Iran planned to attack Washington military base, US officials say

Iranian proxies frequently attack American interests in the Middle East, but no direct assaults on US capital yet

Iran has made threats against Fort McNair, a US army base in Washington, and against the army’s vice chief of staff, according to two senior US intelligence officials. AP

The US has uncovered Iranian plans to attack a military base in Washington by boat and assassinate a general, reports said on Sunday.

Two senior US intelligence officials told AP that Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps members were planning to attack Fort McNair, an army base in the US capital, to survey the complex and kill Gen Joseph Martin.

The US reportedly intercepted IRGC communications in January describing "USS Cole-style attacks" – a reference to Al Qaeda's October 2000 suicide attack on a US Navy destroyer in the Yemeni port of Aden.

It remains unclear how the guards planned to stage such a small boat attack in the US homeland.

Iran attacks US interests through proxies in the Middle East, but a river-based assault in the US capital would be highly unusual.

A Pentagon official told The National  on Sunday that he could not provide any further details about the report.

Two unidentified US intelligence officials told of intercepted chatter among members of the IRGC’s elite Quds Force about retribution for the US drone-strike assassination of Iranian general Qassem Suleimani in Baghdad in January 2020.

Tehran’s military chiefs were unsatisfied with their counter-attacks, specifically the results of the ballistic missile attack on Al Asad airbase in Iraq shortly after Suleimani’s killing, the US officials said.

Fort McNair, one of the oldest army bases in the US, is where the Potomac and Anacostia rivers meet and on Washington’s new Waterfront District developments. It is Gen Martin’s official residence.

Security at the base has been a cause of concern for some time and the army has sought to increase patrols and surveillance of the complex and nearby shoreline.