When world leaders meet with Iranian leaders in Istanbul Friday, topic No. 1, of course, will be Iran’s nuclear program. But a variety of present and former security officials, members of Congress and others say the United States and other western nations are paying too little attention to a problem of near-equal gravity: Iran’s open support of terror and criminal groups all over the world.
Not since the fall of the Soviet Union has any nation so aggressively pursued alliances with bad actors in so many places worldwide, acknowledged Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former CIA officer who focused primarily on Iran. “Their outreach is bolder than it used to be” and is “pretty disturbing” given “their proclivity for nefarious activity.”
“They’re fighting basically a shadow war every day,” Marine Gen. James Mattis, head of the military’s Central Command, told a Senate hearing last month. And now Iran is turning significant attention to the Western hemisphere – including the U.S.
“We know they are in Mexico, we know they are in Canada, we know they are in Central and South America,” said Michael Braun, former chief of operations for the Drug Enforcement Administration. “Who’s better poised to carry out operations on the homeland than they are?”
Late last month, Rep. Peter King, (R-N.Y.), chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, told Congress: “Most disturbingly, we learned” that “there are hundreds of Hezbollah operatives already inside this country” including some who were apprehended “with military training and combat experience in Lebanon.”
In the early 1980s, Iran created Hezbollah, a terror group based in Lebanon, and now Tehran sends its operatives on covert missions worldwide.
Gerecht and others described King’s claim as perhaps exaggerated. Asked about that, King said: “Committee staff conducted a months-long investigation on the threat posed by Iran and Hezbollah to the homeland, assessing it not only from what we heard in official briefings but leveraging extensive counterterrorism sources and contacts. In addition, during our hearing on this threat, witnesses testified that they agreed with this number.”
Abbas Milani, head of Iranian studies at Stanford University, put it this way: “I have no doubt that they have operatives in this country. But would they actually attempt something in this country now? I don’t think so” – partly because he and others believe Iran may not be competent to carry out a successful attack.
Milani and others shake their head as they look at the proposed meeting in Istanbul this week.
The Iranians “are extremely comfortable talking about their nuclear program,” Gerecht said, and “the focus on the nuclear program has been so intense” that it allows them to escape discussion of their foreign misadventures and human rights abuses at home.
As Milani put it, “it’s the wrong policy, the wrong politics, to talk only about the nuclear program. That’s what they want. It plays to their strength.”
Certainly most everyone knows that the U.S. and Europe classify Iran as a state sponsor of terror, supporting militant groups in Lebanon, Syria and Gaza. But what’s not so widely appreciated is that Iran’s operatives have been at work in Thailand, Malaysia, Gambia, Yemen, Sudan, India, Georgia, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Azerbaijan and numerous other places – including Latin America. There, by many government accounts, Hezbollah is in bed with drug traffickers in Mexico and other places, earning money and making covert, criminal allies.
“The security challenges facing our nation by this threat are not being appropriately and adequately addressed,” Braun told Congress late last month.
“There are going to have to be some tough policy measures made, possibly at very high levels,” he added in an interview. “We’re very much behind the curve. It’s just a mess.”
Many in Congress agree.
“I’m very, very concerned about Iran’s influence in the Western Hemisphere,” said Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.) who co-sponsored legislation intended “to counter Iran’s growing presence and hostile activity in the Western Hemisphere,” the bill says. It passed the House Foreign Affairs Committee last month but appears to be hung up in the full House. Still, in an interview Duncan said: “I think the bill will get some traction. We need to focus our State Department on this. Iran has no historical ties to this region, so it really makes you raise your eyebrows.”
Last year, in fact, the U.S. Army Combined Arms Center published an essay by Norman Bailey of the University of Miami titled “What Are the Persians Doing Over Here?” It says “this interest in the hemisphere represents the first time in the 5,000-year history of Persia” that “such interest has been demonstrated.”
At a press briefing, acting Assistant Secretary of State Michael Hammer said “we at the State Department follow” Iran’s activities in Latin America “very closely.”
Gerecht and Milani agree with these concerns, but they also offer some notes of caution. Right now, Iran remains the favorite boogeyman for American government officials. There’s no political cost for standing up to make florid accusations about the state.
“It’s a free-for-all,” said Milani, an Iranian-American who is spiteful of the current regime. “You can say whatever you want about Iran. But irresponsible rhetoric does help those guys,” solidifying their political positions at home.
But he and Gerecht point to something most people don’t talk about: Iran’s foreign operatives are generally incompetent. We know about their recent operations in Azerbaijan, Thailand, Yemen, India, Gambia and South Africa because in every case they were caught.
For example, last year the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned the Lebanese Canadian Bank in Beirut for laundering “hundreds of millions of dollars” that Hezbollah had earned in the Latin America drug trade, the department said. And late last month, Treasury sanctioned an Iranian airline and a Nigerian trading company for cooperatively attempting to ship weapons to Syria.
“The regime, since its earliest days, has been on a mission,” Gerecht said. “They really do see a clash of civilizations, and they see themselves as the cutting edge for one side, the Muslim side. And for them, the first cut for dividing the world is: ‘Are you opposed to the United States? Are you the enemy of the U.S.?’ If so, the Iranians will look upon you fondly.”
But “the truth is,” he added, “they’re pretty sloppy about what they do. They probably have plans, but execution would probably be problematic.”
Last fall, the Justice Department accused Iran of plotting to murder Saudi Arabia’s ambassador in Washington, using paid assassins from a Mexican drug cartel. The assertion was greeted with healthy skepticism in Washington, but then most of the critics were probably not fully aware of Hezbollah’s rich connections to Mexican drug traffickers.
“There’s not just strong intelligence behind this, but also judicial evidence that would stand up in any court,” Braun asserted.
But once again, we know about the operation because the plotters were caught in the act.
One big problem for Iran, Gerecht noted, is how little its security officers actually understand the West. In the regime’s early years, many officials had already spent time in the U.S. or Europe, going to college or serving in the embassy. But most of those people have retired, and now “fewer and fewer of the elite actually have any firsthand knowledge of the West,” Gerecht said. “They can quite easily completely misjudge situations.”
Nonetheless, numerous present and former government officials are warning that Iran may be planning an attack on America.
Early this year, James Clapper, director of National Intelligence, told the Senate Intelligence Committee that Iranians “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.” Bailey’s essay on the Army Combined Arms Center website opined that Iran’s principal reason for building its presence in Latin America “is to retaliate against the U.S. if attacked.”
Braun said, “if they decide to hit us, they don’t need a nuclear weapon. They could hit two or three shopping malls, and they will shut retail sales down. That and a few car bombs.”
“You know,” said Gerecht, “they’re not Darth Vader; they do make a lot of mistakes. But they define themselves by the great unending battle with the United States. They can direct aid to militants who want to blow themselves up — and blow up Americans.
“That’s a real concern we shouldn’t belittle.”
Joel Brinkley, a professor of journalism at Stanford University, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning former foreign correspondent for The New York Times.