Terrorist attacks down, but US very wary of Iran

WASHINGTON — Foreign terrorist groups and their affiliates had a bad year in 2017 as the United States and other countries fought back against the Islamic State, but al-Qaida and Iranianbacked militias remain deadly threats, according to an annual government terrorism report that was released Wednesday.

There were 8,584 terrorist attacks around the world in 2017, a 23 percent decline from 2016, according to the State Department report. As a result, more than 18,700 people were killed, about a quarter of whom were the perpetrators themselves.

That death toll represented a 27 percent drop from the previous year, the report said.

Much of the reason for the decline was improved security in Iraq, according to Ambassador Nathan Sales, the State Department’s coordinator for counterterrorism.

Still, more than half of all terrorist attacks worldwide took place in just five countries: Afghanistan, India, Iraq, Pakistan and the Philippines. And 70 percent of all deaths from terrorist attacks occurred in a different, if overlapping, set of five countries: Afghanistan, Iraq, Nigeria, Somalia and Syria.

Security in Afghanistan continued to worsen as a result of coordinated attacks by the Taliban, including its affiliated Haqqani network, the report noted. Some of the attacks were planned and launched from safe havens in Pakistan, a source of continuing irritation in relations between Washington and Islamabad.

Although four countries are designated as state sponsors of terrorism, the report highlighted Iran as a top threat.

The Trump administration has made its tough approach to Iran a central tenet of its foreign policy. President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the Iran nuclear deal this year, and his top administration officials have excoriated the clerical government in Tehran at almost every opportunity.

The report said Iran is undermining legitimate governments and U.S. interests in Afghanistan, Bahrain, Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen. The 7-year civil war in Syria has given Hezbollah, an Iran proxy, valuable battlefield experience, the report said.

The other three state sponsors of terrorism are North Korea, Syria and Sudan.

While the Islamic State lost much of the territory it controlled in Iraq and Syria, it shifted to a more dispersed model — encouraging attacks by sympathizers around the world using whatever weapons were at their disposal. Such efforts led to highprofile attacks in Manchester, England; Barcelona, Spain; and New York.