Iran and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah have been removed from the U.S.'s list of terrorism threats, according to a new report recently delivered to the U.S. Senate by James Clapper, the director of National Intelligence, reported the Times of Israel.
Clapper presented the unclassified report, titled 'Worldwide Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community' to the Senate on February 26. A previous report from January 2014 included both Iran and Hezbollah under the terrorism section, noting that both "continue to directly threaten the interests of U.S. allies. Hezbollah has increased its global terrorist activity in recent years to a level that we have not seen since the 1990s."
In the 2011, 2012 and 2013 version of the report, Iran was even given its own sub-heading in the terrorism section, noted Newsweek.
The latest report only mentions the Shiite Hezbollah group once in regards to its fight against radical Sunni groups like the Islamic State group and al-Nusra.
Hezbollah, which receives most of its funding from Iran, is officially designated a terrorist group by both the U.S. and the European Union, but the report makes no mention of this classification.
Iran is named as a regional and cyber threat to U.S. interests, partially due to its support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, but the report acknowledges Iran's role in preventing "[the Islamic State group] from gaining large swaths of additional territory" in Iraq.
Tehran has "intentions to dampen sectarianism, build responsive partners, and deescalate tensions with Saudi Arabia," the report notes.
It adds that Iran has "overarching strategic goals of enhancing its security, prestige, and regional influence [that] have led it to pursue capabilities to meet its civilian goals and give it the ability to build missile-deliverable nuclear weapons, if it chooses to do so."
Max Abrahms, professor of political science at Northeastern University and member at the Council of Foreign Relations, told Newsweek that he thinks Iran was largely omitted as part of a "quid pro quo" agreement between Washington and Tehran.
"I think that we are looking at a quid pro quo, where Iran helps us with counter-terrorism and we facilitate their nuclear ambitions and cut down on our labeling of them as terrorists," said Abrahms. "The world has changed. The Sunni threat has gotten worse, the Islamic State is a greater danger than al-Qaeda ever was, and the Iranians have really come up big in terms of helping us out in combating the Islamic State."
