‘Iran still supporting terrorism’

Washington: Iran continued its “terrorist-related” activity last year and also continued to provide broad military support to President Bashar Al Assad of Syria, the State Department said Friday in its annual report on terrorism.

The State Department’s assessment suggests that neither the election of President Hassan Rouhani nor the prospect of a nuclear accord with the United States and its negotiating partners has had a moderating effect on Iran’s foreign policy in the Middle East.

“In 2014, Iran continued to provide arms, financing, training and the facilitation of primary Iraq Shiite and Afghan fighters to support the Al Assad regime’s brutal crackdown,” the report said.

“Iran remained unwilling to bring to justice senior Al Qaida members it continued to detain and refused to publicly identify those senior members in its custody,” it added.

The report does not contend that Iranian officials are conspiring to kill Americans. Nor does it accuse Iraqi militias backed by Iran of plotting to attack US advisers in Iraq. The report also does not provide specific figures on Iranian operations, which might indicate whether they are increasing or decreasing.

But it paints a picture of an aggressive Iranian foreign policy that has often been contrary to the interests of the United States. Even when the United States and Iran share a common foe, as they do in Daesh, the Iranian role in Iraq risks inflaming sectarian tensions. Some of the Shiite militias Iran has backed in Iraq, including Kataib Hezbollah, have committed human rights abuses against Sunni civilians, the report said.

Although the report covers 2014, US officials said that the Iranian policies described in the report have continued this year.

“We continue to be very, very concerned about IRGC activity as well as proxies that act on behalf of Iran,” said Tina S. Kaidanow, the State Department’s senior counterterrorism official, using the acronym for Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps. “We watch that extremely carefully.”

Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has suggested that Iran sees its regional and nuclear policies as proceeding on separate tracks, an approach that may be intended to placate hardliners at home but that may also reflect his own foreign policy strategy.

The White House has held out hope that a deal to limit Iran’s nuclear programme might be the first step toward an eventual easing of tensions and perhaps even cooperation on regional matters. But even if the two sides remain at odds over the Middle East, Obama administration officials insist a nuclear accord is worth pursue in its own right. The report comes a week before Secretary of State John Kerry is expected to travel to Vienna to try to seal a nuclear accord.

In a broad survey of terrorist trends, including a country-by-country assessment, the report notes that the threat from the Al Qaida leadership that has sought sanctuary in Pakistan has diminished even as the group continues to be a source of inspiration for militants elsewhere. An annex to the report indicates that the problem of terrorism has grown, although many of the figures reflect militant attacks in the wars in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan. The number of terrorist attacks in 2014 grew by 35 percent compared with 2013 while the number of fatalities from those assaults increased by 81 percent.

The number of exceptionally lethal attacks has also grown. In 2014, there were 20 attacks that killed more than 100 people. There were only two such attacks in 2013.

The statistics, which are appended to the State Department report, were prepared by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, located at the University of Maryland.

Despite the increasing number of attacks, State Department officials insisted that the United States was making headway in the struggle against terrorism, including by working with its partners in the region. John Kirby, the State Department spokesman, said that defeating Daesh would take time.

“It’s going to take three to five years,” he said.