(NPR) Dina Temple-Raston - Intelligence and law enforcement officials say analysts and experts who have been tracking al-Qaeda for more than a decade have been quietly reassigned, with a good portion of the analysts being asked to focus on Iran. Officials said that with the relative threat from al-Qaeda declining, and with the increase in terrorism-related activity linked to Iran, it made sense to focus on it. Philip Mudd, a former top counter-terrorism official in both the CIA and the FBI, noted the bombs that exploded in India and the country of Georgia which appeared to be targeting Israeli diplomats. "When I saw those attacks, to me the light that went on in my head was the intent light. Iran's intent is back," he says. After years of relatively low-level operations by Iranian-backed terrorists, Tehran appears to be back on the offensive. "There is no way you conduct that number of attacks without having senior leadership saying this is what we want to do." And that goes a long way toward explaining why Iran is fast become such a priority in the U.S. intelligence community.
2012-03-27 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive