Iran, Hezbollah left off US terror threat listing

Iran and Hezbollah were left out of an annual terrorism threat assessment report offered in late February to the US Senate by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. Iran and Hezbollah had been fixtures on the annual report before 2015.

Iran’s efforts to fight Sunni extremists, including the so-called Islamic State (IS, also known as ISIL or ISIS), were touted in the unclassified version of the Worldwide Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Communities, released recently.

While a US-led coalition has targeted Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, the report noted Tehran’s push to keep “ISIL from gaining large swaths of additional territory” in Iraq. Iran is allied with both the Iraqi and Syrian governments. So, with the US, it has a common foe in Islamic State.

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