As members of both parties in Congress complain they’re not being briefed on escalating tensions with Iran, one top congressman who has seen the intelligence said it shows Iran’s aggressive behavior goes beyond its normal harassment as the rogue regime threatens to target Americans.
Mac Thornberry, the ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, told reporters Thursday he had been briefed twice over the past two weeks by officials from U.S. Central Command and the intelligence community. He said he is “absolutely convinced” that the information and warnings he saw, which were available to all members of his committee, showed the situation in the Persian Gulf is far from normal.
“I don’t think it’s business as usual. It is cause for greater concern,” said the Texas Republican. “And a great part of that concern relates to Americans being targeted. So yeah, something else is going on.”
U.S. and Iranian tensions in the Gulf region have risen sharply over the last two weeks. The Pentagon has deployed additional forces to the region in response to perceived Iranian threats, including the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier strike group, a contingent of B-52 bombers, the USS Arlington amphibious landing ship, and a Patriot missile defense battery. U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria are operating on high alert, and the State Department has ordered all non-emergency personnel to evacuate Iraq.
“What I heard is information that indicates that there is a threat, but it’s the same threat that was there six months ago, a year ago, and, in fact, is less because ISIS is defeated,” California Democratic Rep. John Garamendi said in an appearance on CNN Wednesday. “I do not trust the president. He is a pathological liar on most everything.”
Illinois Democrat Sen. Tammy Duckworth spoke for many her colleagues when she tweeted Thursday, “Congress is the only branch of government with the power to declare war and we have a right to know what’s going on.”
Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford, and CIA Director Gina Haspel are scheduled to brief all members of Congress on Iran early next week.
The intelligence that led to the deployments included photographs of missiles being loaded onto boats by members of Iran’s paramilitary Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and conversations about plots by Iranian-backed militias to attack U.S. troops. To indicate the seriousness of the threat, Pentagon officials declassified, but have not released, a photo showing an Iranian missile on a small boat in the Gulf.
Analysts have long been concerned that Iran could use missiles deployed on small boats to swarm U.S. ships in the Gulf. Thus far, Iranian boats have limited themselves to harassing behavior, such as dangerous approaches, but Iranian swarm tactics could overwhelm ship defenses in more aggressive scenarios.
Thornberry did not know whether there will be further U.S. deployments to the Gulf in the future, but he was confident troops would be able to react if they were attacked. Instead, he was concerned the partisan divide in Congress could harm national security.
“What I worry about is … if our partisanship has become so entrenched that we can’t look at facts anymore when it comes to national security and objectively try to evaluate them if, you know, Trump is doing it then it has to be bad or if, you know, Trump is doing it, has to be good,” said Thornberry. “Whichever side you’re on, I just think we have to be cautious about that.”
