After years of being designated as a terror threat, Iran and Hezbollah have been removed from one federal government list, according to the Times of Israel.
It cites a new "Worldwide Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community" delivered to the Senate Armed Services Committee.
The government document still mentions Iran in connection with cyber terror and notes that Tehran considers the U.S. a threat. It also says Iran's ballistic missiles "are inherently capable of delivering WMD" and even potentially nuclear bombs.
But the report from U.S. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, given to senators Feb. 26, doesn't even reference Hezbollah.
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According to the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, it's what's left out that is significant.
"The lack of reference to the threat of Iranian and Shiite terrorism contradicts previous publications by U.S. government agencies (the Intelligence Community and the State Department) in 2014, which stated that Iran and Hezbollah continued to directly challenge the interests of U.S. allies and that Hezbollah had increased its global terrorist activity in recent years to a level not seen since the 1990s," said the report.
It's all politics, the report said.
"The lack of reference to the Shiite terrorist threat, and Iran and Hezbollah as its generators, is not accidental. The ITIC believes that this is due to a combination of political considerations (the U.S. dialogue with Iran over the nuclear agreement) and the idea that Iran and Hezbollah may be of assistance in the campaign against ISIS in Syria and Iraq and possibly in other countries (Iran is mentioned together with the United States, the West and the Arab countries as confronting ISIS)," the report continued.
Townhall.com news editor Katie Pavlich was a little more pointed.
"If this isn't dangerous appeasement, I don't know what is," she wrote. "Is ISIS a threat? Absolutely. Should we align ourselves with or appease Iran because of their work against ISIS? Absolutely not," she wrote.
"As a reminder, Hezbollah, funded by Iran, is the largest terror organization in the world. Before 9/11, Hezbollah, not al-Qaida, was responsible for the majority of U.S. terrorism deaths, including the 1983 bombings of U.S. Marine barracks and U.S. embassy in Beirut, in addition to a series of attacks in the '80s."
She continued: "So what's going on here? Why strip Hezbollah and its funding parent Iran of their terrorism label? Especially now? It all points back to getting President Obama his deal with Iran at all costs."
"Highlighting Iran's regional role, the report pointed to the Islamic Republic's 'intentions to dampen sectarianism, build responsive partners, and de-escalate tensions with Saudi Arabia.'"
The Iran-run PressTV continued, "Iran has repeatedly stressed that it will not interfere militarily in Iraq and Syria, but the Islamic Republican continues to provide support to both countries against ISIL in the form of defense consultation and humanitarian aid."
Iran expert Clare Lopez of the Center for Security Policy said the conflict remains in the report.
"DNI's Senate report doesn't explicitly remove Iran and Hezbollah from the [Department of State] terror lists, but it does set up something of an internal contradiction … more by omission than any explicit statement of removal."
It is "indeed fruition of everything … I've been saying, yes, about Obama's explicit agenda to enable Iran as [a] hegemonic power in [the] Persian Gulf region," she said.
She had said last year that it looked like the U.S., under Obama, had switched sides in the war on terror.
"Some in the administration genuinely appear to believe the Muslim Brotherhood can act as a foil or counterweight to al-Qaida, although with what's going on in Syria, it's hard to understand why they would still think that," she said at the time.
"In any case, and for whatever motivations, there is no doubt this administration switched sides in what used to be called the Global War on Terror. Even though President George W. Bush was obviously confused and mistaken when he called Islam a 'religion of peace' the day after 9/11, he wasn't deliberately exonerating the perpetrators," she said.
She said Bush simply didn't understand.
But Obama, she said, has "no excuse."
"We must acknowledge," she said, "that the enemy is supremacist forces of Islamic jihad. We must name, acknowledge, confront the enemy as he is – not as we wish him to be."
The Times of Israel said that according to one Israeli think thank, the "removal of Iran and its proxy Hezbollah from the list of terror threats, where they featured in previous years, was directly linked to the campaign against the Islamic State."
The report said Israel, as well as Sunni allies of the U.S., "has often warned that Iran, through Hezbollah and other proxies, has been sowing instability in the region."
"An escalating dispute between Jerusalem and Washington over the terms of an eventual agreement on Iran's nuclear program has seen Israeli officials rail against the relatively conciliatory tone adopted by U.S. officials toward Iran, in light of the shared interest in combating the Islamic State."
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