Islamic State group (IS) militants are capable of orchestrating and carrying out an attack against the US, possibly downing an airplane, even after being evicted from the group’s self-declared Syrian capital of Raqqa, CIA Director Mike Pompeo said on Thursday.
Pompeo said the US is threatened by other militant groups as well.
“IS’ capability to conduct an external operation remains,” Pompeo said. “But I wouldn’t put them in a singular bucket. Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula has for a long time had this mission statement, which includes the taking down of a commercial airliner bound for a western country. Certainly, among those would be the United States.”
Photo: AP
Speaking a day after US acting Secretary of Homeland Security Elaine Duke invoked the possibility of another Sept. 11, 2001-style attack, Pompeo said the US’ enemies around the world “are intent upon using commercial aviation as their vector to present a threat to the West.”
However, he said he also worried about a terrorist capability “we just don’t see.”
The typically blunt threat assessment came during a wide-ranging discussion at a the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington, in which Pompeo also underscored US President Donald Trump’s intent to counteract North Korea.
Photo: Reuters
Pyongyang is only months away from perfecting its nuclear weapons capabilities, Pompeo said.
“They are closer now than they were five years ago and I expect they will be closer in five months than they are today, absent a global effort to push back against them,” Pompeo said. “From a US policy perspective, we ought to behave as if we are on the cusp of them achieving that objective.”
On another nuclear concern, Iran, Pompeo said that Trump wants to ensure the country has no pathway to developing the bomb, adding that the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action former US president Barack Obama and five other countries negotiated with Iran was insufficient.
The notion that the agreement would “curtail Iranian adventurism or their terror threat, or their malignant behavior has now... two years on, proven to be fundamentally false,” said Pompeo, a former Republican congressman from Kansas who opposed the seven-nation accord when it was reached.
He said the Iran deal put the US in a better place with respect to inspections of Iranian facilities, but from an intelligence perspective, even more “intrusive inspection” is needed.
“The Iranians have on multiple occasions been capable of presenting a continued threat through covert efforts to develop their nuclear program along multiple dimensions... the missile dimension, the weaponization effort, the nuclear component itself,” he said.
Trump has provided the CIA with the authority it needs to track Iran’s compliance with the deal, he said.
Pompeo also said it is an “open secret” that Iran has links to al-Qaeda.
“There have been relationships, there are connections. There have been times the Iranians have worked alongside al-Qaeda,” Pompeo said. “There have been connections where, at the very least, they have cut deals so as not to come after each other.”
Pompeo and US National Security Adviser Lieutenant General Herbert McMaster, who also spoke at the event, both said the US must counter Iran’s aggression in the region.
They spoke about Iran’s support for Lebanon’s Hezbollah terrorist group, which threatens Israel; its backing of Shia militias in Iraq and Syria; cyber activities; ballistic missile efforts; and a long history of proliferation ties with North Korea.
The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) controls as much as 20 percent of the Iranian economy, Pompeo said.
McMaster said the US needs to raise the cloak on the IRGC’s financial network and urge companies worldwide not to do business with it.
“Don’t enrich the IRGC,” McMaster said. “Don’t enable their murderous campaign. Don’t enable their threat to our friends in the region, especially Israel, but also Saudi Arabia and others.”
Pompeo also spoke about Pakistan’s help in last week getting a US woman, her Canadian husband and three children released from detention by the Afghan Haqqani network militant group.
The couple had been held for five years inside Pakistan, he said.
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