Iran Could Attack Inside the U.S

The U.S. intelligence community is worried that mysterious assassinations and bombings aimed at Iran’s nuclear program may be spurring the Iranian leadership to pursue attacks inside the United States, according to current and former U.S. officials.

On Tuesday, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that a plot last year to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States “shows 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 United States in response to real or perceived U.S. actions that threaten the regime.”

The alleged 2011 plot to murder Saudi Arabia’s ambassador—using contacts in a Mexican drug cartel to carry out the hit—was uncovered in October.

“The Iranians feel—and they have said this already—that they are under attack via economic pressure and things blowing up in their country,” says Juan Zarate, a former deputy national security for counterterrorism who served under President Bush. “The Iranians seem to be responding by trying to attack the United States and its allies abroad.”

While U.S. generals have stated in public testimony that Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps has killed U.S. soldiers in Iraq and worked with insurgents who target Americans in Afghanistan, it was not until 2011 that the U.S. government accused Iran publicly of trying to launch an attack on U.S. soil.

Clapper’s testimony is the first time, however, that a U.S. official has publicly suggested the plot to kill the Saudi ambassador may have been approved by Iran’s supreme leader.