with a
vengeance. The first was the dominance of radical elements within the
clerical leadership, which translated into significant Iranian
hostility toward the West. Then as now, there was little chance more
pragmatic leaders would come to the fore. Furthermore, igniting
tensions abroad could shift popular attention away from domestic
problems, while asymmetrical warfare provided Tehran with a potent
weapon at a time when its military and economy were weak.
Underlying Iranian grievances with the West exacerbated these
tensions in the late 1980s in much the same way that they have today.
In the late 1980s, Iranian anger was fed by the accidental 1988 downing
of an Iranian airliner by the USS Vincennes, as well as anger over the
publication of Salman Rushdie's ``The Satanic Verses,'' deemed by Iran
to be offensive to Islam. Now, the Iranian authorities' anger is fed by
increasing U.S. and European sanctions plus Tehran's conviction that
the West is pursuing a ``soft overthrow'' of the Islamic Republic by
use of modern communications to whip up protests. Tehran thinks that
the West caused the 2009 protests in Iran and is behind the protests
shaking Syria now.
According to CIA reporting in the late 1980s, ``Iranian leaders
view terrorism as an important instrument of foreign policy that they
use both to advance national goals and to export the regime's Islamic
revolutionary ideals.'' The CIA noted that Iran had already ``supported
and sometimes directed terrorist operations by Hezbollah,'' described
as ``a thriving Shia fundamentalist movement in Lebanon.'' Iran had
also ``smuggled explosives into Saudi Arabia and conducted terrorist
operations against Kuwait targets.'' Iran, the CIA concluded, would
``keep the United States as a primary terrorist target'' for itself and
its surrogates for a variety of reasons, including the U.S. military
presence in the Gulf, the recent reflagging of Kuwaiti oil tankers, the
seizure of an Iranian ship laying mines in the Gulf, and an attack on
an Iranian oil platform used to support Iranian military operations.
sponsorship of middle east terrorist groups
Tehran's capability to carry out global terror attacks rests on its
ability to call upon a group of Middle East-based terror groups willing
to act at Iran's behest, a network that would almost certainly be
called upon to execute the kind of asymmetric terror attacks that can
be carried out with reasonable deniability and therefore make a
targeted response more difficult. Muhammad Hejazi, the deputy head of
Iran's Armed Forces, hinted that Tehran could order proxy militant
groups in Gaza and Lebanon to fire rockets into Israel. He even implied
such a strike could be used preemptively, before an attack on Iran.
``We are no longer willing to wait for enemy action to be launched
against us,'' he told Iran's Fars News Agency. ``Our strategy now is
that we will make use of all means to protect our national interests.''
\15\ Hezbollah leaders have also stated they would stand by Iran and
any other entity that has stood up to the ``Zionist regime.'' \16\
Iran has backed not only militant groups in its Persian Gulf
neighborhood but also radicals and armed groups in Lebanon, the
Palestinian territories, Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, by providing
funds, weapons, training, and safe haven. Among the many groups that
Tehran sponsors are the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-
General Command (PFLP-GC), Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), Hamas, and
Iraqi Shia militias. Other relationships are less well known. Consider,
for example, Iran's ties to Somalia's al-Shabab.
Last month, two Iranian nationals, Ahmad Mohammed and Sayed
Mousavi, were arrested in Nairobi after one of the suspects led
officials to 15 kilograms of chemicals hidden at a golf course in the
port city of Mombasa.\17\ Kenyan authorities believe the men, suspected
IRGC-Quds Force members, shipped more than 100 kilograms of powerful
explosives into the country, most of which remains unrecovered.\18\
Last year, Kenya launched military operations into neighboring Somalia,
targeting al-Shabab after a wave of kidnappings damaged Kenya's tourism
industry. According to one senior antiterrorism officer, the two men
``were planning to help al-Shabaab carry out revenge attacks in Kenya
because of the Kenya Defence Forces' incursion inside Somalia.'' \19\
Al-Shabab's connection to Iran goes back at least as far as 2006,
when a report from the U.N. Monitoring Group on Somalia indicated that
the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), the precursor to al-Shabab, sent
fighters to Lebanon to aid Hezbollah against the Israelis in return for
Iranian and Hezbollah funding, arms, and training. According to the
report:
During mid-July 2006 ICU sent an approximately 720-person-
strong military force to Lebanon to fight alongside Hezbollah
against the Israeli military. . . . A number of the fighters
also remained in Lebanon for advanced military training by
Hezbollah. Furthermore, between 8 and 10 September 2006, about
25 Somalis returned to Somalia accompanied by five members of
Hezbollah. . . . In exchange for the contribution of the Somali
military force, Hezbollah arranged for additional support to be
given to ICU by the Governments of the Islamic Republic of Iran
and the Syrian Arab Republic, which was subsequently
provided.\20\
hezbollah: first among equals
Of all the terrorist groups that Tehran has sponsored over the past
28 years, none is more important to Iran than Hezbollah.\21\ Iran
helped create Hezbollah in the early 1980s, funding, training, and
indoctrinating new members of the fledgling movement. This support
created a completely loyal proxy group ready to engage in terrorist
activities at Iran's behest. As one senior Hezbollah official noted in
the early 1980s, ``Our relation with the Islamic revolution is one of a
junior to a senior . . . of a soldier to his commander.'' \22\
Today, Hezbollah operatives maintain close ties to Iranian
intelligence officials and IRGC members. The IRGC--deeply involved in
the country's ballistic missile and nuclear and weapons proliferation
activities--has been a major focus of both U.S. and U.N. sanctions. The
group also maintains a special branch, the Quds Force, which provides
funds, weapons, and training to terrorist groups. Iranian forces
operate training camps in Lebanon for Hezbollah fighters and provide
financial support to the group, according to the Congressional Research
Service. Since the early 1990s, Hezbollah has operated with a
guaranteed annual contribution of at least $100 million from Tehran.
Early last decade, Iran doubled that investment to more than $200
million a year, and its financial support for Hezbollah reached its
pinnacle in 2008-2009, when Iran was flush with revenues from oil
prices that had risen as high as $145 per barrel in late July 2008. By
2009, Israeli intelligence estimated that, since the summer of 2006,
Iran had provided Hezbollah more than $1 billion in direct aid. In
exchange, Iran has been able to leverage Hezbollah cells and operatives
stationed around the world to conduct terrorist attacks well beyond its
borders.
Consider a few telling examples.
unit 1800: hezbollah support for palestinian terrorist groups
In the early to mid-1990s, with the Oslo peace accords signed and
Palestinian autonomy slowly growing in the West Bank and Gaza Strip,
opponents of peace funded, supported, and executed terrorist attacks to
undermine the prospects for peace. Iran was especially active in
promoting terrorism targeting Israel at this time. According to the
Canadian Secret Intelligence Service, ``in February 1999, it was
reported that Palestinian police had discovered documents that attest
to the transfer of $35 million to Hamas from Iran's Ministry of
Intelligence and Security (MOIS), money reportedly meant to finance
terrorist activities against Israeli targets.'' \23\ Iran's primary
proxy group, however, has always been Hezbollah. It should therefore
not be surprising that Hezbollah increased its support for Palestinian
groups in the 1990s, invested in its own terrorist infrastructure in
the West Bank, and went to great lengths to infiltrate operatives into
Israel to collect intelligence and execute terror attacks.
For its part, Iran sought to intensify and coordinate the terrorist
operations of the various Palestinian groups it supported and its
primary proxy, Hezbollah. A Palestinian intelligence report describes a
May 19, 2000, meeting at the Iranian Embassy in Damascus between the
Iranian Ambassador to Syria and representatives from Hamas, Palestinian
Islamic Jihad, and Hezbollah. According to the report, ``during the
meeting the Iranian Ambassador demanded that the above-mentioned
persons carry out military operations in Palestine without taking
responsibility for these operations.'' \24\ According to another
Palestinian intelligence document, dated October 31, 2001, officials
from Hamas, PIJ, and Hezbollah met in Damascus ``in an attempt to
increase the joint activity inside [i.e., in Israel, the West Bank, and
Gaza] with financial aid from Iran.'' The meeting was held ``after an
Iranian message had been transferred to the Hamas and Islamic Jihad
leaderships, according to which they must not allow a calming down [of
the situation on the ground] at this period.'' The Iranian funds, the
report added, were to be transferred to these groups through
Hezbollah.\25\
Indeed, from Iran's perspective, only Hezbollah's direct
involvement would guarantee a truly successful terror campaign
targeting Israel. According to U.S. officials, shortly after
Palestinian violence erupted in September 2000, Iran assigned Imad
Mughniyeh, Hezbollah's international operations commander, to bolster
the operational capacity of Palestinian militant groups, specifically
Hamas and PIJ. In fact, to carry out the March 27, 2002, ``Passover
massacre'' suicide bombing, Hamas reportedly relied on the guidance of
a Hezbollah expert to build an extra-potent bomb.\26\ Following the
death of Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, in November 2004, Hezbollah
was said to have received an additional $22 million from Iranian
intelligence to support Palestinian terrorist groups and foment
instability.\27\
Carrying out attacks along the border with Lebanon in Israel's far
north was one thing, but to effectively undermine the peace process
Hezbollah leaders decided they needed to target key Israeli
decisionmakers, symbolic sites, or ordinary Israeli civilians in
downtown shopping districts. With the onset of the second Palestinian
intifada in September 2000, Mughniyeh complemented infiltration
operations into Israel with others aimed at kidnapping Israelis abroad
and recruiting Palestinians and Israeli Arabs to carry out attacks at
Hezbollah's behest. In particular, Mughniyeh used the increased funding
he received from Iran to form Unit 1800, which was dedicated solely to
supporting Palestinian groups and terror attacks targeting the Israeli
heartland.
The case of one Unit 1800 recruit, Fawzi Mohammed Mustafa Ayub, who
was trained in Hezbollah camps and primed to infiltrate Israel stands
out for two reasons. First, he is one of the few Hezbollah infiltrators
to successfully evade Israeli security and make his way into Israel
undetected. Second, he was able to operate on the ground in Israel and
the West Bank for about a year and a half before being detained.
In the mid-1980s, Ayub was convicted by a Romanian court for his
role in a Hezbollah plot to hijack an Iraqi airliner set to depart from
Bucharest. Following his release from a Romanian prison in 1988, Ayub
immigrated to Canada, sponsored by an uncle under a program reserved
for refugees displaced by the Lebanese civil war. He became a Canadian
citizen in 1992. Asked by an Israeli judge if he had told Canadian
authorities about his conviction in Romania on charges of attempting to
carry out an act of terrorism, Ayub replied, ``They never asked.'' \28\
Ayub seemed to be leading a normal life in the Toronto area. He
married a woman from the United States and at some point the couple
lived near Dearborn, MI, according to U.S. prosecutors.\29\ He studied
in the evenings and worked at a grocery store during the day. But all
the while, Ayub remained an active Hezbollah agent, according to
Israeli officials. While in Canada, Israeli officials noted, Ayub
``maintained contact with senior Hezbollah officials and carried out
operations.'' \30\
In 2000, Ayub returned to Lebanon armed with his Canadian passport
and he trained to carry out sensitive missions abroad. He was an ideal
candidate for Hezbollah's Unit 1800. Under Mughniyeh's personal
supervision, Ayub trained in the handling and preparation of explosives
at secret Hezbollah facilities in Beirut apartments. He was also taught
how to hide any trace of his Lebanese identity and given strict
guidelines on how to behave once in Israel, including suppressing his
Arab identity and speaking only English at all times. The purpose of
his mission, according to the FBI, was to conduct a bombing on behalf
of Hezbollah.\31\
After several months of training, Ayub traveled to an unknown
European country on his Canadian passport. There he ditched his
Canadian passport, acquired a high-quality American passport, traveled
to Greece, and boarded a boat to Israel. After a few days in Jerusalem,
Ayub traveled to Hebron in the southern West Bank, where he contacted a
local terrorist operative. Together, the two scouted possible sites for
the prepositioning and concealment of weapons for future
operations.\32\ According to Israeli intelligence, Ayub did, in fact,
prepare and hide explosives in caches in Israel for later use.\33\
Ayub's mission was interrupted, however, by his arrest in Israel.
In custody, Ayub reportedly admitted that part of his mission was to
free three key Hezbollah operatives--Mustafa Dirani, Abdel Karim Obeid,
and Jihad Shuman--perhaps by kidnapping Israelis and bargaining for
their release in exchange for the detained Hezbollah operatives.\34\ He
was eventually released as part of a prisoner exchange. He flew to
Beirut, where Hezbollah secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah waited on
the tarmac to greet and embrace him.\35\
More recently, members of Hezbollah's Unit 1800 were caught in
Egypt, where they were funneling weapons to Hamas in the Gaza Strip. At
the time, Egyptian authorities maintained the group was also targeting
Egyptian targets. Hezbollah denied those accusations, but proudly took
credit for efforts to arm Hamas. Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah,
confirmed the charges himself days after they were aired. In a
televised address, Nasrallah insisted Hezbollah was not plotting
attacks on Egyptian soil but acknowledged Mansour Shihab, one of the
men arrested, was a Hezbollah member who was in Egypt for ``a
logistical job to help the Palestinians get (military) equipment.''
\36\
africa: recruiting grounds for iran and hezbollah
In Africa, where Hezbollah's support networks are well entrenched,
the group need not rely on Iranian operational support as much as it
does elsewhere. That said, the sponsor and its proxy do cooperate
closely on two key agenda items in Africa: proselytizing and
recruitment, and arms smuggling. Committed to its constitutional
directive to export the Islamic Revolution, the Revolutionary Guard
proactively recruits Shia in Africa by working off of the efforts of
Iranian and Lebanese missionaries proselytizing across the continent.
As early as 1985, the CIA was aware that Iran had long been known to
``promote subversive activity'' in far-flung countries with Shia
populations, including Nigeria.\37\ Three years later, a CIA report
acknowledged the phenomenon was far more widespread than just in
Nigeria. Moreover, the agency highlighted Hezbollah's participation in
efforts to spread Iran's Islamic revolutionary vision in Africa.
Often, Iran recruits directly from the pool of Lebanese Shia
communities across Africa. The Africa Division of the Revolutionary
Guard's Quds Force has ``built many cells in Africa,'' according to a
2011 research report, ``most of which rely on Shiite emigrants from
Lebanon who live in Africa.'' Once spotted and recruited, they are sent
to Iran for training. According to a retired Israeli military officer,
``Lebanese recruited for the Iranian intelligence efforts were invited
to visit Iran, where they underwent training in the field of
intelligence. Upon their return, they serve as a nucleus for recruiting
others and provide a base for Iranian intelligence activity in their
countries.'' \38\
Such efforts are not limited to Lebanese Shia. Indeed, according to
a study commissioned by the U.S. military, Iran uses scholarships for
African students as ``a major recruitment tool.'' Iranian scholarships
are offered to students across Africa as part of Tehran's ``greater
diplomatic effort to simultaneously promote the broader Hezbollah
agenda in Africa and undermine Western influence and credibility across
the continent.'' Wherever Iran has embassies in Africa,'' the report
added, ``it also sets up cultural centers that `award' scholarships and
`study tours' to Iran.'' \39\ One such effort, focused on the
recruitment of Ugandan Shia for religious study--and military and
intelligence training--in Iran was exposed in 2002.
According to an Israeli intelligence report, ``In recent years,
many foreign students, including [students] from Uganda and other
African countries, are sent to study theology in Iranian universities''
as a means of recruiting and training them as Hezbollah operatives or
Iranian intelligence agents. In late 2002, Ugandan officials arrested
several young Shia men, including Shafi Ibrahim, who were recruited by
Iran and trained alongside young Hezbollah members at facilities in
Tehran. Ibrahim's partner, Sharif Wadoulo, another Ugandan Shia,
escaped arrest and fled to an unnamed Gulf country. Under questioning,
Ibrahim acknowledged that he and Wadoulo ``were chosen because they
were ideologically and physically competent to be trained in
intelligence and sabotage.'' \40\
The first group of Ugandan recruits, whose leaders included Ibrahim
and Wadoulo, traveled to Iran in 1996, but many more from Uganda and
elsewhere in Africa followed. The young men, a small group selected for
that first running of this particular Iranian recruitment program, were
ostensibly sent to Iran to study theology, but once in Iran, they were
told explicitly that the primary purpose of their stay was ``to set up
a terrorist infrastructure in the countries they were sent to.'' Their
studies, accommodation and living expenses, and a stipend were financed
entirely by Iran. Meanwhile, the report added, their families also
benefited from unspecified ``Iranian hospitality.'' \41\
Ibrahim, Wadoulo, and the rest of the group studied at the Razavi
University of Islamic Sciences in Mashhad, in northwest Iran near the
Afghan border. As many as 20 million pilgrims reportedly visit the city
annually, making Mashhad a logical destination for foreign Shia
students recruited abroad by Iran's Revolutionary Guard to study Shia
theology and the promise of Iran's Islamic Revolution.\42\
In early 2001, the group was secretly relocated to Tehran for
studies of a different nature. The Ugandan recruits, along with young
Lebanese Hezbollah members, underwent a 1-month basic training course
``specially tailored by Iranian intelligence.'' Different from the
basic training course for a military recruit, this training combined
ideological and operational components. The course was designed ``to
intensify the recruit's sympathy for Iran and the Islamic Revolution,
while motivating them to hit at what the Iranians consider the enemies
of Islam.'' Together, the mixed group of Ugandan Shia and Lebanese
Hezbollah recruits were taught to use a variety of small arms, produce
improvised explosive devices, collect preoperational intelligence ``on
installations and people for terrorist attacks,'' plan escape routes,
and withstand interrogation techniques. The students were given
fictitious covers, money, and means of communication and then
``instructed to collect intelligence on Americans and Westerners
present in Uganda and other countries.'' The group's Iranian handlers
saw these new recruits as force multipliers, telling both Ibrahim and
Wadoulo to be attuned to the need to expand Iran's network in the
region and ``to recruit other Ugandan civilians for similar
assignments.'' \43\
According to the Israeli report, once the recruits returned home in
September 2001, they were assigned a local IRGC handler on the ground
in Uganda, who reportedly was there to ``sustain their motivation, to
convey operational instructions and to obtain reports on their
activities.'' The cell was busted before it could carry out any
operations, and the exposure of this Iranian network led to increased
scrutiny of Iranian institutions in Uganda--including the Iranian
Embassy--that had for years provided local Shia education to young
children and sent older students to study in Iran. There, the report
added, ``they are recruited by Iranian intelligence for intelligence
activity and terrorism.'' \44\
irgc ramazan corp and hezbollah's unit 3800--support to iraqi shia
militias
Iraqi Shia extremists feature prominently in Iran's arsenal of
regional proxies. On their own, and in cooperation with the Quds Force,
local Hezbollah affiliates and groups like the Iraqi Dawa Party have
engaged in terrorism and political violence in support of their own and
Iranian interests. In time, evidence of Hezbollah's presence in Iraq
would be plentiful. Indeed, Hezbollah would create an outfit, Unit
3800, dedicated to aiding the Shia insurgency in Iraq. Iraq became a
core issue for Hezbollah, however, not because it had anything to do
with Lebanon but because gaining influence over Iraq and hegemony in
the region is of primary concern to its Iranian sponsors.
Operation Iraqi Freedom removed Iran's greatest enemy and longtime
nemesis. The 2003 invasion therefore provided Iran with an opportunity
to reshape its influence within Iraq and, in the process, increase its
influence in the region. Working through its proxies, Iran set out to
achieve several goals in Iraq, the most important and overarching of
which was to see the creation, in the words of then-Defense
Intelligence Agency (DIA) director Lowell Jacoby, of a ``weakened,
decentralized and Shia-dominated Iraq that is incapable of posing a
threat to Iran.'' \45\
Of course, Iran has long sought to push the United States out of
the Gulf region. ``Iranian- sponsored terrorism is the greatest threat
to U.S. personnel and facilities in the Middle East.'' So read the
opening statement of a CIA memo written in mid-February 1985 on
terrorism in the Middle East. It continued: ``Islamic radicals in Iran
view Washington's presence and influence in the Middle East as major
impediments to successful export of their revolution and regard
terrorism as a legitimate and effective method of attacking the U.S.
Iranian-sponsored terrorism will continue and possibly increase so long
as the clerics in Tehran do not perceive any significant costs in
launching such operations.'' \46\
That desire now extended not only to the U.S. presence in the Gulf
in general terms but also to the large U.S. and international military
presence in Afghanistan to Iran's east and in Iraq to its west. In the
period after the 2003 invasion, Tehran sought to bloody coalition
forces in Iraq. Careful not to provoke a direct confrontation with U.S.
and coalition forces, Iran proactively armed, trained, and funded a
variety of Shia militias and insurgent groups in an effort to bog down
coalition forces in an asymmetric war of attrition. If the United
States were humiliated in Iraq and forced out of the region in
disgrace, it would be deterred from pursuing similar military
interventions in the region in the future, or so the thinking went.
In 2009, then-director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair noted
that ``Iranian efforts to secure influence in Iraq encompass a wide
range of activities,'' from propaganda and humanitarian assistance to
providing ``lethal support'' to Shia militants.\47\ The breadth and
lethality of Iranian arms smuggled to Iraqi Shia militias were exposed
in a press briefing in February 2007 in Baghdad's Green Zone. Laid out
on the table were mortar shells, rocket-propelled grenades, EFP
launchers and their shaped metal charges, and the false identification
cards found on two of the Quds Force officials captured in a raid a
month earlier. According to U.S. officials, serial numbers on some of
the grenades indicated they were manufactured in Iran in 2006.\48\ ``We
have been able to determine that this material, especially on the EFP
level, is coming from the IRGC-Qods Force,'' the intelligence briefer
stated.\49\ A month earlier, U.S. troops had raided an Iranian
diplomatic office and arrested six more Iranians in northern Iraq. One
individual was quickly released, but the other five were determined to
be IRGC members, not diplomats.
The capture of senior Quds Force officials, and the public airing
of evidence demonstrating Iranian agents were arming and training Iraqi
Shia extremists, embarrassed Tehran and appears to have accelerated
Iran's efforts--already under way--to put an Arab face on this mission.
To that end, Hezbollah sent a master trainer--Ali Musa Daqduq--to Iran
to coordinate the training program and make periodic visits to Iraq. In
2005, Daqduq was told he would be going to Iran to work with the Quds
Force to train Iraqi extremists. Though it would only become clear over
time, the answer to the question U.S. intelligence analysts kept asking
themselves--Why would Iran need to deploy Hezbollah operatives in
Iraq?--was fairly simple: Iraqi Shia resented and distrusted their
Iranian sponsors and trainers.
So it was that Hezbollah, at Iran's behest, helped develop a
sophisticated training program for Shia militants from Iraq. Some
training occurred in Iraq, reportedly at the Deir and Kutaiban camps
east of Basra near the Iranian border. In Iran, Hezbollah and Quds
Force instructors ran a well-organized training program in which Daqduq
was directly involved, ``help[ing] Quds Force in training Iraqis inside
Iran.'' \50\ Over time, Hezbollah operatives trained enough Iraqi Shia
militants--in Iraq, Iran, and Lebanon--to significantly improve the
Special Groups' paramilitary capabilities. Hezbollah provided the Iraqi
insurgents ``with the training, tactics and technology to conduct
kidnappings, small unit tactical operations, and employ sophisticated
improvised explosive devices, incorporating lessons learned from
operations in Southern Lebanon,'' according to an April 2010 Pentagon
report.\51\ Indeed, it would not take long before Hezbollah operatives
would begin directing Iraqi militants in the execution of exactly such
operations, including the January 20, 2007, attack on the Provisional
Joint Coordination Center in Karbala in which four U.S. soldiers were
killed.\52\
what can be done?
Pointing to the 1983 and 1984 Beirut bombings, the CIA reported in
1987 that ``many Iranian leaders use this precedent as proof that
terrorism can break U.S. resolve'' and view ``sabotage and terrorism as
an important option in its confrontation with the United States in the
Persian Gulf.'' \53\ Five years later, the CIA assessed that ``for now,
Iran will sponsor easily deniable attacks on U.S. targets and allow
Hezbollah to retaliate for [Hezbollah leader Abbas] Musawi's
assassination.'' \54\ These assessments from the 1980s and 1990s still
hold true today. Hezbollah has sought to exact revenge for the February
2008 assassination of the group's master terrorist, Imad Mughniyeh. But
this year's string of terrorist plots, some executed by Iranian agents,
some by Hezbollah operatives, is primarily driven by Iran's desire to
avenge attacks on its scientists and efforts to thwart its nuclear
program.
1. Deny Iran and Hezbollah Any Reasonable Deniability
Operating in the shadows, through proxies and trusted operatives,
is Iran's trademark modus operandi. Iran cannot win a conventional war
against the West, but it can exact a high price through asymmetric
warfare. Key to that doctrine, however, is the need to maintain
``reasonable deniability'' for its acts of state sponsorship of
terrorism. Exposing Iran's involvement in international terrorism is
now more important than ever, both to deny the group its coveted
``reasonable deniability'' and to build an international consensus for
action against Iran's support for terrorism.
2. Raise the Cost for Iranian State Sponsorship
One reason Iran is using terrorism as an extension of its foreign
policy is that it remains a cost effective and relatively risk-free
endeavor for Tehran. Iran must be led to believe that the cost of
sponsoring or carrying out an act of terrorism will now be high. That
will be a difficult message to convey in light of Iran's history of
carrying out massive attacks without any significant reaction from
America, even in the case of attacks against U.S. interests (Beirut,
Khobar Towers, Iraq).
3. Apply Diplomatic Pressure
In light of Iran's longstanding use of diplomatic equities to
support international terrorism, Washington should press its allies to
restrict the size of Iranian missions to the minimum needed to conduct
official business, to restrict visits by Iranian officials to official
business only (no meetings with sympathizers, no speeches, etc.), and
to exercise diligence about the possibility that nondiplomatic Iranian
travelers connected to the Iranian Government may be engaged in illegal
activities. Iranian diplomats should only be allowed to travel outside
the city to which they are assigned on official business.
Consider that Iran's intelligence penetration of South America has
expanded significantly since the AMIA bombing. Testifying before
Congress in the weeks following that 1994 attack, the State
Department's coordinator for counterterrorism expressed concern that
Iranian embassies in the region were stacked with larger than necessary
numbers of diplomats, some of whom were believed to be intelligence
agents and terrorist operatives: ``We are sharing information in our
possession with other States about Iranian diplomats, Iranian terrorist
leaders who are posing as diplomats, so that nations will refuse to
give them accreditation, or if they are already accredited, to expel
them. We have had some success in that respect, but we have not always
succeeded.'' \55\
Another witness recounted meeting with senior government officials
in Chile, Uruguay, and Argentina regarding overrepresentation at
Iranian embassies in the region in March 1995--8 months after the AMIA
bombing. Officials in Chile and Uruguay, the countries of most concern
regarding Iranian overrepresentation at the time, indicated that ``the
activities of those at the [Iranian] Embassy were being monitored and
that this was very clearly a concern.'' \56\ Five years later, the
commander of U.S. Southern Command, which has responsibility for the
U.S. military over the southern half of the Western Hemisphere,
indicated the Iranian presence in the region had grown still larger by
expanding the number of embassies from just a handful a few years
earlier to 12 missions by 2010. That, plus Iran's traditional support
for terrorism, had Gen. Douglas Fraser concerned. ``Transnational
terrorists--Hezbollah, Hamas--have organizations resident in the
region,'' Fraser noted.\57\ According to press reports, the Quds Force
plot may have also included plans to target Saudi or possibly Israeli
diplomats in Argentina.\58\
----------------
End Notes
\1\ Jonathan Evans, Director General of the Security Service, U.K.
(speech, Lord Mayor's Annual Defence and Security Lecture, London, June
25, 2012).
\2\ ``Netanyahu: Intelligence Points to Hezbollah in Bulgarian
Bombing,'' Los Angeles Times, July 22, 2012.
\3\ Testimony of Bruce D. Tefft, Paul A. Blais v. Islamic Republic
of Iran et al., Civil Action No. 02-285, United States District Court
for the District of Columbia, May 26, 2006.
\4\ Memorandum for the Secretary of Defense, Report of the
Assessment of the Khobar Towers Bombing, Downing Assessment Task Force,
August 30, 1996, www.fas.org/irp/threat/downing/report.pdf.
\5\ Testimony of Dale Watson, Heiser et al. v. Islamic Republic of
Iran, Civil Action Nos. 00-2329, 01-2104, United States District Court
for the District of Columbia, December 18, 2003.
\6\ Testimony of Dale Watson, Heiser et al. v. Islamic Republic of
Iran, Civil Action Nos. 00-2329, 01-2104, United States District Court
for the District of Columbia, December 18, 2003.
\7\ Testimony of Bruce Tefft, Blais et al. v. Islamic Republic of
Iran, Civil Case No. 2003-285, United States District Court for the
District of Columbia, May 26, 2003.
\8\ Report by the Investigations Unit of the Office of the Attorney
General, ``AMIA Case,'' signed by District Attorney Marcelo Martinez
Burgos, Attorney General Alberto Nisman, and Secretary of the Office of
the Attorney General Hernan Longo, October 25, 2006, p. 92; Larry
Rohter, ``Defector Ties Iran to 1994 Bombing of Argentine Jewish
Center,'' New York Times, November 7, 2003.
\9\ ``International Radical Fundamentalism: An Analytical Overview
of Groups and Trends,'' Terrorist Research and Analytical Center,
Federal Bureau of Investigation, Department of Justice, November 1994,
declassified on November 20, 2008, http://www.investigativeproject.org/
documents/misc/469.pdf.
\10\ Gen. David H. Petraeus, U.S. Army, Commanding General,
Multinational Force Iraq, ``The Situation in Iraq and Progress by the
Government of Iraq in Meeting Benchmarks and Achieving
Reconciliation,'' testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee,
April 8, 2008.
\11\ ``Interview and Moderated Q&A with General David Petraeus,''
Institute for the Study of War, Washington, DC, January 22, 2010, p.
40-41, http://www.understandingwar.org/sites/default/files/
P4%20TRANSCRIPT.pdf.
\12\ Ali Alfoneh, ``Iran's Most Dangerous General,'' Middle Eastern
Outlook no. 4, American Enterprise Institute, July 13, 2011, http://
www.aei.org/article/foreign-and-defense-policy/regional/middle-east-
and-north-africa/irans-most-dangerous-general/.
\13\ Paul von Zielbauer, ``U.S. Calls Iranian Official Part of
Elite Force,'' New York Times, October 8, 2007, http://www.nytimes.com/
2007/10/08/world/middleeast/08iraq.html.
\14\ ``Iranian Support for International Terrorism,'' Directorate
of Intelligence, Central Intelligence Agency, November 22, 1986,
approved for release June 1999, http://www.foia.cia.gov/.
\15\ Adrian Blomfield, ``Iran Threatens to Use `All Means' in Pre-
emptive Strike on Israel,'' Independent, February 22, 2012.
\16\ ``U.S. Bloc behind Syria Unrest: Deputy Hizballah Chief,''
Tehran Times, November 29, 2011.
\17\ Reuters, ``Trial Date for Iranian Suspects in Kenya Set for
July 23,'' Euronews, July 16, 2012, http://www.euronews.com/newswires/
1587094-trial-date-for-iranian-suspects-in-kenya-set-for-july-23/.
\18\ Associated Press, ``Kenya Police: Iranians Shipped 100kg of
Explosive,'' FoxNews.com, July 10, 2012, http://www.foxnews.com/world/
2012/07/10/kenya-police-iranians-shipped-100kg-explosives/.
\19\ Zoe Flood, ``Kenyan Police Arrest Iranians Suspected of Terror
Plot,'' Telegraph, June 22, 2012, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/
worldnews/africaandindianocean/kenya/9350172/Kenyan-police-arrest-
Iranians-suspected-of-terror-plot.html.
\20\ ``Letter dated 21 November 2006 from the Chairman of the
Security Council Committee established pursuant to Resolution 751
(1992) concerning Somalia addressed to the President of the Security
Council,'' S/2006/913, United Nations Security Council, November 22,
2006, http://www.fas.org/asmp/resources/govern/109th/S2006913.pdf.
\21\ The United States first listed Iran as a terrorist sponsor in
1984.
\22\ As quoted by Martin Kramer, ``The Moral Logic of Hizballah,''
in Walter Reich, ed., Origins of Terrorism: Psychologies, Ideologies,
Theologies, States of Mind (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p.
138.
\23\ ``Terrorist Group Profiler,'' Canadian Secret Intelligence
Service (CSIS), June 2002, author's personal files; see also Stewart
Bell, ``Hamas May Have Chemical Weapons: CSIS Report Says Terror Group
May Be Experimenting,'' National Post (Canada), December 10, 2003.
\24\ ``Iran as a State Sponsoring and Operating Terror,'' Special
Information Bulletin, Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center at
the Center for Special Studies, Israel, April 2003, http://
www.intelligence.org.il/eng/iran.htm.
\25\ ``Iran and Syria as Strategic Support for Palestinian
Terrorism'' (report based on the interrogations of arrested Palestinian
terrorists and captured Palestinian Authority documents), Israel
Defense Forces, Military Intelligence, September 2002, http://
www.intelligence.org.il/eng.
\26\ Molly Moore and John Ward Anderson, ``Suicide Bombers Change
Mideast's Military Balance,'' Washington Post, August 17, 2002.
\27\ ``Iran Expands Its Palestinian Control; Offers al-Khadoumi
Five Million Dollars,'' al-Watan (Kuwait), December 13, 2004.
\28\ Stewart Bell, Cold Terror: How Canada Nurtures and Exports
Terrorism to the World (Wiley, 2004), p. 81.
\29\ USA v. Faouzi Ayoub, Indictment, Case 2:09-cr-20367, filed
under seal August 5, 2009, unsealed July 2011; see also Robert Snell,
``Dearborn Man Accused of Bomb Mission on FBI's Most Wanted List,''
Detroit News, July 6, 2011.
\30\ ``Intensive Intelligence Operation by the ISA Arrested in June
2002 Senior Hizballah Militant,'' press release communicated by the
prime minister's advisor, October 30, 2002,http://www.pmo.gov.il/
PMOEng/Archive/Press+Releases/2002/10/Spokesman6728.htm.
\31\ USA v. Faouzi Ayoub, Indictment, Case 2:09-cr-20367, filed
under seal August 5, 2009, unsealed July 2011; see also FBI Most Wanted
Terrorists: Faouzi Mohamad Ayoub, http://www.fbi.gov/wanted/
wanted_terrorists/faouzi-mohamad-ayoub.
\32\ ``ISA Arrests Senior Hizballah Terrorist,'' communicated by
prime minister's advisor, October 30, 2002, accessed at
www.imra.org.il; see also ``Iranian Activities in Support of the
Palestinian Intifada,'' communicated by Israeli security sources,
Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, January 30, 2003,http://
www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/go.asp?MFAH0n6j0.
\33\ ``Hizballah's International Terrorism and the Penetration of
Hizballah Activists into Israel,'' undated Israeli intelligence report
received by the author, August 5, 2003.
\34\ Adrain Humphryes, ``Canadian Seen as Planner of Hebron
Attack,'' National Post (Canada), November 18, 2002.
\35\ Stewart Bell, Cold Terror: How Canada Nurtures and Exports
Terrorism to the World (Wiley, 2004), p. 116.
\36\ ``Hezbollah Confirms Egypt Arrest,'' BBC News, April 10, 2009,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7994304.stm.
\37\ ``Overview of State-Supported Terrorism in 1985,'' Terrorism
Review, Directorate of Intelligence, Central Intelligence Agency,
January 13, 1986, approved for release June 1999, http://
www.foia.cia.gov/docs/DOC_0000258586/DOC_0000258586.pdf.
\38\ Jacque Neriah, ``Iran Steps Up Arming Hizbullah against
Israel,'' Jerusalem Issue Briefs 10, no. 21, Jerusalem Center for
Public Affairs, January 10, 2011,http://www.jcpa.org/JCPA/Templates/
ShowPage.asp?DRIT=1&DBID=1&LNGID=1&TMID=111&FID=442&PID=
0&IID=5660&TTL=Iran_Steps_Up_Arming_Hizbullah_Against_Israel.
\39\ ``Directed Study of Lebanese Hezbollah'' (Nashville: Universal
Strategy Group: Research and Analysis Division, 2011), p. 41.
\40\ ``Iranian Intelligence Activity in Uganda,'' undated Israeli
intelligence report, corroborated in separate author interview with
Israeli intelligence official, Tel Aviv, July 2003.
\41\ Ibid.
\42\ See entry for ``Mashhad'' at the Places of Peace and Power
Website, http://sacredsites.com/middle_east/iran/mashhad.html.
\43\ ``Iranian Intelligence Activity in Uganda,'' undated Israeli
intelligence report, corroborated in separate author interview with
Israeli intelligence official, Tel Aviv, July 2003.
\44\ Ibid.
\45\ Vice Adm. Lowell E. Jacoby, USN, Director, Defense
Intelligence Agency, ``Current and Projected National Security Threats
to the United States,'' testimony before the Senate Select Committee on
Intelligence, February 16, 2005, http://intelligence.senate.gov/
threats.pdf.
\46\ ``Middle East Terrorism: The Threat and Possible U.S.
Responses,'' Directorate of Intelligence, Central Intelligence Agency,
February 15, 1985, approved for release June 1999, http://
www.foia.cia.gov/docs/DOC_0000256571/DOC_0000256571.pdf.
\47\ Dennis C. Blair, Director of National Intelligence, ``Annual
Threat Assessment of the Intelligence Community for the Senate Select
Committee on Intelligence,'' February 12, 2009,http://www.dni.gov/
testimonies/20090212_testimony.pdf.
\48\ James Glanz, ``U.S. Says Arms Link Iranians to Iraqi
Shiites,'' New York Times, February 12, 2007, http://www.nytimes.com/
2007/02/12/world/middleeast/12weapons.html?pagewanted=all.
\49\ Tim Susman and Borzou Daragahi, ``The Conflict in Iraq:
Accusations of Interference; U.S. Makes Case that Iran Arms Flow into
Iraq,'' Los Angeles Times, February 12, 2007, http://
articles.latimes.com/2007/feb/12/world/fg-iraqiran12.
\50\ Press briefing with Brig. Gen. Kevin Bergner, spokesman,
Multi-National Force-Iraq, Baghdad, July 2, 2007, http://www.usf-
iraq.com/?option=com_content&task=view&id=12641& Itemid=131.
\51\ ``Unclassified Report on Military Power of Iran,''
Congressionally Directed Action (CDA) re: Military Power of Iran, April
2010, p. 3, http://www.offnews.info/downloads/militaryPower Iran.pdf.
\52\ ``Update to Initial Findings from Karbala; Militant Attack
Used Deception, U.S. Army Type Uniforms,'' Multi-National Corps--Iraq
Public Affairs Office, Release No. 20070126-21a, January 26, 2007,
http://www.usf-iraq.com/
?option=com_content&task=view&id=9542&Itemid=21; Steven R. Hurst,
``Four U.S. Soldiers Abducted and Fatally Shot during Attack in
Southern Iraq,'' Associated Press, January 27, 2007.
\53\ ``Terrorism Review,'' Directorate of Intelligence, Central
Intelligence Agency, October 22, 1987, approved for release June 1999,
http://www.foia.cia.gov/.
\54\ ``Lebanon's Hizballah: Testing Political Waters, Keeping
Militant Agenda [redacted],'' Central Intelligence Agency, July 1992,
http://www.foia.cia.gov/docs/DOC_0000676447/DOC_ 0000676447.pdf.
\55\ Testimony of Ambassador Philip Wilcox, hearing on ``Terrorism
in Latin America/AMIA Bombing in Argentina'' before the Committee on
International Relations, House of Representatives, September 28, 1995.
\56\ Testimony of Mr. Tommy Baer, president of B'nai Brith, hearing
on ``Terrorism in Latin America/AMIA Bombing in Argentina'' before the
Committee on International Relations, House of Representatives,
September 28, 1995, p. 34 of oral testimony.
\57\ Benjamin Birnbaum, ``General in Latin America Trains Eye on
Middle East,'' Washington Times, July 29, 2010.
\58\ Kevin G. Hall, ``U.S. Says Iran Plot to Kill Saudi Ambassador
Hatched in Mexico,'' Miami Herald, October 11, 2001.
Senator Casey. Doctor, thank you very much.
I want to thank all of our witnesses.
We will go to our first round of questions. And the
admonition on time will apply to the members of the panel as
well, and I will try to do it by way of example.
I wanted to first ask a broad question, and I know that
answering this is difficult in a short timeframe. I wanted to
ask you to look at the threat posed by the Iranian regime in
the context of our national security interests. I would ask any
member of the panel. We can start with the Ambassador and go
down the panel. The question is, What activities or
relationships that Iran engages in demonstrate the most
significant threat to our national security interests? And No.
2, what should we do about that?
Ambassador Jeffrey. Very briefly, Mr. Chairman. Clearly
Iran's pursuit of a nuclear weapons option, as my colleagues
have pointed out, is the most dangerous thing that they could
possibly do and the thing that gets this right up to the top
level of U.S. national security.
The second major threat that emanates from Iran has to do
with economics and specifically oil, not so much Iranian oil
but its ability to disrupt oil supplies from the Middle East as
a reaction to something we might do or something it could do at
some point, for example, if it felt that the sanctions were so
pressuring its own oil exports that it could basically revenge
itself. There was an example of this in the late 1980s when the
Iraqi campaign against Iranian exports was so successful that
the Iranians then lashed out at shipping all over the gulf.
This led to a successful U.S. military operation against Iran,
but it kept the whole area in tumult for 2 years.
The third threat is a more general one, and this is where
terrorism is so important. Essentially it is a U.S. national
interest to keep a Middle East that is stable. Given the
collision of religions and cultures there, given its central
place just from the standpoint of transport with the Suez
Canal, the Dardanelles, the Strait of Hormuz, and on and on,
given its oil riches and given the potential danger from
nuclear-armed or chemical weapons-armed states, it is very,
very important that something that resembles a rule of law and
an international order obtain there. It is one of the few areas
of the world where we do not really have that. We are
constantly engaged in military operations, big or small. We
have done about 20 since 1979, Desert I. And the future looks
like we may have to do more.
So, therefore, Iran's leading role in challenging an
international order and ignoring the U.N. and supporting terror
and carrying it out itself, taken together with its other two
threats, the nuclear threat and the economic threat, make this
an A league problem along with several others that we really
have to focus on, and I think we do.
Thank you.
Senator Casey. Anybody else on that question?
Dr. Byman. Mr. Chairman, let me add briefly. Iran's use of
terrorism has potential to destabilize allies that may be, I
will say, tottering or at least weak for other reasons,
particularly with regard to the Arab Spring. When you take
political protests and introduce a small amount of violence, it
can lead to a cycle of
escalation where the regime legitimates a crackdown. That
crackdown in turn produces more violence. And since Iran has
the ability to stir up violence in a number of states,
especially in the region, that is of grave concern.
But let me also add two things.
One is that Iran has the ability to try to disrupt the
peace process between Israel and the Palestinians. Right now
effectively there is no peace process. So that does not matter
in a sense. But should, as I hope, there be a peace process,
Iran has consistently in the past seen the peace process as,
from their point of view, morally wrong, but beyond that, as a
threat to Iran as a way to isolate Iran and has been successful
in helping disrupt it.
Iran also, I would say, got away very lightly with planning
a terrorist attack on United States soil. It seemed it was a
bungling attempt that came nowhere near completion, but had the
attack
succeeded, it would have killed a number of Americans, as well
as an ambassador of a very important ally. And because it did
not succeed, there was no response, and to me that is not the
appropriate way to do this. You have to think about the
intention because with terrorism sometimes things will succeed
and sometimes things will go wrong, and you do not wait until
success to respond.
And on this broader point, Iran right now is serving as a
de facto haven for al-Qaeda, and I do not want to exaggerate
this. It is not like the Taliban's Afghanistan. But you have a
number of senior
al-Qaeda figures that enjoy a certain degree of immunity within
Iran, and ironically as the drone campaign has made Pakistan a
very dangerous place for al-Qaeda figures, having even a place
simply to not be killed is quite beneficial to the
organization. And Iran has played an important role.
Senator Casey. Thanks.
Ms. Pletka. Let me just add very quickly. I think the point
that Dan just made about al-Qaeda is really important. It is
important not to overstate it. You are right.
But the Iranians in April released Abu Hafs Al-Mauritani
who was believed to be at the table with bin Laden when he
planned the 9/11 attacks. He was released to Mauritania.
Mauritania just released him because he has ``reformed.'' What
was he doing in Iran under what is called a loose form of house
arrest? There is plenty of evidence.
The other thing--and I agree with my colleagues, but the
other thing that has not gotten mentioned enough is Iran's
willingness to arm not just the special groups in Iraq in the
past, but also arming the Taliban against NATO forces in
Afghanistan. Both the United States and the British have spoken
out very aggressively against that. But the Iranians are trying
to kill our soldiers everywhere they find them.
Senator Casey. Doctor.
Dr. Levitt. I would just add that both Iran and Hezbollah
are desperate to engage in these types of activities in ways
that enable them to have reasonable deniability. What we have
to do is to expose these activities at every turn. I disagree
with those who think it is a problem that the administration
has not come out and said that the Bulgaria attack was
Hezbollah. However, once the evidence comes out, the
administration acknowledges--directly, not anonymously, as they
continue in the media--Iran and Hezbollah's ability to engage
in these types of attacks. This includes not only a failed
attack here in Washington, DC, but, as Danny said, Khobar
Towers and other instances in which they succeeded and that
there is no cost makes them believe, ever since the days of the
Beirut bombings, that they can engage in these types of
activities. They are inexpensive and are free or larger
political cost. And if you can engage in reasonable
deniability, it makes it harder for your adversary to respond
even if you wanted to. We need to remove that veneer and
replace it with an indisputable cost.
If there is one thing I would recommend, I suggest
targeting Iranians' diplomatic missions, and because we are
here, I would focus on the Western Hemisphere because we know
that Iran supports terrorism out of its diplomatic
institutions. We know that the number and the size of Iran's
diplomatic institutions in South America are completely out of
whack with its presence, and this is something in which we
could have some tangible impact.
Senator Casey. Thank you.
Senator Risch.
Senator Risch. Thank you, Senator Casey.
I wonder. I would like to get each of you briefly to give
me your personal opinion on what a post-Assad, post-Alawite
Syria looks like because there is, obviously, lots of opinions
out there, but I would like your personal opinions on it, and
how that will affect the relationship between Iran and Syria.
We will start with Mr. Ambassador.
Ambassador Jeffrey. Thank you, Mr. Risch.
First of all, it is very difficult to divine what will
come, but I think that our experience elsewhere in the region
indicates that we should not be as worried as we may be about
al-Qaeda or an
al-Qaeda-like Salafis force taking charge. I think we have very
good contacts with some of the people who are in the
resistance, and all in all, it will be a better place after
Assad than it was with Assad. Once again, I will use the
example of Iraq. We have certainly had our bad moments with
Iraq since 2003, but all of us know that the Iraq since 2003
and certainly the Iraq of today is all in all a far better
place and a far bigger contributor to a stable Middle East than
Iraq was under Saddam Hussein. So all in all, I would say it is
worth the risk, but once again, we do not know exactly what
will come out of it.
Where it will particularly be worrisome, even if you do not
get this extreme Sunni Islamic takeover that some people see,
is, as Danny Pletka mentioned earlier, the impact particularly
on Iraq but in the region generally between Shia and Sunni
Islam. This is a fault line that goes deeper than Iran, that
goes deeper than
al-Qaeda, that goes deeper than most of the other things that
we look at in the Middle East. It is a little bit like, a
decade-plus ago, the Christian-Muslim split in the Balkans that
was the driving force for many of the specific campaigns,
Bosnia, Kosovo, and several others we managed to nip in the
bud.
This is a very dangerous phenomenon. A flip in the
government in Syria would put pressure on all three groups in
Iraq: the Sunnis to take a more active role in politics because
they would feel reinforced; the Shia who would feel pressed
against the wall because ironically the Alawite minority, which
is very secular and not very Islamic, is still characterized as
a part of Shia Islam; and the Kurds who have been sitting on
the fence both in Syria and in Iraq as to which way things
would go. So you would have a particular impact on Iraq if you
did get a change.
But again, my feeling is that this is probably inevitable.
It is probably, all in all, to our advantage. And at the detail
level of how much to our advantage, that is a question of good
policy and good diplomacy.
Senator Risch. Dr. Byman.
Dr. Byman. To emphasize the obvious, we do not know, of
course, what is going to happen in Syria, I would say, next
week let alone a year from now or 5 years out. But I think it
is fairly safe to say that any state that emerges is going to
be very weak and very prone to instability. We have seen
growing sectarianism in the conflict. War has created a dynamic
that exacerbated what was already there.
And of particular concern to me is that a post-Assad Syria
might not actually be a post-Assad regime Syria, that we might
see this regime lose power in much of the country and
essentially hunker down in certain cantonments and parts of it
while the opposition fights among itself.
What has really been striking in a disheartening way in
Syria has been the lack of unity within the opposition. We are
over a year into what has become the bloodiest part of the Arab
Spring, and right now we see a lack of unity politically. We
see a lack of unity militarily. The United States has been
working, I will say, mainly with external voices that appear to
have relatively little influence within Syria, and frankly,
from what I can tell, our policy of working with the external
voices has not even succeeded on that limited basis. So I am
very concerned we are going to see a fractured Syria and one
that will be a source of instability for not only Syria but for
the region in general in the years to come.
One silver lining is I think almost no matter what comes
out of Syria, it is going to be bad news for Iran. A year and a
half ago, they had a good, dependable ally at the heart of the
Arab world, and if this ally is weakened, that is a good thing.
If this ally falls, that is a good thing. And beyond that, Iran
has been further discredited because it is seen as supporting
the forces of oppression. So this is one of the silver linings
that has come out of what is a very tragic situation.
Senator Risch. Ms. Pletka.
Ms. Pletka. As I had a piece in the Washington Post on this
on Sunday, I am going to spend a lot of time quoting myself,
which is an unattractive Washington habit.
I do not agree with Dan at all about the opposition. The
Democratic Party is fractured, and it has the White House and
the Senate. The Republican Party is fractured and it has the
House and a Presidential candidate people think might win.
The reality of opposition groups is opposition groups fight
with each other, and when they do not have a great power
backing, as the Libyans did, then they fight a lot more because
there is no one outside to hold out the sort of fruits of
victory and explain to them what that would mean and try and
broker the disagreements that occur. So instead, we spend all
of our time as a matter of policy saying, oh, they are very
fractured. They really disagree. It is really distressing.
Obviously, they disagree. That is what countries have is
fractured oppositions and people who disagree with each other.
It is a democracy that can absorb those disagreements, and that
is what we hope Syria will become.
I would argue that if we continue to pay as little
attention as we have to the future of Syria, it will, in fact,
be a problem and will be unstable and will represent
potentially a risk for our interests in the region. If we get
more involved and we work more closely with our European allies
and we work with all of the Syrian opposition, not just the
Turkey-based opposition, I think absolutely we have an
opportunity to help Syria move in the right direction, as Libya
has, as Tunisia has, and we hope as Egypt has. So I am not as
pessimistic and I think that the United States has an important
role to play if only we choose to play it.
Senator Risch. Thank you.
Dr. Levitt.
Dr. Levitt. In brief, I just want to say it is going to be
weak. It is going to be weak, but it is not going to be as
friendly or capable an ally to Iran. Most Syrians, I think, are
probably pretty angry with Iran right now for continuing to
support this regime. For a long time, people had hoped that a
major Sunni general would get up and make a deal with the
Alawites, the massacres would stop and things would move
forward. And that did not happen.
I think it is true that the opposition is fractured and
perhaps there is good reason for that, but I think there is a
lot more that we can and need to do to work with that
opposition or even oppositions to move this along, because in
the interim Syrians are dying and it is a very messy situation.
I think the longer things go this way, the messier it is
afterward.
The final comment comes from a terrorism perspective. There
is concern that there are some al-Qaeda elements that have
infiltrated in, and there is concern that Muslim Brotherhood
elements have played too large a role in the opposition. But I
think it was today's New York Times that cited an al-Qaeda Web
posting from Syria. They ran it in today's Times, but the Web
posting is from February.
Senator Risch. Thank you.
Mr. Chairman, my time is up.
Senator Casey. Thank you, Senator Risch.
Senator Menendez.
Senator Menendez. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you all for your testimony.
I would like to get a sense from you what you believe the
impact of the U.S., EU, and U.N. sanctions has been on
financially constraining the ability of Iran to export
terrorism, if at all. If so, could you give us a sense of it.
And if not, if your answer is that it has not really ultimately
deterred or hindered Iran's ability to export terrorism, then
what would? How could we achieve that goal in addition to,
obviously, our goal of trying to deter their path toward
nuclear weapons? I will open it up to anyone.
Dr. Levitt. Well, I am the former Treasury guy, so I will
jump in.
I think, first of all, it is important to note that almost
all of our sanctions are proliferation-focused. They are not
terrorism-focused. I can think of only one, the Bank Saderat
action, which was explicitly done for a counterterrorism
purpose. That said, it is not like Iran keeps its proliferation
money and its terrorism money in separate banks.
I do think it has had an impact, though it is limited. I
had a piece in Foreign Affairs a little while back called
``Party of Fraud'' about Hezbollah's movement into criminality
to complement its funding. One of the reasons for this, and its
increased prominence over the past few years, including its
move into the drug trade, is because a few years back, Iran cut
Hezbollah's funding we believe by somewhere between 30 and
maybe even 40 percent for a period of time. So even if they are
limited to 60 percent of their funds, they can still buy the
bullets and the missiles they want, but they cannot fund their
other programs, and they cannot pay their salaries, which is a
significant setback for Hezbollah. It does not minimize their
ability to target Israel, the United States, or to do things in
Bulgaria or Cyprus or potential targets. That is relatively
inexpensive, but it has had an impact. The question is how do
you sustain this impact. We do not think that has lasted very
long.
So I do think other actions are necessary, including, as I
said earlier, exposing and highlighting every time we see them
doing something. I am reminded of a story of the current White
House counterterrorism advisor, John Brennan, while he was in
Saudi Arabia--I think Tenet writes about it in his book--at one
point Brennan approached an Iranian officer parked in his car
and knocked on his window and say, hey, how are you doing? Good
morning. How is it going? That exposed the Iranian officer and
likely caused him no small amount of discomfort when asked why
it was that an American appeared to know him. Denying Iran the
ability to operate with reasonable deniability is critical, so
that it is no longer the case that there is no literal or
diplomatic cost to their activities. And I think if you start
using all elements of national power, we can get a lot farther.
We have been doing that now on the nuclear side. We need to do
the same on the terrorism side too, and that means convincing
some of our allies that Iran is not only a nuclear threat but
also a terrorism threat.
Senator Menendez. Yes.
Ms. Pletka. I agree with Matt completely. We finished a
report at AEI just earlier this year about Iranian support for
a variety of groups throughout the region, and one of the
things we saw was that Iran's economic troubles and the
sanctions have definitely cut the amount of money they are able
to spend and they are able to give to Hamas, to Palestinian
Islamic Jihad, and even to the kind of softer things that they
were doing. Trade agreements and things like that, really were
not being fulfilled.
But Matt is exactly right. The problem is that that does
not curtail the ability of these terrorist groups that are
supported by Iran to continue undertaking acts of terrorism.
One of the things we really can do is do a much better job in
outing the Iranians. The fact that the President suggested that
we see no threat coming from Venezuela, where the Iranians and
Hezbollah have been enormously active on a variety of fronts
clearly directed toward the United States, is a disappointment.
There are many, many more things that we ought to be doing
to be frank about it. We can absolutely do more on the visa
front, even on that very simple front, with our allies to
ensure that Iranian officials really cannot travel. We can do
more about Iran Air, which is still able to fly to many places
around the world and is used by the Iranians to transport
weapons and personnel for a whole variety of nefarious
purposes. So those are two simple things that we might start
with.
Senator Menendez. Yes.
Dr. Byman. Very briefly I want to emphasize a point that
Matt made about publicizing this. But a part of the key to me
is to publicize it within Iran. Support for a number of these
groups is not at all popular in Iran and in part due to
sanctions and in large part due to mismanagement, Iran itself
has huge economic problems, and so sending money overseas to
support a range of groups is not something that average
Iranians strongly support. And simply highlighting again and
again to the Iranian people that the choices their regime makes
are negative on a daily basis for ordinary Iranians in a bread
and butter sense to me is very important. And terrorism is
actually a very good one to do. I think there is probably more
support among the Iranian people for the nuclear program than
there is for support for a range of extremist groups.
Senator Menendez. And if that information flow, which is
obviously not going to come from the Iranians since there is
not really a free press process in Iran--if that information
came from surrogate broadcasting like our Voice of America
efforts and whatnot, do you think that that would have
credibility?
Dr. Byman. I think anything that comes directly or
indirectly from U.S. officials will be questioned. That is not
an issue. The thing to me is you are forcing a debate. You are
forcing the Iranians to discuss the issue, to deny it.
Iran is actually tremendously open from a media environment
point of view if you look at the large number of Iranians in
exile who are in regular contact with friends and family back
home, if you look at the tremendous availability of technology
within Iran. So the key to me is not--this is not North Korea.
It is not a problem of getting messages in. What you want to do
is force them to respond to it. They will still say it is all
lies, but nevertheless, simply having that debate puts them on
the defensive.
Ambassador Jeffrey. Senator, I agree with everything that
my colleagues have said.
Very briefly, indirectly these sanctions are very, very
effective against not only terrorism but the other tools that
the Iranians have. We have been involved for at least 30 years
in a low intensity competition, conflict, close to war with
Iran on a variety of fronts. One of the more common tools that
they use as they see asymmetrical warfare against us, against
Western interests, against the interests of the bulk of the
states in the Middle East is terror. We can counter that
directly and we have at times and at times we have not.
But more importantly, we are now effectively carrying out a
variety of steps that are squeezing Iran in its campaign, most
importantly the oil sanctions, but its general isolation
through the U.N., the EU, and other activities, and third what
is going on in Syria. And to the extent that we continue to
work closely with our gulf allies, with Iraq, with Afghanistan,
that we maintain as strong a presence in the region as
possible, supporting Israel, and looking for every opportunity,
we counter what is going on. It is very hard to list all of the
things we are doing and say this one blocks this, this one
deters that because it is a very broad campaign. But right now,
we are in many respects on the offensive, as are they in
reaction to us with their terrorist attacks.
Senator Menendez. Well, thank you all. I will just close
with a comment--I think that we can squeeze the noose even more
by the negotiations that are currently going on between the
House and the Senate to perfect, in essence, the CISADA
sanctions and to eliminate the loopholes that the Iranians
found on workarounds, including the Iranian shipping lines and
tanker companies, among others. I believe this effort will
further squeeze the Iranian's economically in this mutual
pursuit of having them deterred from their path toward nuclear
weapons as our last tool of peaceful diplomacy and allowing
them to have increasingly fewer resources for their promotion
of terrorism.
So thank you all. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Casey. Thank you, Senator Menendez.
Senator Lee.
Senator Lee. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thanks to each of you for joining us.
My first question I will direct first to Ms. Pletka and
then open it up to anyone else who might want to weigh in on
it.
On Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insisted on
national television in America that his government has what he
described as unquestionable evidence, unquestionable
intelligence showing that Hezbollah, with the backing of Iran,
was behind the suicide bombing in Bulgaria last week that
killed five Israeli nationals.
So, first, what is your assessment of Hezbollah's possible
involvement in that? And second, if Hezbollah was in fact
responsible for the attack, do you believe that this was
coordinated by Hezbollah or was it coordinated by the Iranian
Government in Tehran?
Ms. Pletka. Thank you, Senator.
I do not have an American security clearance, let alone an
Israeli one, so I have not seen the evidence and I do not know.
What I do know is that the Bulgarians say that this was a very
sophisticated operation, that as many as five people were to
believed to have been involved in it, that they flew into the
country perhaps even a month before.
Given the large number of attempted attacks--I said in my
opening testimony that there had been nine in recent months--I
think that it is not unreasonable to suppose that the Iranians
are helping to coordinate it. In some cases, the attacks that
we saw particularly against Israeli diplomats were exact
mirrors of the attacks against Iranian scientists that we saw
taking place in Tehran. There were bikers going by with sticky
bombs trying to attach bombs to cars to blow them up. Now,
perhaps that is a coincidence.
You know, Iran is capable of undertaking terrorist attacks
on its own with its own Quds Force personnel, but for them, the
lesson of the last 30 years is if you do it through a terrorist
group, through a proxy like Hezbollah, you are much less likely
to pay any price for it because there will be that confusion,
that sort of fog in the conflict. And that is what you see
right now.
You see that while Netanyahu is very aggressively going out
and naming names and accusing, that the U.S. Government, for
whatever reason, is being very reticent about that. I am
reluctant to believe that we have less good intelligence or
that the Israelis have not shared it with us. Nonetheless, we
seem reluctant to say exactly who was behind it. That is part
of our problem. We are always reluctant to say who is behind it
even when we have them dead to rights.
Senator Lee. Even when we know or have strong reason to
know.
Ms. Pletka. I encourage everybody to go--I linked it in my
testimony, so it is online. Go and read the indictment in the
Khobar Towers case. I cannot remember what was not classified
and what was, so I do not want to say anything inappropriate.
But let us just say that we had Iranian Government officials
spot-on, dead to rights involved in the coordination of the
attack at the time it took place, and nothing has happened.
Nothing.
Senator Lee. Anyone else care to add to that?
Dr. Levitt. One of the chapters in my book, Danny, is on
Khobar. So you will know exactly what is classified and what
has been declassified.
There are lots of reasons to suspect early on that
Hezbollah may have been involved. Hezbollah was thwarted in a
similar attempt to carry out an attack on Israeli tourists on
buses this past winter in Bulgaria. A Hezbollah individual was
caught and apparently confessed just a few weeks ago in Cyprus
to a plot that was almost identical, targeting buses at
airports, et cetera.
But I do not really blame the administration for publicly
stating that they will hold off until all the evidence has been
examined, because there are good evidentiary leads, such as DNA
and sketch artists' renditions. They have apparently tracked
down some of the rental agencies and things of that nature.
Brennan is right there. I am sure that we are helping. My guess
is, again not having access to the Israeli information, that
other sources and methods of the type that you were alluding,
suggest Hezbollah is a suspected perpretrator.
It would not surprise me at all if Iran provided some
support. The attack was carried out on the anniversary of the
AMIA bombing in Buenos Aires in 1994, and in that case, again,
public indictments are available on the Internet. We have the
Iranians dead to rights on their support for the Hezbollah
cell; several people came in weeks in advance to carry out the
attack. The fact that there are parallels is not in itself an
indictment, but there are plenty of parallels. I think we need
to let the investigation run its course, but I will be shocked
if we do not find out that, in fact, it was Hezbollah perhaps
with Iranian support.
Of all these attacks we have seen over the past year and a
half, some have been Hezbollah on its own, some have been Iran
on its own, some of have been the two of them together. Any
combination of that is possible.
Senator Lee. Do you ever worry, by the way, that with so
many bombings, that is going to give rise to even more
anniversary bombings? It is almost always the anniversary of
some bombing somewhere. That frightens me.
Dr. Levitt. Not really, because in my experience terrorists
love to use an anniversary when it is convenient, and if it is
not convenient, they will bomb you when they can. I am reminded
of the February-March 1996 string of bus bombings in Jerusalem
by Hamas, and one of them by Islamic Jihad, that impacted the
Israeli elections there. They claimed that the attack was in
response to the assassination of the Hamas bombmaker, Yahya
Ayyash, who had been killed by the Israelis. But once you got
into the investigation, it turned out that they were deep into
the planning stages of this operation months before Yahya
Ayyash was killed. So then the anniversary just became the
opportunity of coincidence.
Senator Lee. Do either of the other two of you care to
weigh in on that one?
[No response.]
Senator Lee. Ambassador Jeffrey, I have got one question
for you.
Iranian navy commander, Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayyari,
was quoted recently as saying just like the global hegemony
that is present near our Marine borders, we also plan to
establish a strong presence near U.S. Marine borders. What is
your assessment of the current strength of the Iranian Navy?
Ambassador Jeffrey. I am not a military expert. One of the
few parts of Iran's violent outreach that we did not have to
worry about in Iraq usually was the navy, although down in the
south, we did have some concerns about the terminals.
The main threat, as I understand it--but again there are
people who know a lot more about this than I--of the Iranian
Navy comes from its, again, asymmetrical warfare capabilities.
These include the speed boats which can swarm on a target and,
if nothing else, divert crews from other activities; the small,
but very lethal fleet of midget submarines that they have;
mine-laying capabilities; and the antishipping missiles that
they have located at various points along the coast that are
basically focused on the gulf, and all of the traffic in the
gulf is within range of it. So it is a multifaceted threat that
they pose. It is not a navy that could slug it out with us.
They tried that in 1987-1988 and they lost across the board.
But these asymmetrical capabilities that their navy has,
particularly the Revolutionary Guard Navy which has the lead in
the gulf as opposed to the regular navy which is down in the
Indian Ocean, I think are quite considerable and quite a lot of
concern to us, sir.
Senator Lee. So, in other words, when they talk about
establishing a presence somewhere, it is not necessarily a
presence in the same sense that we would use that term in terms
of a carrier group, but the fact that it is a smaller presence
and more subtle one does not mean that it is not dangerous.
Ambassador Jeffrey. Right, exactly. Basically they look at
laying mines, speed boats, terrorist activities, espionage--
they look at all of these things as counters to the
conventional capability that we, Israel, and the Sunni Arab
States of the Gulf all have over them.
Senator Lee. Thank you.
Thank you, Chairman. I see my time has expired.
Senator Casey. Thank you, Senator Lee.
Senator Cardin.
Senator Cardin. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much and thank
you for chairing this hearing. This is an extremely important
subject for U.S. national security interests. Iran is a very
dangerous country. It is an oppressive regime to its own
people, which is of great interest, I would hope, not only to
the United States but the international community. It is a
supporter of terrorism that is beyond any dispute. The fact
that they have increased activities against Israeli interests
is of major concern to all of us. The fact that they have
shipped arms to terrorist organizations from Hezbollah to Hamas
and other terrorist groups and supporting the Assad regime in
Syria, all those give us great concern as to what is happening
in Iran. And I followed your answers as to whether sanctions
are working and how effective they have been.
But one thing we know, there has been increased activity by
Iran. We know that they are still seeking to become a nuclear
weapons state, which would be a game-changer in the Middle
East.
I want to first ask as to whether any of you have an
opinion as to whether Iran is targeting the United States
directly. We have seen evidence with the Saudi Ambassador in
2011. Do we have any increased concern about Iranian terrorist
activities that could actually come to United States soil?
Dr. Byman. Senator, that to me is one of the biggest
concerns about what we have seen in Iranian behavior in the
last several years. From my take, it is not a direct desire to
target the United States within the U.S. homeland. It is much
more a willingness to kill Americans as part of other
operations, so going after Israeli or Jewish targets in India
or elsewhere, some of the plots being concerned would have led
to deaths of Americans. Most important, the attack on the Saudi
Ambassador in the United States, had it succeeded, would have
killed many Americans dining in the same restaurant, and that
would not have been the target, but the fact that that did not
stay their hand, to me is actually rather dramatic. That is a
very big change from what we have seen recently. As the
Ambassador can testify much more authoritatively than I can,
Iran, of course, is responsible for backing an array of groups
in Iraq and also Afghanistan that have gone after Americans. So
we have seen them be more aggressive in a variety of ways and a
willingness to inflict casualties on Americans. So to me this
is of tremendous concern. It is different in some way than the
1996 Khobar Towers bombing where it was a direct ``we want to
kill Americans in Saudi Arabia.'' But it is moving more toward
that direction. It shows Iran is more willing to take risks. It
shows it is willing to be more confrontational, and this is a
shift that to me is quite dangerous.
Senator Cardin. Should we be looking more toward attacks
against Americans, Dr. Levitt?
Dr. Levitt. I would just add that the Director of National
Intelligence who testified before Congress that the Arbabsiar
plot--the plot targeting the Saudi Ambassador here in
Washington, DC--suggested that at least some within the Iranian
decisionmaking elite no longer saw a redline for carrying out
attacks directly targeting Americans. I think that is
tremendously significant. It goes beyond the support for
militants in Afghanistan, even beyond the much more proactive
and hands-on support for plots directly targeting Americans in
Iraq, and reportedly some of the recent plots going on
internationally may have been targeting American interests too,
including the last plot in Azerbaijan targeting reportedly
United States diplomats there.
So I do think that Iran traditionally is aggressive and we
are traditionally risk-averse. I think Iran has become much
more aggressive in part because it perceives a need to be more
aggressive in response to the shadow war. I think we need to do
more to pull this out of the shadows because, as you said, Iran
is increasingly dangerous on the CT front, the nuclear front,
to the human rights front, et cetera.
Senator Cardin. I want to talk about what the Iranian game
plan is in regards to its activities in Syria. Syria, by far,
has had the most international attention of late for good
reason. The Assad regime is causing incredible human rights
violations. The Iranian regime is one of the supporters of the
Assad regime. One thing is certain: Assad will not last much
longer. We are going to see a regime change. It will happen. I
think most people agree on that. Iran understands the dynamics
of what is happening in Syria, and yet they support the Assad
regime. We also know the Sunni ethnic population would most
likely have more impact in the next government of Syria. You
would assume that there would be some accommodations made. And
yet Iran seems to be reaching out to have influence in the next
regime in Syria. I do not think we can just
assume that it will be an anti-Iranian regime.
Do you all have any views as to how you see Iran playing
the developments in Syria to further its own objectives of
international relevancy and maintaining its current objectives
against Israel and United States interests?
Ms. Pletka. Iran is obviously very active on the ground. I
mean, there are IRGC forces on the ground fighting with the
regime against the rebels. I think we have ample videos. They
are available on YouTube. You can see them. In fact, Iran is so
deeply involved, that the bombing that killed four now senior
Cabinet officials in the Syrian Government was rumored to have
also killed Qasem Sulemani, the head of the Quds Force. I do
not know what the news is today, but he has not surfaced since
then and he was in Damascus at the time. So I do not know
whether it is reliable or not, but that is how deeply involved
the Iranians are in their defense of the Assad regime.
I would, I think, respectfully disagree a little bit about
a post-Assad Syria. I think that Iran has had its fingers so
clearly involved in the continuation of the Assad regime and
the Assad regime is so profoundly hated by the vast mass of the
Syrian people that the odds that Iran will have any influence
other than through violence or sponsorship of terrorism inside
Syria in a post-Assad scenario I think is very limited.
The real question is----
Senator Cardin. Do all three of you agree with that? You
think that it is pretty much a foregone conclusion, based upon
what Iran has done on the ground, that we will have the next
Syrian regime as an ally as it relates to actions against Iran
or not?
Mr. Ambassador.
Ambassador Jeffrey. Right. Having dealt with Iraq, an ally
of ours, on some of the bad days, as well as good days, with it
as an ally, I am a little bit cautious about predicting that
what will emerge from Syria would be an ally.
What I would say is that Iran--and here I agree 150 percent
with Danny--is totally committed to the Assad regime and its
maintenance of power because if the Assad regime falls and a
Sunni government takes over, Iran first of all fears that it
will lose its influence that has brought it to the
Mediterranean, gives it an ally in what it sees as its struggle
against Israel. But also, as I mentioned earlier, there is this
fissure bubbling underneath the surface in the Middle East
between Sunni Islam and Shia Islam, and Iran sees itself as the
champion of Shia Islam, and ironically it sees the Alawite
regime as an outpost of Shia Islam. And so this would be a
terrible blow to it under any and all circumstances.
I mean, I would characterize Iran's position with Syria
with the United States position toward Egypt. At times, we are
trying to nudge the Mubarak administration along; at times, we
are reaching out to the opposition. At the end of the day, we
figured regardless of what happens, we will try to have a
relationship, including a military relationship, with the new
regime. I do not see Iran playing a similar role in Syria. They
are committed to keep this regime in power and they will do
anything and everything they can, I believe, to do so.
Senator Cardin. I would just make an observation, Mr.
Chairman, and I will yield the floor. One of the options, of
course, is that there is a coup from within and that there is
no predictability as to what type of government comes next. And
there could be a government that, yes, includes more
representation from the Sunnis but does not break its ties to
the minority ethnic population and its ties to Iran. I just
think it is something we have to watch very carefully. I think
all of us are somewhat suspect as to what type of government
comes next and how close they will be to U.S. interests. I was
just pointing out would we have a friend as it relates to
policies against Iran, not a friend as it relates to maybe
other issues in that region.
But I think your responses have been very helpful, and I
thank you very much for your answers.
Senator Casey. Thank you, Senator Cardin.
Senator Udall.
Senator Udall. Thank you, Chairman Casey and Ranking Member
Risch. A very important hearing today and I very much
appreciate the witnesses here and the discussion already.
It is well known that Iran has been attempting to increase
its influence in Iraq before and after the end of United States
involvement in the war. And in addition, it has also been
reported that Iran gave support to the Northern Alliance in
Afghanistan prior to the allied invasion to overthrow the
Taliban.
With regards to Afghanistan, do you believe that Iran will
look to continue its influence of groups inside Afghanistan,
and is it feasible that we could see an increase of Iranian
activity as the United States draws down its forces and turns
over security responsibilities to the Afghan Government?
Ambassador.
Ambassador Jeffrey. Judging from my experience in Iraq and
my general following of what is going on in Afghanistan, I
think you can count on Iran, particularly as it is pressured
ever more with what is going on in Syria, with what is
happening internationally, with what is happening with its oil
trade, to find ways to strike back. One way that it will see a
vulnerability will be in Afghanistan. It has long had good
relations both with the people of the Northern Alliance that
overthrew the Taliban, but more recently, as we have discussed
earlier today, it has been providing arms to Taliban and
Taliban-associated groups that have been attacking us and NATO
forces in the south of the country, and I think it will
continue to play that role. It is an economy of force role, as
with Iraq. It allows them, with a relatively limited amount of
money and weapons and personnel, to maintain a presence on the
ground. I think you are going to see that. I think it is a
challenge but it is not something that we cannot deal with. We
dealt with it in Iraq. We are still dealing with it in Iraq,
and we can deal with it in Afghanistan as well.
Senator Udall. Do any of the others have--yes?
Ms. Pletka. We are not, obviously, here to talk about
Afghanistan that much, but one of the additional tools that the
Iranians bring to bear is the fact that they are home to more
than a million Afghan refugees. Now, that is a very substantial
burden for them. So on the refugee side, let us say good that
they are there. They are in refugee camps along the Afghan
border. And one of the things that they regularly do to
destabilize the Karzai government and to try and complicate the
economic situation and the political situation in Afghanistan
is threaten to dump all the refugees back in Afghanistan. So it
is not just a weapons strategy. They have a very sophisticated
political, economic, and military strategy vis-a-vis
Afghanistan that is interested in ensuring that the country
remains unstable.
Dr. Byman. Iran has been involved in various civil wars in
Afghanistan really since the beginning of the Islamic republic.
It has not been very successful. It has worked with a wide
array of groups, but most of them took their money, took their
weapons, and then went and did what they had planned to do in
the first place. And I think this experience has taught Iran
some caution. Their goals in Afghanistan are quite real but
they are limited. A colleague of mine said that talking about
Iranian support for these groups is a bit like talking about
illegal immigration from Canada, you know, that when you
compare it to Pakistan which is so involved really up to its
neck in supporting a wide array of very anti-American, anti-
Karzai groups, that the Iranian role by comparison is minor.
But Iran is focused, I would say, also logically enough
along its border, and as a result, Iran does not want a strong
central Afghan Government. It is fine with having a certain
degree of instability along its border, and with that
guaranteed instability elsewhere in the country, if it sees the
regime is hostile.
As the U.S. forces draw down, there is likely to be a void.
I do not see many credible expectations that the Afghan
Government will be particularly robust when this happens. And
in this void, in part to counter Pakistan, in part to counter
the Taliban, Iran may act, but conversely if other factions are
strong that Iran opposes, Iran may end up working with these
various groups. So I think Iran will be very flexible. But I
also think the good news is it may not be very successful.
Senator Udall. Dr. Levitt, any thoughts?
Dr. Levitt. The only contribution I can make to these words
of wisdom is just that in the immediate, I think Iran would be
perfectly happy, especially since it does not have the American
targets in Iraq anymore, to provide military assistance to
those who are targeting American and NATO troops there. That
limited objective it is able to do easily at very little cost
without having to worry about the larger objectives of
maintaining instability or a relatively weak central
government. And so I am concerned that we will see an increase
in this type of lethal assistance to our adversaries in
Afghanistan.
Senator Udall. Thank you and thank you very much, Chairman
Casey.
Senator Casey. Thank you, Senator Udall.
I know we have to wrap up. I want to pose one question and
ask for 30- to 45-second answers, if you can do that, and I
know it is not enough time.
The predicate for the question--and I am not sure there is
much disagreement--is that we have established, even prior to
this hearing and certainly on the record in this hearing, that
No. 1, the possibility that Iran could develop nuclear
capability is a direct threat to the United States and
certainly to the Middle East even more directly. No. 2, on a
separate track, Iran is the backer and the banker of all the
bad guys in the region. And No. 3, they export terrorism beyond
the region.
So if you look at this challenge on those three tracks, the
question that I have--and I am sure many others do as well--is
what should the United States do on the track related to Iran's
support for terror in the region and beyond the region, even in
the absence of nuclear capability which, of course, we cannot
discount?
Mr. Ambassador, I will start with you. If you had a short
list for what the United States should do, what would it be?
Ambassador Jeffrey. It is very short, sir, because again,
Iran is not to terror as al-Qaeda is to terror. It is one of
the tools in its toolbox that it uses in this long-term
campaign. We are engaged, I think, quite effectively at the
moment in a countercampaign against it. So it is a question of
tweaking that counteroffensive that we are underway with.
More work on the sanctions. We have been very successful
and we have had a crushing impact on the Iranian economy. That
is a good thing.
Second, Syria is an opportunity unparalleled in the last 30
years for us, and if we can play a more active role there, I
think that that would be very, very beneficial not simply
through the Turks. For example, the chemical weapons threats
that we have been hearing emanating from Syria--that begs the
question of what will we do if they threaten chemical weapons
again. It is a relatively easy thing for us to take a strong
position on.
And again countering by speaking out, by using
counterterrorist tools that we have had for many years, as this
campaign goes on, because it will go on, against Israeli and
American and possibly Saudi and other Sunni Arab interests.
But at the other hand, the one tool that we also have to be
aware of is this fissure line between Shia and Sunni Islam. It
is very, very important that we not see ourselves or have
ourselves positioned on one side of that versus the rest of the
region because the rest of the region includes large minorities
in Bahrain and in Yemen and elsewhere and, of course, a
majority of the population in Iraq. So it is a very, very
touchy subject.
Senator Casey. Thanks so much.
Doctor.
Dr. Byman. As the Ambassador noted in his earlier remarks,
if you push back hard on Iran, it does respond, and to me,
unfortunately, we have not been as aggressive as we should be.
So much of what we discussed during this hearing, publicizing
what Iran does rather than trying to play it down. If there are
failed attacks, treating them seriously, not waiting for
successful attacks to respond. Responding promptly. And so
there is a certain political window and diplomatic window after
violence to do something that dissipates over time.
And with al-Qaeda, we have a campaign. We have a worldwide
effort. It involves a wide array of allies in very different
and often creative ways. And with Iran, it is more ad hoc. It
is quite serious, but I would say on terrorism, it needs to be
more comprehensive. And this is going to vary by region and
country, but it should be done in a more systematic and
sustained way.
Senator Casey. Ms. Pletka.
Ms. Pletka. We can each of us be more succinct because we
agree with our predecessors. So I agree with both Jim and Dan
on this.
I do think we can do more to deny Iran and its proxies
operational latitude in Lebanon, in the West Bank, and in Gaza,
and in other places where they operate. So that is an
additional factor where we actually do have some leverage.
I think we could do much more to push out the Assad regime
and to help ensure that a future Syria is stable and will not,
in fact, be an ally to Iran and will not be so unstable that it
will end up helping Iran anyway.
And last. And I am going to quote Matt's colleague, Dennis
Ross, who did an event with us last week, who said that for as
long as Iran is persuaded that we want the nuclear talks more
than they do, they are never going to give us anything. And I
thought he was exactly right when he said it. We are engaged in
these low-level or lower level talks between the EU and the
Iranian designate in Istanbul. They have been going on. We have
not set a next meeting, and yet no one is willing to say or put
any pressure on the Iranians that in fact the nuclear talks are
failing because no one wants to have to do what it might
require when they fail. So we are playing Iran's game and we
should stop playing Iran's game.
Senator Casey. Thank you.
Dr. Levitt.
Dr. Levitt. I completely concur. The Iranian negotiation
strategy is to negotiate over the next negotiation.
We need to publicize what they are doing. We have a
tremendous opportunity in Syria. I think we need to get greater
international effort, consensus on targeting not just Iran's
nuclear issues but its support for terrorism. A European Union
designation of Hezbollah would be huge here, and if they were
unwilling to designate the entirety of the group, though I
would prefer that, a secondary would be to go the British route
which would be to designate just the terrorist or military
wings of the group. Even that would have some impact.
Iranian travel is also a cause for concern. It is very easy
for Iranians to travel to a lot of places, such as Malaysia
where visas are not required. This enables them to do all kinds
of things as well.
I think it was after the Mykonos bombing in Germany that
almost all European countries for a short period of time
withdrew their ambassadors. If it turns out that this attack in
Bulgaria was a Hezbollah or Iranian attack, I think we should
press our European allies to do that, not necessarily closing
their embassies, but showing a united front. That gave a huge
message at the time.
And the message should not always come from us. I argued in
testimony before the House after the Arbabsiar plot targeting
Ambassador Al-Jabeir that this was as much of an attack on the
Saudis as it was on us, and the Saudis and other Gulf States
should be pressing their allies to take similar action,
including targeting Iranian diplomatic presences and their size
and range
of activities throughout the world, starting with the Western
Hemisphere.
Senator Casey. Thanks very much. We have more questions. We
will submit them for the record. The record will be open for at
least a week.
I want to thank Senator Risch and our witnesses for being
with us. Thank you very much for your time.
We are adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:40 a.m., the hearing was adjourned.]