Assessing whether Iran war has heightened U.S. terrorism threat

On 16 February 1992, Sheikh Abbas al-Musawi was heading to Beirut in a black Mercedes with his wife and five-year-old son when the journey turned deadly.

The Iran-backed Hezbollah secretary-general was travelling with two Range Rovers carrying armed bodyguards.

He was returning from a ceremony commemorating the anniversary of the killing of one of Hezbollah’s founders.

Trailing the convoy were Israeli Apache AH-64 helicopters, which fired missiles and killed the Hezbollah leader along with his family.

A month later, a suicide bomber struck the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires, killing 29 people and injuring 200.

Years after that, another bombing targeted a Jewish community centre in Buenos Aires, leaving dozens dead and hundreds more wounded.

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Argentina and its allies have blamed Hezbollah and Iran for those attacks, accusations both have denied.

That history is why Professor Bruce Hoffman, one of the leading terrorism experts in the United States, said he believes Iran treats revenge as a “dish best served cold”.

“So, this is a threat that regardless if and when the war ends anytime soon, we’ll continue into the future,” he said.

Prof Hoffman served as a commissioner on the independent commission that reviewed the FBI’s post-9/11 response to terrorism and radicalisation.

Now a senior fellow for counter-terrorism and homeland security at the Council for Foreign Relations, he said the joint US-Israel war in Iran should leave the United States on high alert, with history offering ample warning.

“In 1981, following the fall of the shah of Iran and the revolution that brought the Ayatollah Khomeini to power, the shah’s former spokesperson was gunned down at a suburban Maryland home.

“Fast forward to 2011, when there was a very serious plot by Iran, Iranian agents, the IRGC, to assassinate Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States in a very upscale Washington restaurant,” he said.

Sheikh Abbas al-Musawi was travelling to Beirut in a black Mercedes with his wife and five-year-old son when an attack killed them all

“In recent years, there have been repeated accounts of Iranian efforts in the United States to enlist drug traffickers, street gangs, mafia types, motorcycle gangs, to either kidnap or assassinate Iranian dissident residents in the United States,” he added.

The war with Iran has already ushered in what he described as a new era of “lone wolf” attacks in the US.

An attack involving a vehicle and gunfire at a large Michigan synagogue last month was a “Hezbollah-inspired act of terrorism” aimed at the Jewish community, according to the FBI on Monday.

A US citizen originally from Lebanon bought the AR-style rifle used in the attack on 9 March, three days before he drove his truck – loaded with gas and fireworks – into Temple Israel and opened fire.

The attacker died at the scene. No-one else was hurt.

The fear is that the Michigan attack may not stand alone, and that more incidents could follow on US soil, ranging from lone-wolf violence to cyber attacks and targeted assassinations.

Among those recently targeted in a failed assassination plot by an Iranian operative was John Bolton, Donald Trump’s former National Security Advisor.

Federal officials said in 2022 that the suspect was a member of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard who allegedly tried to pay a hitman $300,000 (€260,244) – only for that would-be assassin to be an FBI informant.

Mr Bolton is hesitant to conduct interviews in person these days, so our conversation takes place over Zoom.

“It’s just a question of situational awareness and on the lookout for things that might be suspicious,” he said.

Law enforcement vehicles sit in the car park at Temple Israel as an Israeli flag blows in the wind

For him, the strain on US intelligence services, frayed ties with allies and the country’s terrorism threat level all loom as major concerns.

“Well, having been and still the target of Iranian attention, I do think that people in the US should be concerned about that. This is a time when we should also be cooperating with our allies in terms of sharing intelligence and so on.

“And unfortunately, we’re at a point where the president seems to spend more time attacking our allies than finding ways to work with them. So, if it’s reducing the flow of information that would be helpful to counterterrorism, surveillance or defences, that’s obviously a problem,” the former ambassador to the UN said.

During his second term, Mr Trump pledged to cut “billions and billions of dollars” in government spending.

Reports say the push to curb spending has affected how the Department of Homeland Security operates, including reduced information-sharing with critical infrastructure firms about possible Iranian hacking threats.

Mr Bolton said this is “not the time” to be cutting back capabilities.

“The lower your capabilities, the greater the chances one of them would succeed,” he said.

Jennifer Hendrixson White, a national security expert at Perry World House, shares Mr Bolton’s concerns and said conversations with Capitol Hill contacts have offered a clear picture of the situation.

Former National Security Advisor to Donald Trump, John Bolton

The former senior adviser to two former chairmen of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said there has been a major push to shrink the intelligence community, particularly on the analytical side.

She said that presents a “real challenge” as the US tries to assess both its own threat environment and that facing allies and partners around the world.

“Talking with contacts on Capitol Hill who are involved directly in the funding and oversight of these agencies, critical agencies to US national security. Much like a lot of the other agencies on the domestic side, these national security agencies have undergone tremendous pressure to see people leave, to have retirements or fork-in-the-road type engagements with their staff,” she said.

For some in Washington, the threat feels personal, and their answer is to press on with the military campaign known as Operation Epic Fury.

Iranian Janatan Sayeh, an Iran analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, an organisation known for its “hawkish” voices, said the moment has come for regime change in Iran.

But the United States is also part of the equation, with its war in Iran increasing the risk of wider escalation.

Asked whether he believed the operation had worsened the terrorism threat inside the US, he said past attempts to contain that threat had failed.

“No matter what policy we had in place here, the regime’s malign activities never changed, never halted them,” he said.

“I don’t even think appeasement even changed it. So, you look at what happened under Biden, that was very lax sanctions enforcement. Then you set out the maximum pressure under (the) first Trump administration, and now you have the war,” Mr Sayeh said.

“Even after Operation Midnight Hammer, we did not see any change in decision-making. So, the war was really seen and continues to be viewed as the only way that we can truly neutralise the range of these threats, because so far, we have not been able to contain them,” he added.

But terrorism carries no single nationality, Prof Hoffman said, and the threat can emerge from within the country just as easily as from abroad.

“Certainly, heightened security will be at the World Cup games in the United States, Mexico, as well as Canada this coming spring and summer for the 250th anniversary of the United States’ independence”, Prof Hoffman said.

“But I would argue even beyond that. I think we have to be vigilant, but prudently so and flexible in our defences that would enable us to respond to this potential waterfront of threats we face.”