Ayatollah Khamenei (Majid Saeedi/Getty Images)
The Biden-Harris administration is privately claiming to Congress that no Iranians have been involved in drone attacks on Americans over the past year, drawing criticism from lawmakers and experts who say the government is intentionally denying the extent of Iran's aggression in the Middle East.
In a non-public assessment provided to Congress last month, the State Department said it "has not identified any Iranian persons" responsible for attacking "a U.S. citizen from October 27, 2023, to July 23, 2024, using an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)," according to a copy of the previously unreported notice reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon.
The assessment was transmitted to lawmakers against the backdrop of a massive Iran-fueled war in the Middle East, where Tehran’s terror proxies are wreaking havoc on Israel, attacking international shipping lines, and targeting American forces stationed in the region. Drones are a key weapon for Iran’s allies and have been used on the battlefield by Hezbollah, Hamas, Yemen’s Houthi rebels, Syrian militants, and, most prolifically, Tehran-backed militia groups in Iraq.
Three American soldiers were killed in January in a drone attack on a U.S. outpost in Jordan, which President Joe Biden said was "carried out by radical Iran-backed militant groups operating in Syria and Iraq.
The State Department's late September analysis was mandated under a 2024 law that required a report to Congress on "any Iranian person that has attacked a United States citizen using an unmanned combat aerial vehicle." While the State Department’s analysis is technically accurate as written, Biden-Harris officials reinterpreted the law so that the report only included Iranians "directly involved" in launching drones at Americans.
This legal distinction enabled the administration to officially claim it "does not possess evidence that any Iranian persons" were involved in launching drones at Americans—even though a mounting body of evidence shows a number of Iranian-controlled terror proxies have done so.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas), who is responsible for authoring the portion of the law requiring a drone report, said the State Department intentionally misinterpreted the legal requirements to avoid identifying Iran as the principal source of drone attacks on Americans in the region.
"It's obvious that State Department lawyers worked overtime to deny Iran's role in attacking Americans, and it's also obvious why they did so," Cruz told the Free Beacon. "The Biden-Harris administration has been financing Iran's war against America and our allies since the day they took office. They have allowed over $100 billion to flow towards the Ayatollah, which enabled the Iranian regime to finance not just the October 7 terrorist attack on Israel but attacks on our soldiers across the Middle East. Rather than acknowledge the Iranian regime's role in those attacks, they have chosen to lawlessly ignore them."
A State Department spokesman maintained the report faithfully followed "the specific reporting requirements" Congress mandated.
"The Biden Administration takes seriously the range of threats posed by Iran to the safety and security of U.S. citizens, including those posed by Iran’s UAV proliferation," the spokesman said.
"That is among the reasons why we have conducted self-defense strikes in response to Iranian-enabled attacks in Syria, Iraq, and Jordan, as well as in Yemen and its surrounding waterways."
The United States is also imposing fresh sanctions on those "involved in Iran’s UAV program" and will "respond to this evolving threat" as needed, the State Department said.
Michael Knights, an analyst who has closely tracked Iran-backed attacks for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy think tank, said the State Department’s assessment suggests "the U.S. government is not keen to openly state that Iran is functionally at war with the United States, hence the use of legalese to describe Iranian involvement."
Iranian nationals, Nights added, "were clearly involved in designing the Shahed-101 and KAS-04 drones that are used to attack U.S. bases in Iraq and Syria."
Iran’s terror proxies have continuously targeted American and Israeli positions in the region since Hamas’s Oct. 7 terror spree. This includes a spate of attacks on U.S. outposts in Iraq and Syria, according to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, which identified the various terror factions responsible for the attacks as operating under Iran’s orders.
The State Department made a similar determination but would not attribute these strikes directly to Iran, even though the groups involved are directed by Tehran.
"Iran relies on and supports an extensive network of proxies and partners in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen that can conduct armed operations aligned with Iran’s interests, including against U.S. forces in the region," the State Department said in its report to Congress.
Iran-aligned militia groups in Iraq and Syria conducted "upwards of 170 attacks against U.S. forces since October 2023, the majority of which involved the use of UAVs." The State Department noted that Iran’s "lethal aid, training, and advice" enabled "many of these attacks" on Americans.
Still, the State Department maintained that the "individuals identified as conducting the attacks were non-Iranian foreign national members of proxy or partner groups."
One former U.S. official who worked on Middle East issues described the State Department’s determination as laughable, saying, "Any suggestion that Iran doesn’t have influence over and direct not just Iraqi militias but the Iraqi government is disingenuous."
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, the source added, "has near full control of Iraqi militias, including decisions on whether or not to attack U.S. personnel. Those decisions are not made in Baghdad by Iraqis—they are made by Iranians and the IRGC."
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