The U.S. said the number of global terrorist attacks declined slightly between 2014 and 2015, although the Islamic State group expanded its reach.
Iran remained the leading state sponsor of terrorism despite sealing a nuclear deal with world powers, the State Department said in its annual survey of worldwide terrorism released Thursday.
The department reported a 13 percent decrease in attacks in 2015 from the year before — the first such decline since 2012 — but said the threat from extremists keeps evolving as groups exploit lawlessness in ungoverned areas and seize on corruption to recruit members.
Meanwhile, as it has done in numerous previous years, the report identified Iran as the world’s “foremost state sponsor of terrorism in 2015” through its provision of financial support, training and equipping of various extremist groups, notably Lebanon’s Hezbollah, as well as the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad.
In addition to Iran, Syria and Sudan were again tagged as state sponsors of terrorism in the report, which is the first to be released since the Obama administration removed Cuba from the list last year as Washington and Havana moved to normalize ties.
Although it achieved a diplomatic resolution to concerns over its nuclear program, Iran in 2015 continued to use the Quds Force of its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to implement foreign policy goals, which include creating instability throughout the Middle East, according to the report. In addition to arming the Hezbollah and the Assad government, it also provided weapons and other assistance to militants in Bahrain and remained active in supporting anti-Israel groups such as Hamas, the report said.
Iran is also widely suspected of helping Houthi rebels in Yemen, although the report did not mention the alleged connection.
“The global terrorist threat continued to evolve rapidly in 2015, becoming increasingly decentralized and diffuse,” it said. “Terrorist groups continued to exploit an absence of credible and effective state institutions, where avenues for free and peaceful expression of opinion were blocked, justice systems lacked credibility, and where security force abuses and government corruption went unchecked.”
Statistics compiled for the report by researchers from the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism showed that there were 11,774 attacks that resulted in 28,328 deaths in 2015, compared with 13,463 attacks in 2014 that killed 32,727 people. Of those killed in 2015, 19 were private American citizens, compared with 24 in 2014.
The report attributed the decline to fewer attacks and deaths in Iraq, Pakistan and Nigeria but noted that attacks increased in number between 2014 and 2015 in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Egypt, the Philippines, Syria and Turkey.
________________________________________
Fallowing is part of US State Department annual report about Iran’s continued terrorist-related activity in 2015:
State Sponsors of Terrorism Overview
IRAN
Designated as a State Sponsor of Terrorism in 1984, Iran continued its terrorist-related activity in 2015, including support for Hizballah, Palestinian terrorist groups in Gaza, and various groups in Iraq and throughout the Middle East. In 2015, Iran increased its assistance to Iraqi Shia terrorist groups, including Kata’ib Hizballah (KH), which is a U.S. designated Foreign Terrorist Organization, to bolster the Asad regime in Syria. Iran used the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force (IRGC-QF) to implement foreign policy goals, provide cover for intelligence operations, and create instability in the Middle East. The IRGC-QF is Iran’s primary mechanism for cultivating and supporting terrorists abroad.
Iran views the Asad regime in Syria as a crucial ally, a pillar in its “resistance” front together with sub-national groups aligned with Iran, and a key link to Hizballah, Iran’s primary beneficiary and terrorist partner. In addition to its ongoing support for Hizballah in Syria, Iran continued to provide arms, financing, training, and the facilitation of primarily Iraqi, Afghan, and Pakistani Shia fighters to support the Asad regime’s brutal crackdown that has resulted in the deaths of more than 250,000 people in Syria. Iran more openly acknowledged the deaths of Iranian personnel in Syria in 2015, including several senior commanders, and increased Iranian troop levels, while continuing to claim publicly that Iranian forces had only deployed in an advisory role.
Iran also increased its arming and funding of Iraqi Shia terrorist groups.
Many of these groups, such as KH, have exacerbated sectarian tensions in Iraq and have committed serious human rights abuses against primarily Sunni civilians. The IRGC-QF, in concert with Hizballah, provided training outside of Iraq, as well as advisors inside Iraq for Shia militants in the construction and use of advanced weaponry. Similar to Hizballah fighters, many of these trained Shia militants have used these skills to fight for the Asad regime in Syria. Iran has also provided weapons, funding, and training to Shia militants in Bahrain. In 2015, the Government of Bahrain raided, interdicted, and rounded up numerous Iran-sponsored weapons caches, arms transfers, and militants. This includes the Bahraini government’s discovery of a bomb-making facility with 1.5 tons of high-grade explosives in September.
Since the end of the 2006 Israeli-Hizballah conflict in 2006, Iran has also assisted in rearming Hizballah, in direct violation of UNSCR 1701. Iran has provided hundreds of millions of dollars in support of Hizballah in Lebanon and has trained thousands of its fighters at camps in Iran. These trained fighters have used these skills in direct support of the Asad regime in Syria .
They have also carried out isolated attacks along the Lebanese border with Israel.
Iran remained unwilling to bring to justice senior al-Qa’ida (AQ) members it continued to detain and refused to publicly identify the members in its custody. Iran previously allowed AQ facilitators to operate a core facilitation pipeline through Iran since at least 2009, enabling AQ to move funds and fighters to South Asia and Syria.
Source: US State Department, Associated Press, 2 June 2016