New U.S. intelligence assessment says core al Qaida group seriously hurt

Jan. 31, 2012
New U.S. intelligence assessment says core al Qaida group seriously hurt
Jonathan S. Landay | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — The losses of Osama bin Laden and other key figures have seriously degraded the core al Qaida organization's ability to mount major strikes and continued "robust" U.S. counter-terrorism efforts could reduce the group to only symbolic importance, the top U.S. intelligence official said Tuesday.

The finding, delivered by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper to the Senate Intelligence Committee as part of a 2012 Worldwide Threat Assessment, contrasts with last year's report, which warned that the Pakistan-based group continued to pursue sophisticated foreign plots.

Bin Laden's killing last May by U.S. special forces and the deaths and capture of other key operatives since 2008 "lead us to assess that core al Qaida's ability to perform a variety of functions — including preserving leadership and conducting external operations — has weakened significantly," Clapper said.

The report omitted mentioning that many of the group's losses were due to an intensified campaign of attacks by CIA missile-firing drones on al Qaida's sanctuaries in Pakistan's tribal area, something that President Barack Obama confirmed on Monday.

Those operations have been substantially curtailed because of a serious downturn in U.S. relations with Pakistan that led to a Pakistani decision late last year to end the CIA's use of an airbase from which it launched the pilotless aircraft.

Clapper noted that with continued "robust counter-terrorism efforts" and cooperation by other countries, "there is a better-than-even chance" that the global jihadist movement spawned by al Qaida will become fragmented.

"With fragmentation, core al Qaida will likely be of largely symbolic importance to the movement; regional groups, and to a lesser extent small cells and individuals, will drive the global jihad agenda both within the United States and abroad," Clapper said.

In another finding, Clapper said that an alleged Iranian plot to kill Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United States last year shows that some Iranian officials — probably including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei — may be "more willing" to launch attacks against the United States. Iran denied mounting such a plot.

"We are also concerned about Iranian plotting against U.S. or allied interests overseas," Clapper said, adding that the costs Iran bears for the alleged plot and its leaders' perceptions of U.S. threats to their country will probably determine "Iran's willingness to sponsor future attacks against the United States."

That assessment comes amid growing tensions over what the United States, its European allies and Israel charge is a covert Iranian program to develop nuclear weapons. The United States and Israel have declined to rule out military action against Iranian nuclear facilities. Iran insists that its uranium enrichment effort is for producing fuel for civilian nuclear reactors.

Repeating a finding from last year, Clapper said that the U.S. intelligence community thinks that "Iran is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons," but that it remains unknown whether Tehran has taken the decision to do so.

At the same time, Clapper suggested that the U.S. intelligence community believes that Iran has advanced its ability to produce nuclear weapons since last year.

In last year's report, Clapper said that Iran had the technical ability to produce sufficient quantities of highly enriched uranium for a weapon "in the next few years." The phrase "next few years" was dropped from this year's assessment.