[Mb-civic] Attacking Iran May Trigger Terrorism - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

Attacking Iran May Trigger Terrorism
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."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/01/AR2006040100981.html?nav=hcmodule
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