Worldwide Threat Assessment
Annual Threat Assessment
Director of National Intelligence
Selected extracts
Iran
Global Challenges
The public protests and elite infighting that followed the June 2009 presidential election posed the greatest internal challenge to the Islamic Republic since the early 1980s. The election crisis has widened splits in the country’s political elite and has demonstrated the popular willingness to challenge government authority and legitimacy. Nevertheless, the Iranian regime has stymied opposition activities and should be able to contain new threats from the opposition to its hold on power over the near term.
In reasserting control in the wake of the election, the regime has moved Iran in a more authoritarian direction. Decisionmaking on domestic issues that affect Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s hold on power will be shaped by ascendant hardliners, including President Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad and his allies and officials of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The regime is unlikely to compromise with the opposition. Since the election Iran has arrested thousands of opposition sympathizers, shut down media outlets, and increased monitoring and control of telecommunications.
• The regime has sought to pressure and ostracize leaders of the Green Path movement, which emerged in response to perceived election fraud. The movement, although weakened, will continue to pose a low-level challenge to the regime, given its ability to tap into the alienation among the middle classes over the election, the government’s subsequent violent crackdown, and restriction of civil liberties.
• The regime’s increasing reliance on the IRGC to suppress political dissent will allow the Guard to widen its political and economic influence, which has grown over the past two decades.
Despite the regime’s reassertion of control, it is vulnerable to renewed challenges because traditional conservatives have been alienated and ideological cleavages between conservatives and hardline factions have widened. In fact, Expediency Council Chairman Ali Akbar HashamiRafsanjani, his moderate allies, and other traditional conservatives have responded with increased public criticism of Ahmadi-Nejad and efforts to block his policies.
The election crisis and the most recent round of UN sanctions almost certainly have not altered Iran’s long-term foreign policy goals—namely Iranian sovereignty, and the projection of power and influence in the region and the Muslim world. Iranian leaders probably will continue to issue harsh rhetoric and defy the West, but we judge that the need to avoid tougher sanctions and maintain commercial relationships will likely also temper regime behavior.
The Intelligence Community judges Tehran will continue to view the United States as an existential threat and as partly responsible for post-election unrest. Iran will seek to undermine US influence in the Middle East by sponsoring opposition to US initiatives, backing groups that oppose US and Israeli interests, working to undermine cooperation between Washington and moderate Arab allies, and strengthening its deterrent capability against threats from the United States and Israel.
Despite Chinese and Russian support for UNSCR 1929 in June 2010, Iran will continue to view relations with China and Russia as critical to countering Western economic pressure, limiting US influence in the region, and obtaining advanced military equipment. Tehran also is seeking to develop improved political and economic ties with a range of Asian, Latin American, and East European countries to try to offset and circumvent the impact of sanctions.
Proliferation
The Iranian regime continues to flout UN Security Council restrictions on its nuclear and missile programs. There is a real risk that its nuclear program will prompt other countries in the Middle East to pursue nuclear options.
We continue to assess Iran is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons in part by developing various nuclear capabilities that better position it to produce such weapons, should it choose to do so. We do not know, however, if Iran will eventually decide to build nuclear weapons.
One of the most important capabilities Iran is developing is uranium enrichment, which can be used for either civil or weapons purposes. As reported by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the number of centrifuges installed at Iran's enrichment plant has grown significantly from about 3,000 centrifuges in late 2007 to over 8,000 currently installed. At the same time, the number of operating centrifuges that are enriching uranium has grown at a much slower pace from about 3,000 centrifuges in late 2007 to about 4,800 in late 2010. Iran has used these centrifuges to produce more than 3,000 kilograms of low enriched uranium.
Iran's technical advancement, particularly in uranium enrichment, strengthens our assessment that Iran has the scientific, technical, and industrial capacity to eventually produce nuclear weapons, making the central issue its political will to do so. These advancements contribute to our judgment that Iran is technically capable of producing enough highly enriched uranium for a weapon in the next few years, if it chooses to do so.
We judge Iran would likely choose missile delivery as its preferred method of delivering a nuclear weapon. Iran already has the largest inventory of ballistic missiles in the Middle East. It continues to expand the scale, reach and sophistication of its ballistic missile forces, many of which are inherently capable of carrying a nuclear payload.
We continue to judge Iran's nuclear decisionmaking is guided by a cost-benefit approach, which offers the international community opportunities to influence Tehran. Iranian leaders undoubtedly consider Iran's security, prestige and influence, as well as the international political and security environment, when making decisions about its nuclear program.
Iran's growing inventory of ballistic missiles and its acquisition and indigenous production of anti-ship cruise missiles (ASCMs) provide capabilities to enhance its power projection. Tehran views its conventionally armed missiles as an integral part of its strategy to deter—and if necessary, retaliate against—forces in the region, including those of the US. Its ballistic missiles are inherently capable of delivering WMD, and if so armed, would fit into this same strategy.
In February 2010, Iran displayed a new rocket engine design that Tehran said is for the Simorgh, a large space launch vehicle. It also displayed a simulator of the Simorgh. This technology could be used for an ICBM-class vehicle. We are watching developments in this area very closely.
