CIA Creates New Mission Center to Turn Up Heat on Iran - WSJ

Central Intelligence Agency Director Mike Pompeo speaking at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington in April. Photo: eric thayer/Reuters

WASHINGTON—The Central Intelligence Agency has established a new organization focused exclusively on gathering and analyzing intelligence about Iran, reflecting the Trump administration’s decision to make that country a higher priority target for American spies, according to U.S. officials.

The Iran Mission Center will bring together analysts, operations personnel and specialists from across the CIA to work collectively on Iran and bring to bear the range of the agency’s capabilities, including covert action. In that respect it is similar to a new Korea Mission Center that the CIA announced last month to address North Korea’s efforts to develop long-range nuclear missiles.

The CIA didn’t publicly announce the new Iran organization. The agency declined to comment.

CIA Director Mike Pompeo is a longtime Iran hawk, and the U.S. officials said his emphasis on the threat the country poses to U.S. national-security interests is reflected in the establishment of the new center.

In April, in his first public remarks since taking the helm at the spy agency, Mr. Pompeo warned that Iran was “on the march.”

“Whether its enormous increased capacity to deliver missile systems into Israel from Hezbollah, their increased strength in and around Mosul with the Shia militias, the work that they’ve done to support the Houthis to fire missiles against the Saudis—the list of Iranian transgressions has increased dramatically since the date that the JCPOA was signed,” Mr. Pompeo said then, referring the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the 2015 agreement that Iran struck with the U.S. and other world powers to limit its nuclear program.

Both Mr. Pompeo and President Donald Trump have criticized that deal—the director has called the agreement a “mistake” for U.S. national security—and have vowed to hold Iran accountable to its terms.

“We’re actively engaged in a lot of work to assist the president, making sure he has an understanding of where the Iranians are complying and where they might not be,” Mr. Pompeo said at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington in April.

The CIA previously had brought analysts and operational personnel under one roof to address Iran, as part of the Iran Operations Division, internally known as Persia House. It was later subsumed into a broader regional division.

But breaking the Iran Mission Center out into a new, stand-alone entity is a sign that the CIA and the White House are elevating the country’s importance as an intelligence target and making it a priority alongside other countries such as Russia and North Korea, current and former officials said.

To lead the new group, Mr. Pompeo tapped a veteran intelligence officer, Michael D’Andrea, who had recently overseen the agency’s program of lethal drone strikes and has been credited by many of his peers for successes against al Qaeda in the U.S.’s long campaign against the terrorist group.

Mr. D’Andrea is widely known among peers as a demanding but effective manager, and a convert to Islam who works long hours. Some U.S. officials have expressed concern over what they perceive as his aggressive stance toward Iran.

Attempts to reach Mr. D’Andrea were unsuccessful, and the CIA doesn’t comment on personnel matters.

Mr. Trump, who during the presidential campaign pledged to dismantle the nuclear agreement Iran struck with the U.S. and five other nations, has publicly turned on the heat on leaders in Tehran.

In his first presidential trip to Israel last month, Mr. Trump said Iran must “never be allowed to possess a nuclear weapon—never, ever—and must cease its deadly funding, training and equipping of terrorists and militias, and it must cease immediately.”