Playing Politics With National Security Is a Dangerous Game
There have been two alleged acts of terrorism on American soil since President Trump launched Operation Epic Fury against Iran. While investigators are still probing whether the man suspected of carrying out a deadly mass shooting in Austin, Texas, on March 1 was motivated by Trump’s war, national-security experts contend that geopolitical escalations amplify the risk of lone-wolf extremism, in which self-radicalized actors commit violent, ideologically motivated attacks without material support from organized terrorist networks.
One week later, the New York City Police Department (NYPD) arrested two Pennsylvanian men for allegedly attempting to detonate an IED during a counterprotest outside Gracie Mansion, the mayor’s residence. The men were reportedly inspired by ISIS; one suspect allegedly told police the goal was to “carry out an attack bigger than the Boston Marathon bombing.”
Between the threat of lone-wolf extremism and potential retaliation by Iran, the U.S. remains on high alert. But the ongoing erosion of counterterrorism resources and expertise, recent shift in priorities across U.S. intelligence agencies toward immigration, and historic lack of oversight over the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF), which has developed a reputation for wrongfully targeting activists and communities of color, appear to be softening the nation’s counterterrorism readiness.
“The United States is in an unprecedented dangerous situation when the Iranian regime’s desire to retaliate for the war and the killing of [Ayatollah Ali] Khamenei could surface now or at any time in the future,” Bruce Hoffman, a national-security expert and senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote in an op-ed last week. “For the regime, revenge has always been a dish best served cold.”
Iran is among the world’s leading state sponsors of terrorism, and following decades of U.S. intervention, it has conducted numerous covert operations on American soil. Beginning with the assassination of Iranian dissident Ali Akbar Tabatabai in 1980, Iran has been linked to a 2011 bomb plot targeting Saudi Arabia’s then-ambassador to the U.S., and two separate attempts to silence Iranian-American journalist Masih Alinejad.
Similarly, the Indian-born British novelist Salman Rushdie has found himself in the Islamic Republic’s crosshairs for the past 30 years. In 1989, Iran’s Supreme Leader issued a fatwa, or religious edict, ordering Rushdie be killed over his depiction of the Prophet Muhammad in The Satanic Verses, which was published a year earlier. In 2022, a 24-year-old assailant stabbed Rushdie multiple times at a literary event in upstate New York. The author sustained serious injuries and had to be intubated at the hospital. Although Iran denied involvement in the attack, a spokesperson for the Islamic Republic’s Foreign Ministry condoned the violence.
IT IS ENTIRELY POSSIBLE THAT Iran’s retribution against Western countries comes in the form of directed attacks by Iranian-backed transnational criminal organizations or sleeper cells, but as Soufan Center Executive Director Colin P. Clarke observed in The Atlantic this week, lone-wolf extremism is the “most likely” scenario. It is also the hardest to anticipate.
“Lone-wolf attacks are the most difficult kind to predict because, as the name suggests, the individuals don’t have accomplices and they eschew guidance from both state and non-state actors,” Clarke writes. “If the assailant is not already on law enforcement’s radar, preventing the plot becomes even more challenging.”
U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies now have the added challenge of foiling those plots with fewer resources and personnel, as both have been diverted toward other priorities. “The 2018 National Defense Strategy recognizes that we face immense challenges from peer competitors, whether it’s China or Russia,” Hoffman said, “so there’s been a tendency to diminish the threat of terrorism.”
As my colleague Daniel Boguslaw chronicled last year, federal-state JTTF partnerships have strayed from their core counterterrorism mission in the Trump era.
On January 21, 2025, former acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove directed JTTF to coordinate with both DHS, as well as state and local law enforcement, “to assist in the execution of President Trump’s immigration-related initiatives.” The directive, which came one day after President Trump’s inauguration, effectively placed immigration at the top of the administration’s national-security agenda, ahead of China, Russia, and counterterrorism more broadly. According to Hoffman, “that sense of prioritization erodes when there are no other terrorist attacks, and that’s precisely when terrorists seem to act again—when they see a new vulnerability.”
Iran is among the world’s leading state sponsors of terrorism, and following decades of U.S. intervention, it has conducted numerous covert operations on American soil.
APART FROM THE SHIFT IN PRIORITIES across U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies, the Trump administration appears to be diminishing the nation’s counterterrorism capabilities in other ways.
In his op-ed, Hoffman noted the “surprising absence” of a National Terrorism Advisory System (NTAS) alert since the start of Trump’s war with Iran. “DHS published a NTAS bulletin on the same day the Trump administration struck Iran’s nuclear facilities in June last year, warning of a ‘heightened threat environment’ in the United States,” he writes, “but it has remained unchanged.”
Days before Trump ordered U.S. Central Command to initiate Operation Epic Fury, FBI Director Kash Patel reportedly fired a dozen agents, analysts, and staff tasked with monitoring threats from Iran due to their involvement in the federal investigation into Trump’s alleged retention of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate. Trump’s FBI has asserted the firings will not hinder Iran-related investigations by the agency, but MS NOW (formerly MSNBC) reported that roughly 300 agents who “worked mostly on national security matters have left the bureau” since Trump returned to the White House, including 45 who were fired.
“It is concerning that, whether voluntarily or not, there has been an exodus of expertise on terrorism from the U.S. government,” Hoffman told the Prospect.
He continued: “It would be prudent … not to write off the Austin attack and [attempted bombing] in New York City this past weekend as at all isolated. I would say too that the longer the war in Iran goes on, the higher the possibility of some manifestation of terrorism in this country.”
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