U.S. Annual Threat Assessment of Iran

Strategic Overview

Tehran will try to leverage its robust missile capability and expanded nuclear program, and its diplomatic outreach to regional states and U.S. rivals to bolster its regional influence and ensure regime survival. However, regional and domestic challenges, most immediately tensions with Israel, are seriously testing Iran’s ambitions and capabilities. A degraded Hizballah, the demise of the Asad regime in Syria, and Iran’s own failure to deter Israel have led leaders in Tehran to raise fundamental questions regarding Iran’s approach. Iran’s consistently underperforming economy and societal grievances will also continue to test the regime domestically.

Tehran will continue its efforts to counter Israel and press the United States to leave the region by aiding and arming its loose consortium of like-minded terrorist and militant actors, known as the “Axis of Resistance.” Although the demise of the Asad regime, a key ally of Tehran, is a blow to the Axis, these actors still represent a wide range of threats. These threats include some continued Israeli vulnerability to HAMAS and Hizballah; militia attacks against U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria; and the threat of Huthi missile and UAV attacks targeting Israel and maritime traffic transiting near Yemen. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei continues to desire to avoid embroiling Iran in an expanded, direct conflict with the United States and its allies.

Iranian investment in its military has been a key plank of its efforts to confront diverse threats and try to deter and defend against an attack by the United States or Israel. Iran continues to bolster the lethality and precision of its domestically produced missile and UAV systems, and it has the largest stockpiles of these systems in the region. It considers them as critical to its deterrence strategy and power projection capability, and Iran uses their sales to deepen global military partnerships. Iran’s growing expertise and willingness to conduct aggressive cyber operations also make it a major threat to the security of U.S. and allied and partner networks and data.

Iran also will continue to directly threaten U.S. persons globally and remains committed to its decade-long effort to develop surrogate networks inside the United States. Iran seeks to target former and current U.S. officials it believes were involved in the killing of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)-Qods Force Commander Qasem Soleimani in January 2020 and previously has tried to conduct lethal operations in the United States.

Tehran intends for its expanding relationships with other key U.S. adversaries and the Global South to mitigate

U.S. efforts to isolate the regime and blunt the impact of Western sanctions. Tehran’s diplomatic efforts—including at times outreach to Europe—are likely to continue with varying degrees of success. In the past year, Iran has focused extensively on deepening ties with Russia—including through military cooperation for its war in Ukraine—and has relied on China as a key political and economic partner to help it mitigate economic and diplomatic pressure. Iran is also making progress developing closer diplomatic and defense ties to African states and other actors in the Global South and is trying to build on nascent improvements in its ties with other regional actors, such as Saudi Arabia, despite continued mutual suspicion over each other’s ultimate visions for the region.

The economic, political, and societal seeds of popular discontent could threaten further domestic strife akin to the widescale and prolonged protests inside Iran during late 2022 and early 2023. The economy is beset by low growth, exchange rate volatility, and high inflation. Absent sanctions relief, these trends probably will continue for the foreseeable future.

Military

Iran’s conventional and unconventional capabilities will pose a threat to U.S. forces and partners in the region for the foreseeable future, despite the degradation to its proxies and air defenses during the Gaza conflict. Iran’s large conventional forces are capable of inflicting substantial damage to an attacker, executing regional strikes,

and disrupting shipping, particularly energy supplies, through the Strait of Hormuz. Iran’s unconventional warfare operations and militant partners and proxies, such as Hizballah, have traditionally enabled Tehran to pursue its interests throughout the region and maintain strategic depth with a modicum of deniability.

However, Iranian officials are grappling with how to slow and eventually reverse their and their proxies’ recent military losses from the Israeli campaign against Iran and its regional allies, including strikes on Iranian military targets such as air defense systems in April and October 2024. The IC assesses Iran’s prospects for reconstituting force losses and posing a credible deterrent, particularly to Israeli actions, are dim in the near-term.

Iran has fielded a large quantity of ballistic and cruise missiles as well as UAVs that can strike throughout the region and continues efforts to improve their accuracy, lethality, and reliability. Iran’s defense industry has a robust development and manufacturing capacity, especially for low-cost weapons such as small UAVs.

However, the limited damage Iran’s strikes in April and October 2024 inflicted on Israel highlights the

shortcomings of Iran’s conventional military options.

Iran has also deployed small boats and submarines capable of disrupting shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. Its ground and air forces, while among the largest in the region, suffer from outdated equipment and limited training.

Cyber

Iran’s growing expertise and willingness to conduct aggressive cyber operations make it a major threat to the security of U.S. networks and data. Guidance from Iranian leaders has incentivized cyber actors to become more aggressive in developing capabilities to conduct cyber attacks.

Malign Influence Activities

Iran often amplifies its influence operations with offensive cyber activities. During the Israel-HAMAS conflict, U.S. private industry tracked Iranian influence campaigns and cyber attacks.

In June 2024, an IRGC actor compromised an email account associated with an individual with informal ties to then-former President Trump’s campaign and used that account to send a targeted spear-phishing email to individuals inside the campaign itself. The IRGC subsequently tried to manipulate U.S. journalists into leaking information illicitly acquired from the campaign.

WMD

We continue to assess Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and that Khamenei has not reauthorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003, though pressure has probably built on him to do so. In the past year, there has been an erosion of a decades-long taboo on discussing nuclear weapons in public that has

emboldened nuclear weapons advocates within Iran’s decisionmaking apparatus. Khamenei remains the final decisionmaker over Iran’s nuclear program, to include any decision to develop nuclear weapons.

Iran very likely aims to continue R&D of chemical and biological agents for offensive purposes. Iranian military scientists have researched chemicals that have a wide range of sedation, dissociation, and amnestic incapacitating effects, and can also be lethal.

Iran’s Challenges

Iranian leaders recognize the country is at one of its most fragile points since the Iran-Iraq war, which probably weighs on their strategic calculus and confidence in their approach toward the region, the United States, and U.S. partners. They face growing political, social, economic, and regional pressures, leaving Iran increasingly vulnerable to regime-threatening instability and external interference.

Source: “Annual Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community,” Office of the Director of National Intelligence, (March 25, 2025).