Contributor: The U.S. desperately needs functional counterterrorism
On Monday, the latest evidence of dysfunction in the Trump administration’s counterterrorism apparatus emerged when National Counterterrorism Center director Joe Kent resigned, citing his opposition to the war in Iran. But turmoil is not new.
In July 2025, President Trump’s National Security Council senior director for counterterrorism, Sebastian Gorka, announced He said that “the US presidency is on the verge of announcing its new non-secret counterterrorism policy.” But eight months later, as America declares war on a notorious sponsor of terrorism, the strategy has yet to be revealed.
Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security not published He has been the National Terrorism Advisor since September and has failed to release his annual Homeland Threat Assessment report since Trump returned to office. This continues to be the case, despite counterterrorism experts I warned About the possibility of Iranian-backed sleeper cells mobilizing due to the current conflict with Iran.
Without a strategy that clearly articulates America’s priorities and responses, America’s counterterrorism defense will be fragmented, disorganized, and under-resourced. It was this breakdown that led Trump to respond to the question of whether Americans could expect more violence on their own soil. effective shrug: “I think.”
The local response to the Iran conflict began on March 1, when a naturalized U.S. citizen opened fire at a bar in Austin, Texas. Who was the gunman? He wears clothes that show his support for IranHe killed three people before being killed by police gunfire. Two young people inspired by the Islamic State on March 7 threw improvised explosives A group of far-right protesters in front of the New York City mayor’s mansion. There were two attacks on March 12. First, a shooting broke out at Old Dominion University, where a former U.S. National Guardsman was on trial for ISIS-related conspiracy. killed an ROTC instructor. Later a US citizen with family ties to Lebanon he drove his vehicle He entered Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, Michigan, before being killed in a gunfight with synagogue security guards.
In three of the four attacks, further violence was stopped by heroic interventions at the scene. Perhaps most importantly, the Old Dominion gunman was neutralized by students who stabbed the gunman to death. heroic stories, when it’s worth revivingIt underscores a bleaker reality: In the midst of war abroad, Americans have been forced to take the fight against terrorism into their own hands in their own communities; They were left to fend for themselves against AR-15s, IEDs, and armed vehicles.
The diversity of attacks and perpetrators makes the situation worse. The attackers include a U.S. National Guard veteran who spent several years in prison on terrorism charges, two teenagers who traveled to a different state with violent intentions, a man who apparently had a long history of mental illness, and a U.S. citizen who lost family members in the recent Israel-Hezbollah conflict. Their goals also point to a complex and unpredictable terrorist environment.
Without more predictable trends, law enforcement will be weakened and asked to protect an impossible variety of locations across the country from an impossible variety of locations. In this environment, an effective national counterterrorism strategy will likely address stopping terrorism further upstream, disrupting radicalization and violent mobilization at an earlier stage. But the Trump administration has effectively gutted the prevention infrastructure. major dismantling Department of Homeland Security Prevention Programs and Partnerships Center.
It is also noteworthy that none of the attacks to date appear to have been coordinated or directed by the Iranian regime; instead, the war encourages Western lone actors to attack their own communities. But Iran has long been plotting assassinations in the United States, often by enlisting third-party criminal groups, and may seek to activate such a program. As journalists Peter Beck and Seamus Hughes to warn: “Iran’s past calculations were low-grade operations sufficient to keep the FBI busy in the United States, but not large enough to trigger serious military consequences. With the latter now already a reality, the Islamic Republic has less to lose by mounting bolder attacks.”
The Trump administration has repeatedly cited Iran’s history of support for terrorist proxies to justify the conflict: On March 2, for example, Embers explained It was stated that one of the objectives of the operation was to “ensure that the Iranian regime cannot continue to arm, finance and direct terrorist armies outside its borders.” Indeed, if Iran follows its historical pattern, it will likely continue to make foreign operations and inspired violence a key part of its response, adding sleeper cell activation and sponsored individuals to the ranks of domestic violent extremists that have so far plagued the American homeland since the start of hostilities. But without a more defined strategy, America will likely struggle to mount an effective response.
If, as the old saying goes, “all politics is local,” then the corollary today in the age of smartphones is that “all conflicts are global.” Every time there is a war in the Middle East, which began in Gaza following terrorist attacks by Hamas in southern Israel on October 7, 2023, the landscape of terrorist threats worldwide, including in the West, worsens. Images and videos of erroneous US missile strike girls school Internet flooding is causing temperatures to rise and making attacks by lone actors and other violent extremists with only superficial connections to the conflict more likely.
But the scope of violence was not guaranteed or predetermined. As a Shiite-majority country, Iran has long been fractious and even unfriendly Relations with Sunni jihadist actors. The extent of the violence suggests that broader anti-American sentiment prevails in diaspora communities; This sentiment has likely been accelerated by the decades-long war on terror, greatly aggravated by Israel’s rights violations in Gaza since October 7, 2023, and punctuated by the killing of schoolchildren. In other words, the Iran war appears to be replacing earlier grievances and instead uniting different extremist forces against the United States.
In this environment, the Trump administration needs to stop being so careless about the fight against terrorism. Without a real strategy and without a director of the National Counterterrorism Center, the United States is far more vulnerable to an attack on its homeland than any existing one. Robert A. Pape, a long-time expert on terrorism, writes on X: sent: “After covering terrorism for 25 years, this is a flashing red light; as bright as I’ve ever seen before a serious attack.”
Only a serious approach to counterterrorism can keep the United States safe, and this is the time for the Trump administration to show that it is aware of the risks. In the fight against terrorism, carelessness can be fatal.
Jacob Ware is a terrorism researcher and co-author of “God, Guns, and Insurrection: Far-Right Terrorism in America.” Colin P. Clarke is the general manager of the Soufan Center. His research focuses on terrorism, counter-terrorism and armed conflict.
