WASHINGTON — Iran has exploited the war in Iraq and a proxy fight with Israel to emerge as a more powerful and confident foe of the United States and is casting a growing "shadow" of influence across the Middle East, the nation's top intelligence official testified Thursday.
During a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on national security threats, National Intelligence Director John D. Negroponte and other officials expressed a new level of concern over Iran's capabilities and intentions, saying the Islamic regime's pursuit of nuclear weapons was only one element of its increasingly aggressive behavior.
"Iran's influence is rising in ways that go beyond the menace of its nuclear program," said Negroponte, ticking off several developments that had emboldened the country in the last year.
Among them, he said, was an increase in oil revenue that allowed greater funding of terrorist activities, and a belief in Iran and Lebanon that Hezbollah -- the Tehran-sponsored militant group based in Lebanon -- was the victor in heavy fighting with Israel last summer.
Iran "regards its ability to conduct terrorist operations abroad as a key element of its national security strategy," Negroponte said, adding that Hezbollah, which the United States classifies as a terrorist organization, "could decide to conduct attacks against U.S. interests if it feels its survival -- or that of Iran -- is threatened."
His testimony comes at a crucial juncture in the long-strained relationship between the United States and Iran, as the Bush administration struggles for ways to derail Tehran's pursuit of nuclear weapons and curb its interference in the Iraq war. Iran's Shiite Muslim government is a strong supporter of Iraqi Shiite militias involved in sectarian violence.
Indeed, U.S. forces took six Iranian nationals into custody in Iraq on Thursday, while lawmakers in Washington used three separate Capitol Hill hearings to express their concerns that President Bush's plan to deploy 21,500 more troops to Iraq in an effort to stabilize the country could lead to a military confrontation with Iran.
At a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), the panel's chairman, pressed Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to say whether the administration believed it had authority to invade Iran without congressional approval -- a question Rice declined to answer.
