Senator Corker, chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee asked Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff during a Senate hearing on the fight against ISIS that should there be any concern by the people in the Senate that Iran is influencing the outcome against ISIS, does have Shiite militias on the Ground, does have some of their personnel helping with the command and control there. Is that a concern that anyone that cares about US National Interests should have?
Gen. Martin Dempsey replied: Yes, of course. There are six things that, from the military perspective, concern us about Iranian influence. Four of them are regional and two of them are global. Four regional concerns are surrogates and proxies, some of which are present in Iraq and Syria and Lebanon and in other places such as Yemen, weapons’ trafficking, ballistic missile technologies and mines that they have developed with the intent to be able to close the Straits of Hormuz, if certain circumstances cause them to do that.
And then there are two global threats of course, their nuclear aspirations, not their nuclear aspiration for peaceful nuclear program, but for a weapon, which is being dealt with through negotiations on the diplomatic track. And then there is cyber is the other global threat they pose.
So Iran’s activities across the region and in the cases of nuclear aspirations and cyber activities are concerning us of course.