ISIS Determined to Strike US Soon — Intelligence Chiefs

Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Vincent Stewart, director of the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), predicted that ISIS will probably increase its attacks this year in the DIA’s own assessment of the threats facing the United States globally, which he delivered while testifying before the Senate panel alongside Clapper on Tuesday.

It said that Kim “continues to challenge the global community with provocative and threatening behavior in pursuit of his goals, as prominently demonstrated in the November 2014 cyberattack on Sony, the August 2015 inter-Korean confrontation spurred by the North’s placement of landmines that injured two South Korean soldiers, and the fourth nuclear test” last month.

ISIL is “taking advantage of the torrent of migrants to insert operatives into that flow”, Clapper said, adding that the terror group is “pretty skilled at phony passports so they can travel ostensibly as legitimate travelers”.

Despite this apparent failure, North Korea has pressed on with its ballistic missile program and on Saturday launched a rocket into space, a move Washington and Tokyo said was a banned weapons test.

Iran also continues to march down the path of building an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead, according to Clapper.

How advanced is North Korea’s nuclear programme?

The Yongbyon reactor was mothballed in 2007 under an aid-for-disarmament agreement, but North Korea started renovating it after its third nuclear test in 2013.

Experts believe the Yongbyon reactor can produce about 4 kg of the radioactive material per year, which is enough to fuel a nuclear bomb, reported the BBC. However, the US and South Korea denounced the move as a cover for an intercontinental ballistic missile test.

Nuclear proliferation was only one of a long list of threats Clapper raised, from failing states and the migration crisis to terrorist plots by the Islamic State and potential cyberattacks. “They have an organized approach to laundering money”.

The launch was strongly condemned by the USA, its allies and the United Nations Security Council.

Historically, the USA has insisted the missile defense in Europe was exclusively aimed at Iran, and the fact that it was all on the Russian border was coincidental.

The head of US intelligence has confirmed that North Korea restarted its plutonium nuclear reactor Tuesday, giving the reclusive country the ability to create nuclear stockpiles within weeks.

Pyongyang has reportedly relaunched a plutonium production reactor and could begin to assemble a stockpile of plutonium for its nuclear reactor. Many outside experts were skeptical and Clapper said the low yield of the test “is not consistent with a successful test of a thermonuclear device”.

Yongbyon Uranium Enrichment Facility in North Korea.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper also said Islamic militants and those inspired by the Islamic State group will continue to pose a threat to Americans at home and overseas; al-Qaida remains an enemy; and the US will continue to see cyber threats from China, Russia and North Korea.

“The threat from foreign intelligence entities, both state and non-state, is persistent, complex and evolving, targeting a collection of USA political, military, economic and technical information by foreign intelligence services continues unabated”.