The National- March 10, 2018- In a detailed testimony about the evolving threats facing the United States globally, US Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) General Robert Ashley laid particular emphasis on the growing Iranian influence across the Middle East, and particularly in Iraq, Syria and Yemen.

Addressing the US Senate Armed Services Committee last week, General Ashley described a “low-cost, high-payoff support” coming from Iran for Yemen’s Houthis against the Saudi-led coalition. This support includes helping the Houthis “improve their military and missile capabilities, demonstrated through missile launches against targets in Saudi Arabia and Saudi-led coalition ships in the Red Sea.”

But Iranian support to the Houthis is not just ground and air lethal aid according the US senior defense official. General Ashley detailed Iranian efforts to also boost the Houthis maritime capabilities. “With Iranian support, the Houthis have improved their maritime capabilities” he said, and which now “include anti-ship missiles, explosive-laden boats, and mines.” This reality makes the Yemen war, now in its third year, a “threat to vital international shipping lanes through the Red Sea.”

The head of the DIA drew a picture of a more muscular Iranian influence regionally. “Iran is poised to wield the most power in a post-conflict environment” in Syria, he said.

As it consolidates gains in Iraq and Syria, “we expect Iran to transition to efforts that secure and increase its long-term influence and to look for new opportunities to challenge its regional adversaries” he said.

In Iraq, this will take form in Iran leveraging “its aligned PMF (Hasd Shaabi) and Shia militia groups as well as its longstanding political and societal ties as its main avenues of influence to pressure Baghdad to expel U.S. and coalition forces and prevent Kurdish separatism.” As the ISIL territorial threat recedes, “Shia militia groups, including those loyal to Iran, are likely to pose an increasing threat to U.S. forces.”

In Syria, the US General foresaw an Iranian role that “will continue to work with Russia to administer deescalation zones while simultaneously supporting Syrian regime operations on the peripheries of these zones.” Iran’s presence in Syria, he said, “not only benefits the Assad regime, it represents a key step toward Iran’s goal of a land bridge from Tehran through Iraq and Syria into Lebanon.” It increases Iran’s operational reach in the region, but also tension with Israel.

Inside Iran, General Ashley said that after the nuclear deal – also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) – was signed in 2015, “the regime has distributed some financial gains resulting from the JCPOA to its security forces.” However, with the latest protests in Iran driven by economic woes, the US commander said “domestic social and economic expenditures will remain the priority for Tehran in the near term.”

The US General also pointed to improved Iranian conventional capabilities to deter adversaries, “defend its homeland, and control avenues of approach—including the Strait of Hormuz—in the event of a military conflict.” He saw continued focus on “its ballistic missile, naval, and air defense forces, with new emphasis on the need for more robust combat air capabilities.”

General Ashley revealed that “in 2017, Iran tested and fielded its Russian-made SA-20c surface-to-air missile (SAM) system” which grants Tehran “the flexibility of a highly mobile, long-range, strategic SAM with a generational improvement in capabilities over its other legacy air defense systems.” Iran has the region’s largest ballistic missile arsenal, “consisting of close-, short-, and medium-range systems that can strike targets throughout the region up to 2,000 kilometers from Iran’s border” he told Congress last Tuesday.

In the long run “Tehran is pursuing long-range, precision land-attack cruise missiles, which present a new type of threat in the region” and “is also developing more powerful space launch vehicles and technologies that enable development of long-range missile subsystems”, he added. His testimony comes as the Trump administration is consulting with regional partners on a counter-Iran strategy, and with Europeans on measures to amend few provisions in the JCPOA or otherwise abandon it in May.