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Washington Post
U.S. Experts Wary of Military Action Over Nuclear Program
By Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, April 2, 2006; A01
 As tensions
increase between the United States and Iran, U.S. intelligence and terrorism
experts say they believe Iran would respond to U.S. military strikes on its
nuclear sites by deploying its intelligence operatives and Hezbollah teams to
carry out terrorist attacks worldwide.
Iran would mount attacks
against U.S. targets
inside Iraq,
where Iranian intelligence agents are already plentiful, predicted these
experts. There is also a growing consensus that Iran's
agents would target civilians in the United States,
Europe and elsewhere, they said.
U.S. officials would not
discuss what evidence they have indicating Iran
would undertake terrorist action, but the matter "is consuming a lot of
time" throughout the U.S.
intelligence apparatus, one senior official said. "It's a huge
issue," another said.
Citing prohibitions against discussing classified information, U.S.
intelligence officials declined to say whether they have detected preparatory
measures, such as increased surveillance, counter-surveillance or message
traffic, on the part of Iran's foreign-based intelligence operatives.
But terrorism experts considered Iranian-backed or controlled groups --
namely the country's Ministry of Intelligence and Security operatives, its
Revolutionary Guards and the Lebanon-based Hezbollah -- to be better
organized, trained and equipped than the al-Qaeda network that carried out
the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
The Iranian government views the Islamic Jihad, the name of Hezbollah's
terrorist organization, "as an extension of their state. . . . operational teams could be deployed without a long period
of preparation," said Ambassador Henry A. Crumpton,
the State Department's coordinator for counterterrorism.
The possibility of a military confrontation has been raised only obliquely in
recent months by President Bush and Iran's government. Bush says he
is pursuing a diplomatic solution to the crisis, but he has added that all
options are on the table for stopping Iran's acquisition of nuclear
weapons.
Speaking in Vienna last month, Javad Vaeedi, a senior Iranian
nuclear negotiator, warned the United States that "it may
have the power to cause harm and pain, but it is also susceptible to harm and
pain. So if the United
States wants to pursue that path, let the
ball roll," although he did not specify what type of harm he was talking
about.
Government officials said their interest in Iran's
intelligence services is not an indication that a military confrontation is
imminent or likely, but rather a reflection of a decades-long adversarial
relationship in which Iran's
agents have worked secretly against U.S.
interests, most recently in Iraq
and Pakistan.
As confrontation over Iran's
nuclear program has escalated, so has the effort to assess the threat from Iran's covert
operatives.
U.N. Security Council members continue to debate how best to pressure Iran to prove
that its nuclear program is not meant for weapons. The United States, Britain
and France want the
Security Council to threaten Iran
with economic sanctions if it does not end its uranium enrichment activities.
Russia and China,
however, have declined to endorse such action and insist on continued
negotiations. Security Council diplomats are meeting this weekend to try to
break the impasse. Iran
says it seeks nuclear power but not nuclear weapons.
Former CIA terrorism analyst Paul R. Pillar said that any U.S. or Israeli airstrike
on Iranian territory "would be regarded as an act of war" by Tehran, and that Iran would strike back with its
terrorist groups. "There's no doubt in my mind about that. . . . Whether
it's overseas at the hands of Hezbollah, in Iraq
or possibly Europe, within the regime there
would be pressure to take violent action."
Before Sept. 11, the armed wing of Hezbollah, often working on behalf of Iran, was responsible
for more American deaths than in any other terrorist attacks. In 1983
Hezbollah truck-bombed the U.S. Marine barracks
in Beirut, killing 241, and in 1996
truck-bombed Khobar Towers
in Saudi Arabia, killing
19 U.S.
service members.
Iran's intelligence service,
operating out of its embassies around the world, assassinated dozens of
monarchists and political dissidents in Europe, Pakistan,
Turkey and the Middle East in the two decades after the 1979 Iranian
revolution, which brought to power a religious Shiite government. Argentine
officials also believe Iranian agents bombed a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires in 1994,
killing 86 people. Iran
has denied involvement in that attack.
Iran's intelligence services
"are well trained, fairly sophisticated and have been doing this for
decades," said Crumpton, a former deputy of
operations at the CIA's Counterterrorist
Center. "They are
still very capable. I don't see their capabilities as having
diminished."
Both sides have increased their activities against the other. The Bush
administration is spending $75 million to step up pressure on the Iranian
government, including funding non-governmental organizations and alternative
media broadcasts. Iran's
parliament then approved $13.6 million to counter what it calls "plots
and acts of meddling" by the United States.
"Given the uptick in interest in Iran" on
the part of the United States, "it would be a very logical assumption
that we have both ratcheted up [intelligence] collection, absolutely,"
said Fred Barton, a former counterterrorism official who is now vice
president of counterterrorism for Stratfor, a
security consulting and forecasting firm. "It would be a more fevered
pitch on the Iranian side because they have fewer options."
The office of the director of national intelligence, which recently began to
manage the U.S.
intelligence agencies, declined to allow its analysts to discuss their
assessment of Iran's
intelligence services and Hezbollah and their capabilities to retaliate
against U.S.
interests.
"We are unable to address your questions in an unclassified
manner," a spokesman for the office, Carl Kropf,
wrote in response to a Washington Post query.
The current state of Iran's
intelligence apparatus is the subject of debate among experts. Some experts
who spent their careers tracking the intelligence ministry's operatives
describe them as deployed worldwide and easier to
monitor than Hezbollah cells because they operate out of embassies and behave
more like a traditional spy service such as the Soviet KGB.
Other experts believe the Iranian service has become bogged down in intense,
regional concerns: attacks on Shiites in Pakistan,
the Iraq war and efforts
to combat drug trafficking in Iran.
As a result, said Bahman Baktiari,
an Iran expert at the University of Maine,
the intelligence service has downsized its operations in Europe and the United States.
But, said Baktiari, "I think the U.S.
government doesn't have a handle on this."
Because Iran's nuclear
facilities are scattered around the country, some military specialists doubt
a strike could effectively end the program and would require hundreds of
strikes beforehand to disable Iran's
vast air defenses. They say airstrikes would most
likely inflame the Muslim world, alienate reformers within Iran and
could serve to unite Hezbollah and al-Qaeda, which have only limited contact
currently.
A report by the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks
cited al-Qaeda's long-standing cooperation with the Iranian-back Hezbollah on
certain operations and said Osama bin Laden may have had a previously
undisclosed role in the Khobar
attack. Several al-Qaeda figures are reportedly under house arrest in Iran.
Others in the law enforcement and intelligence circles have been more dubious
about cooperation between al-Qaeda and Hezbollah, largely because of the
rivalries between Shiite and Sunni Muslims. Al-Qaeda adherents are Sunni
Muslims; Hezbollah's are Shiites.
Iran
"certainly wants to remind governments that they can create a lot of difficulty
if strikes were to occur," said a senior European counterterrorism
official interviewed recently. "That they might react with all means,
Hezbollah inside Lebanon
and outside Lebanon,
this is certain. Al-Qaeda could become a tactical alliance."
Researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.
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