The FBI and DHS are on alert because Iran has a long history of planning retaliatory attacks, including the recent assassination attempt on President Donald Trump.
US military releases video of Iran attack
The US military has released footage of the airstrike that allegedly killed Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei.
WASHINGTON – Federal counterterrorism agencies are on alert for possible retaliatory attacks on the U.S. mainland after U.S. and Israeli forces launched attacks on Iran, killing the country’s supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei and other senior officials.
The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security announced they remain at war with each other over whether U.S. strikes on Iranian targets ordered by President Donald Trump will prompt Tehran’s regime and its proxies to retaliate.
And while officials from both countries declined to comment to USA TODAY on March 1 about the stepped-up operations, veteran Iranian observers said there was good reason to be concerned.
“Iran has developed the ability to carry out attacks abroad, including in the United States, for many years,” said Matthew Levitt, a former FBI and Treasury Department counterterrorism official. “If there was ever a time when the administration would want to act on it, it would be now.”
Iran has already responded with a series of retaliatory attacks across the Middle East, including targeting countries with U.S. military bases such as Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian vowed on March 1 that “bloodshed and vengeance” is Iran’s “legitimate right and obligation.”
Three U.S. service members have been killed and five others seriously injured in the ongoing conflict.
The Iranian regime has a long history of assassinations and other terrorist plots against Americans on U.S. soil and abroad, dating back at least 46 years.
These include plots thwarted by the United States against Iranian dissidents and against President Trump and former National Security Adviser John Bolton in response to the 2020 military offensive that killed Iranian military leader General Qassem Soleimani.
On June 22, last year, the United States put its country on high alert due to fears of Tehran’s retaliation following the bombing of three Iranian nuclear facilities the day before.
Major U.S. cities from New York to Los Angeles have tightened security, and the U.S. government has issued warnings to Americans at home and abroad.
Following the US government’s involvement in last year’s so-called “12-day war” between Iran and Israel, the FBI and Department of Homeland Security issued terrorist advisory alerts about possible Iranian attacks on American soil.
And that prompted the FBI to pull many employees from immigration and mass deportation efforts, one of President Trump’s top priorities, and return them to counterterrorism work in anticipation of a possible attack, Leavitt wrote in an article for the Army Counterterrorism Center in August.
At the time, federal authorities advised state and local governments to be especially wary of potential plots within the United States. One DHS National Terrorism Advisory System bulletin warned that “the Iranian conflict is creating a heightened threat environment in the United States.”
The bulletin warned that terrorist plots were not the only concern.
The bulletin said a “cyberattack on U.S. networks by pro-Iranian hacktivists is likely” and other attacks by the Iranian government are also possible.
Citing Iran’s “long-standing efforts to target U.S. government officials,” the paper said, “If Iranian leadership imposes a religious verdict calling for retaliatory violence against domestic targets, it will likely increase the likelihood that domestic violent extremists will mobilize for violence on their own in response to the conflict.”
What are the FBI and DHS doing now?
On February 28, FBI Director Kash Patel said the agency was “fully committed to the situation overseas” and directed the FBI’s counterterrorism and intelligence teams, including more than 200 joint counterterrorism task forces across the country, to remain on high alert and “mobilize all necessary supporting security assets.”
“As always, JTTFs across the country are working 24/7 to respond to and thwart potential threats to our homeland,” Patel told XPost. “While our military works to protect our armed forces abroad, the @FBI remains on the front lines of deterring attacks here at home, and our teams will continue to work around the clock to protect Americans.”
Patel urged everyone to “report anything that looks suspicious to law enforcement” through the FBI’s 1-800-CALL-FBI tip line and the tips.fbi.gov website.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said the Department of Homeland Security is similarly alert to the possibility of a U.S.-based attack.
“I continue to work directly with our federal intelligence and law enforcement partners to closely monitor and thwart all potential threats to our homeland,” Noem said in the X post.
Officials from both offices told USA TODAY they could not comment beyond what Patel and Noem have said.
Decades of conspiracies, assassinations, and attacks
In 1980, Iranian agent David Theodore Bellfield, who changed his name to Daud Salahuddin, allegedly assassinated a former aide to the recently ousted Shah of Iran in Bethesda, a suburb of Washington, D.C.
Ali Akbar Tabatabai, 49, a close aide to the Shah, had organized the Iranian Freedom Foundation, a vocal group opposed to the new religious government led by then-Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeini.
Dozens of subsequent plots against American targets in the United States and abroad followed, according to Congressional investigators.
U.S. prosecutors say these efforts have intensified significantly in the years following the Trump-ordered assassination of Soleimani, a major general in Iran’s feared Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and commander of the Revolutionary Guard’s International Strike Force, known as the Quds Force.
Since Soleimani’s death in 2020, Iranian operatives have worked alone or in conjunction with numerous proxies of the Revolutionary Guards, including the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah, to plot attacks against Mr. Trump, Mr. Bolton, other U.S. officials and prominent Iranian dissidents.
Leavitt said in the West Point article that since Soleimani’s death, U.S. authorities have thwarted a total of at least 17 Iranian plots in the country.
Murder for hire plot against Trump
In November 2024, federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York indicted three men in a murder-for-hire plot against Iranian-Americans. One of them, Farhad Shakeri, an Iran-based operative, was also charged with being directed by Iran and the Revolutionary Guard to “surveil and plan the assassination” of President Trump in retaliation for Soleimani’s assassination, according to a Justice Department criminal complaint.
Carlyle “Pop” Rivera, 49, and Jonathan Rodholt, 36, both of New York, were also indicted.
Another man with ties to Iran, Asif Merchant, is currently on trial in New York for his role in the 2024 terrorist attack and plot to kill Trump.
Bolton, a former top aide to President Trump and one of America’s top targets, said on March 1 that he could not comment on whether he received special protection from the FBI or Secret Service, as he has in the past.
“I probably shouldn’t say anything about it,” Bolton told USA TODAY. “I don’t comment on anything like that.”
Bolton said he had been given a number of “duty to warn” orders by the FBI in recent years following confirmed Iranian threats to his life for his role in Soleimani’s assassination.
These are considered so serious that the FBI has asked the Biden administration to provide special Secret Service protection to Mr. Bolton starting from Thanksgiving 2021. The measures lasted until President Trump ordered the protections revoked on his first day in office in January 2025, citing rifts between the two sides following the publication of Bolton’s revealing memoir during the Trump administration.
But Bolton said, “At this time, the entire U.S. domestic counterterrorism organization should be on high alert and in touch with our friends and allies around the world, because there is no question that Iran, and the regime, will use any means available to retaliate against what is happening.”
