something it has avoided for decades.
“The 2011 plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States shows that some Iranian officials probably including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenehi have changed their calculus and are now more willing to conduct an attack in the United States in response to real or perceived actions that threaten the regime,” James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, said Tuesday in his annual statement to Congress.
Iran’s willingness to sponsor attacks against the US at home or abroad “probably will be shaped by Tehran’s evaluation of the costs it bears for the plot against the ambassador as well as Iranian leaders’ perceptions of US threats against the regime,” he said.
The only known terrorist actions carried out by the Islamic Republic on US soil were a few weeks apart in 1980 when an American tasked by Iranian agents murdered Ali-Akbar Tabatabai, an official of the Iranian embassy in Washington under the Shah, and set fire to the offices of the Iran Times.
That assassin, David Belfield, later said he had been ordered not to attack any Americans he had wanted to assassinate Henry Kissinger and only to target Iranians in the United States.
Most of Clapper’s testimony was focused on Iran’s nuclear program. He said Iran has the technical, industrial and scientific capability to produce a nuclear weapon eventually, making “the central issue its political will to do so.”
He said, “They are certainly moving on that path, but we don’t believe they’ve actually made the decision to go ahead with a nuclear weapon. We assess that Iran is keeping its options open to develop nuclear weapons, in part by developing various nuclear capabilities that better position it to produce such weapons, should it choose to do so.” That wording was similar to last year’s testimony.
“Iranian leaders undoubtedly consider Iran’s security, prestige and influence, as well as the international political and security environment, when making decisions about its nuclear program,” Clapper said.
“We do not know, however, if Iran will eventually decide to build nuclear weapons,” Clapper said. If Iran did so, intelligence agencies believe Tehran would be likely to choose a ballistic missile for its “preferred” delivery, he said.
Iran is “expanding the scale, reach and sophistication of its ballistic missile forces, many of which are inherently capable of carrying a nuclear payload,” Clapper said.
He said the intelligence agencies believe that tougher sanctions on the Islamic Republic could persuade it to change course and abandon a nuclear weapons program, but won’t topple the regime.
Combined US and European sanctions will “weigh down” the Iranian economy, yet these difficulties “probably will not jeopardize the regime, absent a sudden and sustained fall in oil prices or a sudden domestic crisis that disrupts oil prices,” Clapper said.
Iran’s biggest regional concern is Syria, not the US, “because regime change would be a major strategic loss for Iran,” he said.