For more than two decades, I have studied counterterrorism and radical Islamist organizations in the Middle East. I now want to address the U.S. intelligence community directly.
The question is not whether the Islamic Republic is willing to pursue violence on American soil. Its record has answered that. The question is whether America will recognize the next plot before Tehran succeeds.
In March 2026, a federal jury convicted Asif Merchant of murder-for-hire and attempting an act of terrorism across national boundaries. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, Merchant testified that he worked for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and came to the United States to arrange political assassinations. U.S. President Donald Trump was among the potential targets identified in the case. American investigators stopped the plot; they cannot assume they will stop every one.
After seven months of war, Tehran faces mounting pressure and the possibility of historic upheaval at home. A regime sustained by propaganda and repression may become more dangerous, not less, when it fears for its future. That is my assessment; I do not claim to know whether an attack has been ordered. The distinction matters. A serious warning must identify what the evidence shows and then ask what those facts require America to prepare for.
The intelligence community’s 2026 threat assessment states that Iran has demonstrated the capability to develop lethal operations against Americans at home and abroad and will probably pursue such efforts again if the government remains in power and rebuilds. The threat is not a product of imagination, even if the timing and form of another attempt remain unknown.
The Islamic Republic’s ruling establishment has long used intimidation and violence to reach beyond Iran’s borders. Its ideological certainty turns opponents into enemies and makes coercion an instrument of survival. But American agencies should not picture only the conventional terrorist cell waiting for instructions in a basement. The more difficult threat may involve a dormant network, a facilitator, a criminal intermediary or someone already positioned to gather information about a target.
The Department of Homeland Security has assessed that Iran relies on people with preexisting access to the United States—including members of criminal networks and private investigators—for surveillance and lethal plotting. These are the kinds of connections an intelligence service can exploit without sending an identifiable assassination team from Tehran.
At the center of concern are the IRGC, its Quds Force and Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence—institutions whose activities must be understood across the boundaries between espionage, terrorism and transnational repression. Their reach need not depend on every participant knowing the whole operation. A person who collects information, a criminal willing to accept payment and a handler abroad may each occupy a different part of the chain.
What matters is whether American agencies can put those parts together before a plan reaches its intended victim. The phrase “sleeper cell” captures the fear, but it should not become a substitute for identifying the people, relationships and conduct that make a threat real.
A regime sustained by propaganda and repression may become more dangerous when it fears for its future.
That is also why counterintelligence cannot confine its attention to the familiar image of a uniformed Iranian operative. Universities, media, charities, religious institutions and political organizations are places where people work, speak and associate freely—and where a hostile intelligence service might seek access or influence. This does not make those institutions suspect, or their members agents of Tehran. It means investigators must follow evidence of foreign direction wherever it leads, while refusing to confuse political speech, religious belief or Iranian ancestry with operational involvement. An indiscriminate response would wrong many of the people the regime itself seeks to intimidate.
The lives of Trump and other American officials are at stake, but so are the lives of Iranian dissidents who have sought safety in the United States. The plot against journalist Masih Alinejad shows why those threats belong in the same homeland-security conversation. In one Iran-directed murder-for-hire case, two organized crime figures were sentenced to 25 years in prison. In another, an American convicted murderer was sentenced to 15 years for his role in a plot against Alinejad. For Tehran, an outspoken opponent abroad may be a target; for America, she is a person entitled to the protection of its laws. An attempt to kill her in New York is not merely an extension of Iranian politics; it is an assault on American sovereignty.
These cases should not be filed away as unrelated prosecutions. They expose a method: the use of intermediaries to put distance between a decision made by the regime and violence carried out elsewhere. That distance can complicate attribution and offer plausible deniability, but it should not obscure the underlying threat.
American law enforcement deserves credit for the plots it has disrupted. Success, however, can become a dangerous comfort if officials regard each arrest as the end of a story rather than another source of insight into how a future operation might be organized.
Iran’s violence against its own people adds urgency to this question. During the bloody repression of January 2026, the authorities imposed severe communications restrictions as protests spread. A government willing to silence its citizens and punish dissent at home should not be presumed to respect the safety of its critics abroad. Washington’s concern for Iranian dissidents in America must therefore be practical, not ceremonial: When a credible threat emerges, protection, warning and investigation should follow before a victim becomes the subject of another indictment.
The danger is not limited to a single kind of target or operation. An official, a dissident or a Jewish or Israeli institution may face different threats requiring different responses. Cyber activity and physical violence must be assessed together when evidence connects them, not casually treated as parts of a plot merely because both are possible. Nor should concern about unconventional attacks be turned into a prediction for which there is no case-specific basis. The task of intelligence is to separate a demonstrated capability from a feared scenario, then act decisively when warning signs move from one toward the other.
That task belongs to more than one agency. The FBI’s investigations, DHS’s homeland intelligence and border responsibilities, the Secret Service’s protective mission, cyber defense, financial investigations, and the work of state and local law enforcement must reinforce one another. The objective is not another general declaration that Iran is dangerous. It is the timely recognition of suspicious recruitment, surveillance, payments and foreign direction, especially where a criminal intermediary or locally placed facilitator stands between Tehran and a potential victim. The strongest defense is one in which information reaches those able to act before the threat becomes an attack.
Washington must also confront the strategic question it has postponed. I believe the Islamic Republic’s growing vulnerability makes serious attention to Iran’s political future unavoidable. An endless search for another deal cannot, by itself, answer the problem posed by a regime that has pursued opponents abroad while repressing its people at home. The aspirations of Iranians must not disappear behind negotiations about the rulers who govern them. Nor should uncertainty about America’s ultimate Iran policy become an excuse for uncertainty about its immediate obligation: protecting people on American soil.
I am not predicting the place, date or form of Tehran’s next attempt. I am saying that the possibility of major violence in the United States cannot be dismissed simply because earlier plots failed.
The intelligence community should examine suspected facilitators and criminal connections, protect those credibly threatened and treat every disrupted operation as both a success and a warning. America should not have to learn how far the regime’s reach extends from an atrocity America failed to prevent. Counterterrorism is measured not by how thoroughly a crime can be reconstructed afterward, but by whether it was stopped before anyone was killed.
