Why Has Iran Not Carried Out Attacks Inside the United States Despite Threats?

SadaNews - Despite repeated warnings from U.S. intelligence agencies over the years about the possibility of Iran carrying out attacks inside the United States, this scenario has not materialized even during the most tense periods, raising questions about the reasons for this absence.

The American newspaper "Christian Science Monitor" addressed this issue in a report prepared by writer Anna Mulrine Grop, who noted that warnings intensified following U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities last year, and then with the outbreak of the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran this year, where the U.S. strategy for combating "terrorism," issued by the administration of President Donald Trump in May, described Iran and its proxies as "the biggest threat to the United States from the Middle East."

Mulrine Grop stated that the escalation of warnings coincided with reports indicating that Israel had informed Washington of a potential Iranian plan to assassinate Trump.

However, experts believe that the absence of any attack within U.S. territory is not due to a retreat in Iran's intentions, but rather to the difficulty of executing such operations, as the writer indicated.

She quoted Daniel Byman, director of the Wars, Irregular Threats, and Terrorism Program at the "Center for Strategic and International Studies," explaining that any attack requires a complex network of funding and coordination and the infiltration of elements into the United States while avoiding intense security surveillance, a process that carries significant risks at every stage.

Byman also believes that Iranian leadership has acted with a degree of political pragmatism, as they realized that carrying out a large-scale attack inside the United States could unify American public opinion behind a war that did not have broad support, which is not in Iran's interest.

The author reviews an Iranian attempt thwarted by U.S. authorities in 2011 to target the Saudi ambassador in Washington, in addition to the United States in May accusing a member of the Iran-backed "Hezbollah Brigades" of planning to target Jewish temples in Los Angeles, Arizona, and New York, a case that ended in failure after the FBI infiltrated the network through a confidential informant.

The report notes that the success of the United States in preventing these plots reflects a significant development in the capabilities of its "terrorism" countermeasures, which have increasingly relied on intelligence cooperation, continuous surveillance, and infiltration of extremist networks, as well as receiving alerts from individuals within immigrant communities, which often refuse to engage in violent acts.

Nonetheless, the author conveys analysts' concerns that recent cuts in the number of workers at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence may affect the efficiency of future counterterrorism operations, after lawmakers from both the Republican and Democratic parties warned that reducing personnel could weaken national security.

The Christian Science Monitor concludes that Iran's abstention from carrying out attacks inside the United States reflects a combination of U.S. security deterrence and Iranian political calculations, while the continuation of this balance remains contingent on Washington's ability to maintain its intelligence agencies' readiness.