“We know where most of them are. I think we have noticed them all,” President Trump told world media this week. The commander-in-chief discussed the possibility of Iranian sleeper cells being embedded and activated in the United States.
The concept of a sleeper cell—an organized group of foreign spies who lead mundane lives before being directed into action—may feel like something out of a movie or book in the public imagination. The same is true for lone wolves, who operate without direct command or support from a larger organization.
The president spoke about the threat on the tarmac in front of Air Force One, crystallizing a reality long held by defense and counterterrorism experts. Sources interviewed wealth They believe that out of sheer desperation, the Iranian regime may look for a way to harm the United States, Israel or their allies in hopes of retaliating.
ISIS has taken heavy losses: The United States says it targeted the country with ballistic missile attacks, naval ships and submarines, and command and control centers. As Trump said, “There’s almost nothing to target.” More than 1,400 Iranians have died, according to casualty tolls calculated by Al Jazeera. An ongoing military investigation has also determined that erroneous U.S. targeting data led to the Tomahawk attack on an girls’ elementary school rather than a nearby military base.
According to Al Jazeera, the United States and Israel, which acted out of concerns about national security, have lost 26 aircraft. Trump claimed that the Iranian regime had twice tried to assassinate him, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth added that the United States had been aware for “a long time” that the Iranian regime was targeting senior U.S. officials. Experts tell wealth Iran and the United States have long been targeting each other and fundamentally do not understand each other.
Wilbur Ross, President Trump’s former Commerce Secretary wealth While it is “hard to imagine” that Iran will be able to reestablish itself as a major geopolitical threat, factions within the country may “resort to activating their sleeper cells in various countries, including the United States, to do something one-off, maybe something like the World Trade Center.” Even the suggestion of another 9/11 attempt would shock intelligence and defense establishments around the world.
Sleeping Cells in the American Imagination
While some defense experts insist that sleeper cells have long been integrated into American society, Ruel-Marc Gerricht thinks the concept “may be a little outdated.” Gerecht, a former CIA targeting official on Iran who now works for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told reporters wealth If dormant cells existed, they would have been activated in the past. More likely, he explained, the Iranian regime may rely on foreign criminal networks to target individual dissidents — as demonstrated by the 2022 attempted murder of human rights activist Masih Alinejad in Brooklyn using two Russian criminals.
“We don’t need to worry about Iranian sleeper cells like those in Hollywood,” echoed Michael Rubin, a former Pentagon official and now a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he specializes in Iran and the broader Middle East. “When Iranians operate in the United States, they often leverage existing criminal networks to do so.”
This week, reports emerged that the FBI had sent a memo to California police departments saying it had obtained unconfirmed information that Iran might be attempting to launch drone strikes on the West Coast. White House press secretary Carolyn Leavitt stressed that the intelligence was unconfirmed, writing on
Rubin, who spent time with the Taliban before 9/11 studying the group, is more concerned about the “harmless extortion” of individuals who are forced to provide logistical assistance to foreign powers. Gerricht believes lone wolves pose a greater danger, arguing that their isolation from existing networks means law enforcement sometimes has to rely on luck to identify threats. “I’d be willing to bet that all the usual suspects are under investigation right now,” Gerricht added. “However long they maintain this surveillance, that’s another question.”
Iranian brain drain
Secretary of State Ross said that from a military sense, the U.S. operations in Iran are going well and in line with everyone’s expectations. Michael Allen, managing director of Beacon Global Strategies, tends to agree, saying the U.S. counterterrorism strategy is to “remain vigilant.” [the Iranian regime’s] throat so that they can do nothing but think of ways to survive instead of thinking of how to launch a sophisticated external attack on the West. “
Allen, who spent eight years on the White House National Security Council and Homeland Security Council, told reporters wealth: “I can never rule it out…so I’m not saying everything has been eradicated, but…strategies have to target these issues to continue to suppress it, suppress it as much as possible.”
After struggling to complete high-priority targets, reports surface that the United States is now attacking police stations. Infrastructure disarray is at the root of what Geleshte calls Iran’s “brain drain.” “If you don’t start with a decent bench, you’re not going to make the bench better,” Gerricht said. “It’s one thing to want to do something, it’s another thing to be able to do something.”
Be alert but don’t panic
The Iranian state knows it cannot “win” a war with the United States, so its strategy may increase costs for the United States and its allies, forcing them to cease hostilities and thus allow the Iranian regime to continue to exist.
“I think this is consistent with [the state’s] “Their overall strategy, of course, is to survive, to kill Americans … but all of that is to force the United States to say, ‘You know what, the cost is too high,'” Allen said.
The source added that reports that the Iranian regime has begun attacking its neighbors mean it has burned some bridges, indirectly helping the U.S. “get everyone on side and rowing in the same direction,” Allen noted. “This indirectly helps the United States, especially in the medium to long term.”
“The Iranian regime has always sought revenge,” Gerricht added. “That was true before the U.S.-Israeli airstrikes, and it is true today.”
contextual issues
The complexity of the Iranian state has historically made it difficult for most foreign intelligence agencies to establish a presence there. Compared to the United States, Iran has five institutional languages; three language families produce more than 60 dialects. Additionally, while the exact composition of Iran’s population is difficult to decipher, the government conducted a count of undocumented Afghan nationals in 2022, with 2.6 million people registered.
Sources say Israel has strong intelligence gathering capabilities in the Middle East wealthalthough Rubin believes that analysis of this data can create blind spots. Rubin, who has taught at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, observed that Israeli intelligence gathering in Iran was first and foremost based on the skills of immigrants from around the world who had settled in the country: “Israeli intelligence has a certain level of granularity where they understand the dialects of local communities and understand how things work on every street, which allows them to penetrate and understand those societies.”
A generation later, however, Rubin said that Israel’s experience of conflict with the Arab community was primarily about Palestine: “Unknowingly, [Israel] There is a tendency to filter all their understanding of Iran through Palestinians, but Arabs are not monolithic and neither is the Middle East. “
This story originally appeared on Fortune.com
