The Bureau of Counterterrorism
https://www.state.gov/reports/country-reports-on-terrorism-2024/
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1y1ESeHXhT4Yb4goe_hpkMGF57_otliE4/view?usp=sharing
Extract
Foreword
Iran remained the leading state sponsor of terrorism, facilitating a wide range of terrorist and other illicit activities against the United States and our allies, both at home and abroad. Regionally, Iran continued to support acts of terrorism through its proxies and partner groups. Ongoing Iranian financial support allowed Hamas to continue operations in 2024. Iran-backed militias based in Iraq perpetrated the Tower 22 attack in Jordan in January 2024, which killed three U.S. soldiers and injured 47 others. This served as a stark reminder of the ongoing threat of Iranian-aligned proxy groups overseas. In addition, Iranian-backed Houthis continued to attack ships in the Red Sea and launch attacks at Israel, threatening critical shipping lines and disrupting the global economy in support of Iran’s regional terrorist aims.
State Sponsors of Terrorism
Iran
In 2024, Iran increasingly relied on the IRGC Aerospace Force to conduct direct and brazen attacks against its enemies, including in coordination with the IRGC-QF. On April 13, the IRGC ASF launched more than 170 unmanned aerial systems (UAS), 120 ballistic missiles, and 30 cruise missiles against Israel in a coordinated attack with the Houthis, IAMGs, and Hizballah, which launched UAS and missiles against Israel from Yemen, Iraq, and Lebanon, respectively. The strikes marked Iran’s first direct attack against Israeli territory. On October 1, the IRGC again conducted a large-scale missile attack against Israel in response to Israel’s killing of Hizballah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, the IRGC-QF Chief in Lebanon Abbas Nilforoushan, and Hamas Political Chief Ismail Haniyeh. The IRGC launched an estimated 200 ballistic missiles against Israel in two waves, killing two civilians in Israel and the West Bank and injuring at least four civilians in Israel and Jordan.
Although Israel’s response to the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023, and heightened security around the Gaza Strip frustrated Iran’s attempts to provide weapons systems to Hamas and other U.S.-designated Palestinian terrorist groups, including the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Iran continued to support terrorism in Israel and the Palestinian territories. In 2024, Iran and criminal and terror networks smuggled weapons into the West Bank to foment unrest there and inspire and encourage Palestinian terrorist attacks against Israel.
In Iraq and Syria, Iran supported various IAMGs in 2024, including the U.S.-designated terrorist groups Kata’ib Hizballah, Harakat al-Nujaba, Kata’ib Sayyid al-Shuhada, Harakat Ansar Allah al-Awfiya, and Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq, with sophisticated weapons – including increasingly accurate and lethal UAS and land-attack cruise missiles – as well as support, funding, and training. Following the October 7 Hamas attack against Israel, the IAMGs resumed attacks against U.S. forces in Iraq, Syria, and Jordan on an unprecedented scope and scale. Although Iran paused attacks against U.S. forces in February, following an IAMG attack against a U.S. military outpost in Jordan that killed three U.S. military personnel, IAMGs gradually increased the frequency of attacks against U.S. forces in Syria – with IRGC-QF support – throughout 2024. By year’s end, IAMGs had attacked U.S. facilities in Iraq, Syria, and Jordan more than 200 times since October 2023.
Despite Iran’s investment of billions of dollars in Syria and its building of terrorist groups to support the Assad regime during the Syrian Civil War, the Assad regime fell in December 2024. Before the collapse of the regime, Iran armed and funded terrorist groups operating throughout Syria, including Hizballah, and transferred weapons through Syria to arm Hizballah in Lebanon. Iran used these groups to threaten Israel and U.S. forces and attacked them dozens of times in the months before the regime’s collapse. Although the fall of the Assad regime marked the loss of Iran’s smuggling routes through Syria to Lebanon and the withdrawal of Iran-backed forces from the country, Iranian officials were exploring ways to reestablish a foothold and networks throughout Syria.
Following the end of the 2006 Israeli-Hizballah conflict, Iran supplied Hizballah in Lebanon with thousands of rockets, missiles, and small arms in violation of UNSCR 1701. Iran supplied Hizballah with advanced weapons systems and technologies. It assisted the group in creating infrastructure that would permit it to produce its own rockets and missiles to threaten Israel from Lebanon and Syria. Since Hizballah’s founding, Iran has provided hundreds of millions of dollars in support to Hizballah annually and has trained thousands of its fighters at camps in Iran. Although Israeli airstrikes and ground raids in Lebanon during 2024 significantly weakened Hizballah and reduced its stockpiles of advanced weaponry, Hizballah remained a formidable terrorist group with advanced military capabilities owing to decades of Iranian assistance. Iran continued to view Hizballah as its top partner, and support for Hizballah remained a critical effort of the IRGC-QF.
In Bahrain, Iran had continued to provide weapons, support, and training to local Shia militant groups, including the al-Ashtar Brigades and Saraya al-Mukhtar, both U.S.-designated terrorist groups.
In Yemen, Iran continued to provide a wide range of weapons, such as UAS and missiles, training, intelligence, and other support to Houthi militants, enabling them to conduct almost 200 UAS, missile, and small boat attacks against international shipping in the Red Sea and surrounding waterways since late 2023. In 2024, the Houthis – a Specially Designated Global Terrorist – nearly caused an environmental catastrophe after striking and setting aflame MT Delta Sounion as she was carrying 150,000 tons of petroleum cargo, and struck M/V Rubymar, which severed critical cross-continental telecommunications cables as she sank in the Red Sea. The Houthis killed at least four innocent mariners and, as of December, still held the crew of M/V Galaxy Leader in Yemen after having seized the ship more than a year earlier. Although Houthi attacks had inflicted an economic toll in the region and disrupted the transit of critical humanitarian aid, including to Yemen, Iran continued to enable the Houthis’ maritime attack campaign.
As in past years, the Iranian government continued supporting terrorist plots or associated activities targeting dissidents and other perceived enemies of the regime, including Israeli and U.S. citizens. In 2024, the U.S. Department of Justice unsealed two indictments charging at least seven individuals, including an Iranian military official, with plotting to assassinate a New York City-based Iranian dissident and prominent regime critic, who had been the target of multiple kidnapping and murder plots directed by the Iranian government in recent years. At least one of these individuals was further charged with planning to kill U.S. President Trump as vengeance for the U.S. strike that killed IRGC-QF Commander Qasem Soleimani in 2020 and with attempting to target Israeli tourists in Sri Lanka. The Department of Justice also unsealed an indictment charging an Iranian national and IRGC officer for orchestrating the murder of a U.S. citizen in Baghdad, Iraq, in 2022. In recent years, Albania, Belgium, Denmark, and the Netherlands have all either arrested, convicted, or expelled Iranian government officials, or implicated them in various terrorist plots in their respective territories, or recalled their ambassadors from Tehran in response to these plots. Additionally, Iran continued to pursue or support terrorist attacks against Israeli and Jewish targets globally.
Senior al-Qa’ida members continued to reside in Iran, where the authorities still refused to identify publicly members they knew to be living in the country. Iran had allowed al-Qa’ida facilitators to operate a core transit pipeline through Iran since at least 2009, enabling al-Qa’ida to move funds and fighters to South Asia and Syria, among other locales.
