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Three days into the Iran war, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said the quiet part out loud: The Revolutionary Guard’s Qods Force has long carried out plots around the world and now intended to deploy those capabilities against the U.S. homeland. The United States, a Qods Force statement carried on Iranian television warned, “will no longer be safe” as the Qods Force targets Americans within the homeland and abroad. “The enemy should know that their happy days are over and they will no longer be safe anywhere in the world, not even in their own homes.” U.S. authorities went on a nationwide high alert at the onset of war against Iran, with the FBI mobilizing to “address and disrupt any potential threats to the homeland” and warning state and local law enforcement of “an elevated threat” posed by Iran and its proxies in the homeland.
And yet, as of this writing, two months after the Revolutionary Guards’ threat, authorities have yet to report a single homeland plot specifically tied to Iran. Lone offenders appear to have carried out attacks on their own, some clearly angered by the war, but authorities have yet to establish links between these plots and Iranian intelligence or security agencies, their terrorist proxies, or criminals hired as cutouts to carry out attacks.
This is surprising, not only because of the explicit Revolutionary Guard threat to target the homeland, but because Iranian-linked plots have been thwarted elsewhere around the world since the war began and because Iran has a track record of plotting attacks in the United States. Indeed, Iran and its proxies have spent years investing in what U.S. counterterrorism officials describe as a “homeland option” in the United States.
It stands out that there have been no reported plots in the United States while plenty have occurred elsewhere, despite Iranian threats. Intent and capability, two factors typically associated with assessing threats, could help explain why.
If ever there was a time when Iran would seek to target the U.S. homeland, it would be now, when the United States joined Israel in a war that President Donald Trump intimated was aimed at overthrowing the revolutionary regime in Tehran. Consider that convicted Hizballah operative Ali Kourani — who described himself as a sleeper agent and carried out wide-ranging preoperational surveillance of potential targets in New York and elsewhere — told the FBI in 2016 that he expected that he or other operatives would be called upon to carry out attacks in the United States only under specific circumstances, one of which was if the United States ever went to war with Iran. After the war started, a federal government alert warned local and state law enforcement agencies that Iran may have sent an “operational trigger” in an encrypted communication to activate sleeper cells abroad.
Iran was not always seen as posing this kind of a threat to the homeland. For years, the U.S. intelligence community assessed that Iran and its proxies were unlikely to carry out attacks within the United States. Then, in 2011, the Revolutionary Guard hatched a plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States at a popular Washington, D.C., restaurant, leading the U.S. intelligence community to reassess its assumptions. Then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper soon testified before Congress that “some Iranian officials — probably including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei — have changed their calculus and are now more willing to conduct an attack in the United States in response to real or perceived U.S. actions that threaten the regime.”
Since that 2011 plot, Iranian agents or their proxies have been tied to 29 plots in the United States, according to a data set I maintain for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Around the world, over the past five years, the data set tracks 174 cases of Iranian foreign operations, including 81 involving Iranian agents, 24 involving criminal proxies, and 55 terrorist proxies. Within the homeland, “U.S. law enforcement has disrupted multiple potentially lethal Iranian-backed plots in the United States since 2020,” the Department of Homeland Security reported in June 2025. “During this timeframe, the Iranian government has also unsuccessfully targeted critics of its regime who are based in the Homeland for lethal attack.”
In its 2025 threat assessment, the Director of National Intelligence assessed that Iran “will continue to directly threaten U.S. persons globally and remains committed to its decade-long effort to develop surrogate networks inside the United States.” In just the past five years, U.S. authorities have disrupted at least 17 Iranian plots in the homeland, including those involving Iranian operatives as well as terrorist and criminal proxies, according to the Washington Institute data set.
This makes the lack of Iranian plots in the homeland over the course of the current war all the more intriguing. Iran has a demonstrated ability to plot attacks in the homeland, even if most have failed, but authorities have not reported any since the war began. The answer may come down to traditional factors determining the level of a threat, namely intent and capability.
First is a question of intent. Iranian security and intelligence agencies may not be trying to carry out, direct, or inspire attacks in the United States at the moment, either because they are deterred from doing so or because they understand that carrying out an attack in the homeland crosses a bright red line and would likely result in military escalation against Iran at home.
In June 2025, Trump warned Iran of the consequences of attacking the United States. “ANY RETALIATION BY IRAN AGAINST THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA WILL BE MET WITH FORCE GREATER THAN WHAT WAS WITNESSED TONIGHT,” the White House posted. Having suffered tremendous losses — to personnel, infrastructure, military and other manufacturing, and the economy — Iranian leaders may understand that they need the war to end (Trump says the war is terminated, but the U.S. military remains deployed and the U.S. Navy is now escorting commercial ships through the Strait of Hormuz) and that attacking the U.S. homeland would almost surely lead to American military escalation against Iran. Iranian officials may also have sought to avoid creating a rally-around-the-flag effect that could give the Trump administration the public mandate for war that it currently lacks.
Iranian officials may also feel they do not need to escalate to attacks in the U.S. homeland since they have already successfully engendered significant public fear and global media attention through low-scale attacks in Europe by lone offenders or small groups targeting Jewish communities. These plots, claimed under the name of Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamiyah, a previously non-existent entity that appears to be a front group tied to pro-Iran proxy networks in Iraq, appear to be carried out by individuals — mainly teens and young adults — recruited online to launch attacks in a violent variation of the modern gig-economy. This hybrid, terror-for-hire model allows Iran to have a significant psychological effect, while maintaining enough distance and reasonable deniability to protect itself from significant blowback.
Second is a question of capability. Iranian and Hizballah operatives have tried to carry out attacks abroad since the war began, but in each case, authorities detained suspects and reportedly thwarted plots in Azerbaijan, Kuwait, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, among others. Similarly, Trump warned that Iran was “trying”— but was apparently unable — to activate sleeper cells in the United States. “We know a lot of different things that have happened that have been very bad,” the president stated, adding that the United States has very good intelligence on such plots and is “very much on top of it.”
This is surely a testament to the capabilities of national counterterrorism services and also the result of effective intelligence sharing among countries. But it is a factor of intelligence-driven precision airstrikes that took out key Iranian personnel behind the regime’s external operations. For example, early into the war, Israeli air force strikes specifically targeted Rahman Moqadam, the head of Unit 4000, the special operations division of the Revolutionary Guards’ Intelligence Organization, as well as his boss, Majid Khademi, the head of the Revolutionary Guard Intelligence Organization, whose predecessor was killed during fighting back in June. The U.S. government has tied the Revolutionary Guard Intelligence Organization to Iran’s lethal operations abroad targeting journalists and Israeli nationals.
In a rare public statement, Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, along with the Israel Defense Forces and Israel’s domestic service, the Israel Security Agency, revealed in late April that Rahman Moqadam was killed in a targeted airstrike in Iran. “Unit 4000,” the statement explained, “is responsible for promoting and directing terrorist activities outside of Iran against Israeli and Western targets.” Also killed was Mohsen Suri, “a primary operator and leader in the secret attacks network,” who held a senior position within Unit 4000.
As a result of this targeted disruption campaign directed against Revolutionary Guard units directing and involved in sabotage and assassination plots abroad, which was reportedly a focus of the Israeli air campaign over some six weeks, the Iranian security and intelligence elements responsible for such plots may not have been able to follow through on their intended plans.
Assessing why an event has not (yet) happened, like proving a negative, is something of a fool’s errand. While the above is all true, there are plenty of unknowns that cannot be accounted for in this kind of assessment. Moreover, well-planned plots often take a long time to plan, so the lack of a plot in recent past is not evidence that a plot is not currently in the making.
But the one thing that cannot be easily explained is the lack of attack-for-hire plots — recruited and perhaps directed by elements tied to Iran but with ties that are difficult to prove — in the United States. If Iran wanted to see small-scale plots in the homeland, like the recent spate of attacks in the United Kingdom, it could see that they occur. The ties back to Iran can be hard to pin down in such cases, as British officials are now seeing in their investigations into attacks like the recent stabbings in London.
To date, the closest cases that have taken place in the United States are the Temple Israel attack in Michigan, carried out by an individual with ties to Hizballah, and a shooting attack in Austin, Texas, the day the war started. The FBI has classified the Michigan synagogue attack by Ayman Muhammad Ghazali as a “Hizballah-inspired act of terrorism,” though in this case, the attacker appears to have been distraught by the death of family members, including an adult Hizballah member and two children, in an Israeli airstrike.
The Austin attack came a day after U.S. law enforcement released a bulletin warning that while “lone offenders in the Homeland have not historically been motivated by issues related to Iran … the existential threat to the Iranian regime and increased U.S. or Israeli actions could prompt some U.S.-based violent extremists or hate crime perpetrators to attack targets perceived to be Jewish, pro-Israel, or linked to the U.S. government or military.” The next day, a gunman in Austin, Texas, opened fire at a bar, killing three people and wounding 15. The shooter wore a sweatshirt with the words, “property of Allah,” over a t-shirt with the Iranian flag. Authorities are investigating the shooting as a possible act of terrorism.
Iranian agencies involved in plots abroad may be acting more cautiously than anticipated, having realized how deeply they appear to be penetrated. Against the backdrop of the 12-Day War in June 2025, authorities thwarted plots in Sweden and Germany. With a ceasefire in place, Iran is likely wary of being tied to any successful plot for fear of inviting further reprisal attacks for any acts of terrorism abroad.
As for attacks by criminal proxies, kids for hire, or inspired plots, these may yet come to pass. Asked in March if Americans should be concerned about an Iranian plot on the homeland, Trump replied, “I guess.” As to why such plots have materialized in Europe but not in America, Iran may see the cost of being tied to such plots as lower in Europe than in America. But the same way Iranian military planners have apparently held back some military capabilities and assets over the course of the war, Iran’s foreign plotters may be choosing not to act on their homeland capabilities — especially violence-for-hire plots — to be used if the war resumes or the regime is truly at risk of falling.
In a statement issued April 30 and attributed to Iran’s new Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, Iran issued new threats to America — but this time, limited to U.S. soldiers in the region: “Foreigners who come from thousands of kilometers away … have no place there except at the bottom of the waters.”
This latest threat was directed at U.S. forces in the region, not Americans back in the homeland. But the risk of Iranian-linked terrorism in the homeland remains and will continue even after the war ends, as Iranian leaders seek to avenge the deaths of so many of their compatriots and the destruction suffered over the course of the war.
Assessed together, intent plus capability dictate the level of the threat. The threat level must then be considered along with vulnerability to determine the level of risk.
Based on the above, the threat of terrorism in the homeland tied to Iran remains significant, but possibly somewhat diminished by the extent of damage inflicted on the Iranian security and intelligence agencies tasked with carrying out or overseeing such operations. With time, Iran will reconstitute those capabilities. However, should the war persist, Iran may calculate that the benefit of sowing fear in America and raising the costs of continuing to prosecute the war outweighs the risks of uniting the American public behind a still more aggressive U.S. posture against Iran.
Meanwhile, the risk of Iranian-linked terrorism in the homeland remains high. While questions remain about Iran’s intent and ability to carry out such attacks at the moment, the United States remains extremely exposed and vulnerable — especially to low-scale attacks like those seen in Europe. In other words, despite the lack of Iranian attacks in the homeland to date, authorities are right to maintain a posture of heightened vigilance.
Matthew Levitt, Ph.D., is the Fromer-Wexler senior fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, where he directs the Reinhard program on counterterrorism and intelligence. Levitt teaches at Georgetown and Pepperdine Universities. He is the author of Hezbollah: The Global Footprint of Lebanon’s Party of God (Georgetown University Press, 2013), host of the podcast Breaking Hezbollah’s Golden Rule, and the creator of interactive, open-access online maps of Hizballah and Iranian worldwide operational activities available at www.washingtoninstitute.org.
Image: 42-BRT via Wikimedia Commons
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