RALEIGH -- On Jan. 31, Congress heard testimony about the government's Annual Threat Assessment Report. James Clapper, director of National Intelligence, testified that "... some Iranian officials - probably including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei - have changed their calculus and are now more willing to conduct an attack in the U.S. in response to real or perceived U.S. actions that threaten the regime."
This was official confirmation of a real threat to our homeland. According to the CIA, "Iranian leaders view terrorism as an important instrument of foreign policy that they use both to advance national goals and to export the regime's Islamic revolutionary ideals."
Iran has been responsible or complicit in a continuum of terrorist violence either through the Quds Force of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard or through various proxies or surrogates, including Hezbollah. The regime has engaged in multiple acts of murder, kidnapping, hijacking and bombing and its reach is long. Iran is credited with terrorist events in Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Ethiopia, Israel, France, Belgium, Lebanon, Spain, Thailand, Egypt, Argentina, Italy, Ivory Coast, Kuwait, the United Kingdom, Turkey, the Republic of the Congo, Cypress, Greece, Denmark, Iran, Yemen, Chad, Tunisia, and most recently, in Iraq and Afghanistan.
According to the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center, Iran has been tied to at least 162 external murders since 1979. These murders were committed throughout the world, including in the United States. In 1980 Dawud Salahuddin, an American convert to Islam, was contracted and paid to, as he put it " kill for the Iranian Government." The victim, Ali Akbar Tabatabai, a former press attaché at the Iranian Embassy in Washington and a vocal critic of the Islamic Republic, was shot to death at his home in Washington, D.C. in 1980.
Salahuddin escaped and fled to Iran, where he resides to this day.
Last October, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that two men had been charged in an alleged plot to murder the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the United States. He said the plot was directed and approved by high-ranking Iranian officials and it included plans to attack the Saudi and Israeli embassies.
In addition to perceived "enemies" and dissidents, the principal targets of this violence have been Israel and Saudi Arabia. Israel because the Iranian leadership does not feel Israel has a right to exist. In February 2001, Supreme Leader Khamenei stated, "It is the mission of the Islamic Republic of Iran to erase Israel from the map of the region." Saudi Arabia is Iran's main rival for regional and religious hegemony. Saudi Arabia is the main exporter of Sunni Islam and Iran is the home of Shia Islam.
The ongoing international effort to prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons has increased the stress on the regime. Persistent and current rumors that Israel may use military measures to stop the weapons program have also increased the pressure. Iran has responded with threats of violence.
U.S. intelligence has reported that Iranian proxy Hezbollah has cells operating in the Middle East, Europe, Africa, South America and North America. A violent Iranian attack on the United States is entirely possible. Continued and increased pressure against Iran presents a dangerous scenario. Any military action taken against Iran's nuclear program would very likely risk a violent response.
However, we must not allow this danger to deter us, because an Iran with nuclear weapons is an even more dangerous scenario.
A nation that has a long record of using terrorism as an important instrument of foreign policy in order to advance national goals and to export Islamic revolutionary ideals must not possess a nuclear weapon. Iran is ruled by religious leaders. A significant percentage of the ruling theocracy and many senior officials may well believe that this is the age of the final apocalypse. In this religious-based belief, Israel and the West are destroyed and the world comes under the rule of Shia Islam. Therefore, the prospect of nuclear "mutually assured destruction" does not frighten them.
As stated in the 17th century by Blaise Pascal, "Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction."
Stephen C. Miller is a retired special agent with the U.S. Department of Defense and a former member of the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force in Raleigh.
