Threats from Iran are expanding beyond Middle East, defense official says
Mike Brest
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While the Department of Defense has outlined China as its “pacing challenge” and Russia as an “acute threat,” the threat from Iran is “increasing” as well, according to one DOD official.
Iran’s maligned influence “is not staying in the Middle East,” Dana Stroul, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East, said at a media roundtable earlier this week, designating that line as “the key takeaway” from a broad scope of Tehran’s behavior.
Tehran has provided Russia with hundreds of “kamikaze” drones for its war in Ukraine, and Russia has subsequently used them to target Ukraine’s energy infrastructure in an attempt to break the will of the Ukrainian people by making residents suffer through brutal winter conditions.
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“Now I think the key takeaway is what has — we’ve seen in the Middle East is not staying in the Middle East,” Stroul explained. “The Iran-Russia increasing alliance, the proliferation of UAVs to Russia, and the possibility that there’s contemplation of the transfer of ballistic missiles to Russia for use in Ukraine is both a call for the entire global community to — to step up, in how we counter the Iran threat, and very specifically to take a firm stance against Russian-Iranian cooperation.”
Earlier this week, national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Tehran could be “contributing to widespread war crimes” against the Ukrainians.
Stroul described four aspects of the threats from Iran that she described “not only as consistent but increasing.” They were the “continuing support, arming, training, equipping, and funding terrorists and proxy groups across the region,” their aggression at sea, cyberattacks, and the proliferation of their UAVs not only to regional proxies, but to Russian forces as well.
A day before the round table, U.S. Central Command announced that, days earlier, it “intercepted a stateless dhow in the Gulf of Oman smuggling more than 2,000 AK-47 assault rifles while transiting international waters from Iran to Yemen.”
“This shipment is part of a continued pattern of destabilizing activity from Iran. These threats have our attention. We remain vigilant in detecting any maritime activity that threatens freedom or compromises regional security,” Vice Adm. Brad Cooper, the commander of U.S. Naval Forces Central Command, the U.S. 5th Fleet, and the Combined Maritime Forces, said.
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Gen. Matthew McFarlane, the commander of Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve, said at the roundtable that he’s “laser-like-focused on force protection” against Iran and its proxies in the region. “We track threats from multiple vectors across both countries. We remain focused on innovating to stay in front of threats that are — are developing weapons, like advanced conventional weapons, one-way attack UAVs, to ensure we can defeat those and protect the coalition, as we remain focused on our de-ISIS mission.”