October 08, 2021
Iran will now be dealt with as part of the Middle East region and no longer have a unique office just for that country, The New York Times reported October 7.
But the CIA says it is not dismissing Iran as a continuing threat, just deciding that it can be handled better as part of an office dealing with it together with its neighboring countries, perhaps a reflection of the fact that so much of the concern with Iran today is dealing with the countries it has involved itself in.
Mike Pompeo, who was President Donald Trump’s first CIA director, created the mission centers focused on North Korea and Iran. They helped to show the emphasis Trump put on those countries.
The Biden Administration wants to give less attention to the Middle East and more to China, which is seen as a far greater concern than any other country.
With the ending of the Iran mission center, its current chief, Michael D’Andrea, is retiring from the agency. The appointment in 2017 of D’Andrea, who had a long career leading operations against Al-Qaeda and other terrorist targets, was a sign of the Trump Administration’s hard line on Iran. And inside the CIA, D’Andrea helped craft a tougher approach to Tehran.
A senior CIA official told The New York Times that ending the independent Iran and North Korea centers did not reflect any reduction in the agency’s view of the importance of those countries or a lessening of the threat they posed. But a review of the agency’s operations concluded that Iran and North Korea were best analyzed inside the context of their wider regions.