FBI Asks Congress To Renew Spy Tool, Citing Threats From Iran
The FBI Director has warned that threats from entities like Iran cannot be effectively countered if Congress fails to renew a spying authority set to expire on December 31.
The FBI Director has warned that threats from entities like Iran cannot be effectively countered if Congress fails to renew a spying authority set to expire on December 31.
In a Senate hearing Tuesday, Christopher Wray warned that Section 702 of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) is key to US national security and its ability to combat foreign terror.
“When it comes to foreign adversaries like Iran, whose actions across a whole host of threats have grown more brazen… or the People’s Republic of China, which poses a generational threat to our economic and national security, stripping the FBI of its 702 authorities would be a form of unilateral disarmament,” Wray said.
Section 702 of FISA allows intelligence agencies to monitor non-Americans outside the US and collect and analyze their communications, such as emails and text messages.
Calls for changes to Section 702 have emerged in Congress following revelations that the FBI improperly searched the database for exchanges with US citizens, including political protesters, campaign donors, and even members of Congress.
Critics argue that FISA 702 has become a backdoor to investigate Americans without warrants. However, the US government and the intelligence community contend that recent reforms prevent such abuse, and additional red tape would neutralize the tool in the face of foreign threats.
"In the last couple of years Iran has tried to assassinate a former US national security advisor on US soil,” Wray reminded the Senate Judiciary Committee.”[Iran] has tried to kidnap and kill an American journalist in NYC… and for extra credit, has tried to interfere in the last presidential elections. " He was referring to plots to kill former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo as retaliation for the targeted killing of IRGC militant mastermind Qasem Soleimani in Baghdad, in January 2020.
US officials say Section 702 has been critical to stopping weapons sales to Iran before, and “in 2022 to help the administration target an individual and foreign firm that attempted to circumvent US sanctions on Iran,” according to Politico.
Intelligence agencies had identified what the Iranian regime needed for its advanced weapons program, and then searched for those (including names of components and manufacturers) in the 702 database.
In his Senate hearing Tuesday, the FBI director warned again that “allowing 702 to lapse, or amending it in a way that undermines its effectiveness would be akin to laying bricks to rebuild another, pre-9/11-style wall.”
Opponents of the 702 say it invades Americans’ privacy, undermines trust, and oversteps constitutional boundaries. Some US lawmakers are proposing changes that would require a warrant to utilize the database for investigating US citizens.
Senator Mike Lee, one of the more vocal critics of Section 702, grilled Wray on potential abuses of the tool.
“When the FBI is allowed to police itself, and need not go to court to get a warrant based on evidence establishing probable cause—like every other law-enforcement agency in America—it abuses its power under FISA,” he later posted on X.
“When Wray insists that a warrant requirement would just be too difficult for FBI to comply with, that isn’t surprising,” Senator Lee said. “It's supposed to be hard for the government to spy on Americans. That's why we have a Constitution.”
It is expected that the Judiciary Committee proposal and a House Intelligence plan are introduced as amendments Wednesday, “moving forward only with the proposal that gathers the most votes,” according to Politico.
Iran caught between Israel’s military operation in Gaza that has squeezed Tehran’s ally Hamas and Israeli air strikes in Syria, appears to be trying to defend its reputation and military credibility. Fars wrote that foreign media claim “Israel has been serially attacking Iranian positions in Syria. However, these assertions are far from reality. Israel has no intention or audacity to launch a deliberate attack on Iranian forces."
Fars’ claim contradicts the history of Israeli attacks on Iran-related targets in Syria that have been routinely taking place since early 2017. Hundreds of attacks have been carried out by Israel targeting weapons depots, forward positions, and Syrian airports that Iran uses to transport its weapons into the country. At least twenty such attacks took place in 12 months from April 2022 to April 2023. According to Israeli sources 100 attacks took place before 2017, and by the end of 2018, the number had already climbed to 200.
Iran became involved in the Syria civil war in 2011 and started to send military personnel to the country. It also deployed Afghan, Iraqi and other militias to fight on the side of Bashar al-Assad’s forces, but its main fighting force was considered to be the Lebanese Hezbollah. However, Iran also began shipping weapons solely for Hezbollah to store in Lebanon for possible use against Israel.
The air attacks often targeted these shipments, whether in warehouses in Syria or en route to Lebanon.
However, Fars dismisses hundreds of Israeli attacks and claims that only a few air strikes took place and Iran so far has had a handful of casualties. Moreover, the IRGC mouthpiece says that these attacks and casualties were errors by Israel, who did not intend to hit Iranian targets.
"The attacks have mostly occurred either due to the lack of information on the part of the Zionists about the presence of Iranian forces, or are conveyed through intermediaries, such as the Russians, and Iranian forces are martyred solely due to some miscoordination," Fars claimed.
The latest Israeli attack took place last week, and Iran admitted that two of its high-ranking officers were killed in Syria, vowing retaliation.
While supporting Hamas financially and militarily, Tehran has decided not to become directly involved in the Gaza war to defend its ally, Hamas. This is apparently seen by the IRGC as a potential domestic and regional embarrassment, after decades of threats that it can wipe Israel off the map with its ballistic missiles.
Since the war started on October 7, IRGC generals have been frequently making claims of fielding new weapons systems, and issuing warnings against any power that would dare to challenge them. Meanwhile, the United States sent a naval strike group led by the aircraft carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower into the Persian Gulf last week with the United Kingdom also dispatching an additional warship.
One way in which IRGC has tried to compensate for its lack of direct action to defend Hamas has been frequent attacks by Iranian proxies against US bases in Iraq and Syria as well as escalating attacks on vessels in the Red Sea by Yemeni Houthi forces. But Tehran has tried to disavow any role in these attacks, insisting that “resistance” forces are acting on their own in defense of Hamas.
Israeli government spokesman Eylon Levy told Iran International that the focus of the military offensive is “fighting the terror monsters who perpetrated the October 7 massacre,” not expanding into a regional conflict.
He stressed that in spite of heightening tensions on its northern border with Lebanon, Israel is not interested in fighting a war on two fronts, he added that they have “put up serious deterrence against Hezbollah in the north with a massive buildup of reserves.”
He emphasized that Lebanon’s Hezbollah “will be making the mistake of a lifetime” if it enters war as the consequences will be severe for both the Iran-backed militant group and the poverty-stricken state of Lebanon.
Levy also addressed the rising tensions in the West Bank. “Hamas launched the massacre with a grand vision... to spark a regional conflict,” he said, Hamas “calling on Palestinians in the West Bank to grab guns and knives and join the fighting."
Palestinian sources claim about 240 Palestinians have been killed since the Hamas operation while over 550 terror attacks have been launched by Palestinians, according to the IDF, many waged by Hamas.
Iran claims it did not play any role in the Hamas attacks of October 7 terror attack that triggered the current crisis, in spite of its having supported the militants financially and militarily for years, along with many others around the region from Iraq to Yemen.
The war, which followed the Hamas invasion on October 7 when thousands of militia killed at least 1,200 mostly civilians and took an additional 240 hostage, has also seen over 15,000 killed in retaliatory attacks in Gaza, with hundreds of thousands displaced. Israel pounded the enclave to uproot the Islamist group, which has made the war exceedingly bloody, hiding deep among the civilian population and in a vast underground tunnel network stretching around 500kms.
Israeli forces have begun operating in the southern area of the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, where the population has been swollen by around one million refugees from northern areas and has faced heavy international pressure, including from Washington, to limit civilian casualties.
"We are going to continue with our campaign to destroy Hamas, a campaign that the United States sees eye to eye with us about the strategic objectives of this war, that this war cannot end with Hamas still standing," Levy said.
"We're moving ahead with the second stage now. A second stage that is going to be difficult militarily," noting that "We didn't pick the battlefield, Hamas picked the battlefield."
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov announced the planned visits of the Russian president on Tuesday, adding that the agenda for Ebrahim Raisi's Moscow visit is not finalized yet but discussions will likely include the Gaza war.
Although not very frequently held, Raisi’s meeting with Putin is not unexpected as Tehran and Moscow are partners in crime, particularly since Iran is supplying Russia with drones and missiles for the invasion of Ukraine.
Putin’s outreach to the Arab states of the Persian Gulf aligns with his broader strategy to foster global alliances outside the Western sphere, aimed at projecting the failure of US and its allies’ attempts to isolate Russia through sanctions. Aligning with the two most powerful Persian Gulf states helps give Putin a degree of credibility more than the allegiance with Iran, as the world views Russia, like Iran, as a rogue state.
The visit comes after OPEC+ agreed to voluntary supply cuts totaling about 2.2 million barrels per day (bpd), including an extension of existing Saudi and Russian voluntary cuts of 1.3 million bpd. Russia cooperates with all three countries in the OPEC+ group of oil producers, which last week announced new voluntary production cuts that were greeted skeptically by the oil market because of doubts as to whether they would be fully implemented.
The visits by Putin and Raisi come as Russia is also hosting the littoral countries of the Caspian Sea, in a cooperation framework that Moscow says strengthens security in Eurasia. “The joint work of the Caspian countries makes a significant contribution to ensuring security, stability and sustainable development on the Eurasian continent,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in a meeting with his Azerbaijani, Iranian, Kazakh and Turkmen counterparts in Moscow on Tuesday.
Lavrov proposed the creation of “the Caspian Council -- a forum for cooperation and dialogue without any bureaucratic schemes,” emphasizing the need for enhanced international legal foundations and cooperation among Caspian countries. He expressed hope for further collaboration based on the outcomes of the upcoming Third Caspian Economic Forum in Tehran.
The Russian foreign minister also highlighted that deepening practical cooperation across the region is also significant in a broader sense, namely in the context of the formation of a multipolar world order. Last month, hundreds of military leaders, lawmakers, diplomats and scholars convened in Canada’s 2023 Halifax International Security Forum to discuss the alignment of Russia, Iran, China, and North Korea as a substantial threat to the established world order.
Leaders of these countries, including Iran’s ruler Ali Khamenei, have repeatedly talked of a new global order not based on Western values.
It is a rare foreign visit for Putin who now has an ICC arrest warrant on his head for alleged war crimes in Ukraine. While it may limit his travels to most of the world, there remain some who still welcome him.