Iran remains "the world's largest state sponsor of terrorism," using its elite Revolutionary Guard Corps and Lebanese Hezbollah to undertake "terrorist-related and destabilizing activities," the U.S. administration said in an annual report, released Wednesday.
The U.S. State Department's annual survey of global terrorism accused Iran of intensifying numerous conflicts and trying to undermine governments throughout the Middle East and beyond. Iran's "terrorist affiliates and proxies demonstrated a near-global terrorist reach," the report said.
The number of worldwide terrorist attacks dropped 23% from 2016, according to the report, a change largely due to gains against the Islamic State group in Iraq. The drop follows a decrease in 2016 as compared to 2015.
The report comes as the U.S. is toughening its stance against Iran. President Donald Trump withdrew from the nuclear accord with Iran earlier this year and has begun to dismantle sanctions relief granted under the 2015 deal.
The reimposition of sanctions is one part of a larger effort by the U.S. to cut Iran off from funds used to support proxy forces and other "malign activity" in the region, including terrorism, according to Trump administration officials.
"Iran uses terrorism as a tool of its statecraft, it has no reservations about using that tool on any continent," Ambassador Nathan Sales, the State Department's coordinator for counterterrorism, told journalists, Wednesday. He cited Iran-linked fundraising networks in West Africa, weapons caches in South America and operational activity in Europe.
The report specifically cited the activities of Qassem Suleimani, the powerful commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guard commander, who also helped organize Iraqi militias against the Islamic State.
Iran used the Revolutionary Guards "to provide support to terrorist organizations, provide cover for associated covert operations and create instability in the Middle East," the report stated.
Iranian fighters and Iran-backed militias like Lebanon's Hezbollah emerged emboldened from the war in Syria with valuable battlefield experience they seek to leverage elsewhere in the Middle East, according to the report.
The decrease in terrorist attacks around the world in 2017 was attributed mainly to fewer attacks in Iraq, where territory once held by the Islamic State group was retaken by government forces. Deaths due to terrorist attacks also decreased by 27% last year. The report said the Islamic State alone carried out 23% fewer terrorist attacks and caused 53% fewer total deaths, compared with 2016.
Despite the drop in attacks, the report described the terrorist landscape as "more complex" and the terrorist threat to the U.S. and its allies around the world as having "evolved."
U.S.-backed forces and Iraqi militias liberated nearly all of the territory that Islamic State once controlled in Iraq and Syria, including the major Iraqi city of Mosul.
The United States and its partners also stepped up pressure on al-Qaida to prevent its resurgence, it said.
As the Islamic State lost territory, the group became "dispersed and clandestine, turning to the internet to inspire attacks by distant followers," which has made the group "less susceptible to conventional military action," the report said.
The report stated that Islamic State and groups that pledged allegiance to Islamic State carried out attacks in more than 20 countries worldwide in 2017.
Also in 2017, al-Qaida quietly expanded its membership and operations, with a global network that includes forces in Syria, the Persian Gulf, North Africa, Somalia and the Indian subcontinent, in addition to core forces in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
"They have largely remained out of the headlines in recent years," Sales said Wednesday, "but we shouldn't confuse a period of relative quiet with al-Qaida's abandonment of its capabilities or its intentions to strike us or our allies."
The report highlighted a truck bombing in Mogadishu in October 2017 carried out by the al- Qaida-linked al-Shabab terrorist group that killed hundreds of people in "the deadliest terrorist attack in Somali history."
The report stated that terrorist attacks took place in 100 countries in 2017, but were concentrated geographically, with 59% of all attacks taking place in just five countries: Afghanistan, India, Iraq, Pakistan and the Philippines.
