US faces elevated terrorism threats against backdrop of Iran war and
cuts at FBI, Justice Department
[March 14, 2026]
By ERIC TUCKER and ALANNA DURKIN RICHER
WASHINGTON (AP) — In New York City, two men who federal authorities say
were inspired by the Islamic State brought powerful homemade bombs to a
far-right protest outside the mayoral mansion.
In Michigan, a naturalized citizen from Lebanon rammed his vehicle into
a synagogue before being shot by security.
In Virginia, a man previously imprisoned on a terrorism conviction was
heard yelling “Allahu akbar” before opening fire in a university
classroom in an attack that officials said ended when the shooter was
killed by students.
The three acts of violence in the last week have laid bare a heightened
terrorism threat unfolding against the backdrop of the U.S. war with
Iran and as the country's counterterrorism system is strained by the
departures of experienced national security professionals at the FBI and
Justice Department. The firings and resignations, along with the
diversion of resources and personnel over the last year to meet other
Trump administration priorities, have fueled concerns about the
capability to head off a potential surge in threats.
“So much experience has been decimated from the ranks,” said Frank
Montoya, a retired senior FBI official. “The folks that were
best-positioned to get to the bottom of it before something really bad
happened” are in many cases no longer with the government, he said,
meaning less experienced personnel assigned to the threat are “starting
from way behind.”
The FBI said it would not comment on personnel numbers and decisions,
but issued a statement saying “agents and staff are dedicated
professionals working around the clock to defend the homeland and crush
violent crime. The FBI continuously assesses and realigns our resources
to ensure the safety of the American people.”
Iran has a history of plotting attacks, targeted killings inside the
US
Iran has vowed revenge for the killing by the U.S. and Israel of Supreme
Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and though the fighting has so far been
confined to the Middle East, the Islamic Republic has long professed its
determination to carry out violence on American soil.
Iranian operatives, for instance, responded to the 2020 assassination of
Gen. Qassem Soleimani during the first Trump administration with a
disrupted murder-for-hire plot targeting former national security
adviser John Bolton.
A Pakistani business owner who says he was carrying out instructions
from a contact in Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard was convicted
in New York last week of trying to hire hit men in 2024 for
assassination plots targeting public figures, including President Donald
Trump, who was then running for president.
Though much attention has focused on Iran's use of proxies or hired
hands to carry out plots, the country's capability to organize a
large-scale assault on the U.S. remains unclear despite clear angst over
the potential. The FBI warned in a recent bulletin to law enforcement
about Iran’s aspiration to conduct a drone attack targeting California,
but after the warning was publicized, officials emphasized the
intelligence was unverified and that no specific plot was known to
exist.
Lone actors have been a persistent concern for the FBI
The U.S. government after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks overhauled its
intelligence and national security apparatus to prevent similarly
catastrophic events. But in the years since, lone actors radicalized
online have nonetheless carried out shootings like the 2015 ambush
attacks at a pair of military sites in Chattanooga, Tennessee and a
rampage at an Orlando nightclub the following year by a gunman who
killed 49 people and raged against the “filthy ways of the west.”
Those plots by self-directed individuals have proved notoriously
difficult to prevent and have occurred even when the FBI has not been
roiled by firings and internal upheaval like during the first year of
the Trump administration.
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NYPD officers stand outside Carl Schurz Park as they investigate
suspicious device, Tuesday, March 10, 2026, in New York. (AP
Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
“They're self-directed,” said retired FBI official Edward Herbst.
“That’s what makes them really lethal. You never know when they're
going to rise up. You never know when and where they're going to
attack.”
Terrorism concerns typically rise during times of international
conflict when military action overseas is accompanied by increased
vigilance, including outreach from agents to their sources, more
active sharing of tips between federal and local law enforcement and
closer coordination among FBI joint terrorism task forces, said
Claire Moravec, a former FBI national security official who served
as deputy homeland security adviser in Illinois.
Officials have said there is no indication that either the men
arrested in connection with the explosives in New York, or the man
responsible for Thursday’s Old Dominion University shooting, were
motivated explicitly by the Iran war. The man who crashed into
Temple Israel synagogue near Detroit on Thursday lost four family
members in an Israeli airstrike in his native Lebanon last week, an
official in Lebanon said.
Regardless, wars like the one in Iran can function as “accelerants,”
raising the volume and intensity of grievances for the disaffected,
Moravec said.
“Ultimately, the goal during these periods is not ‘surveillance’ but
maintaining a broad awareness of how international events could
translate into domestic security risks, so that threats can be
identified and disrupted early,” she said in an email.
Resignations, firings at the FBI and Justice Department
The Justice Department's National Security Division was established
in 2006 to address threats of terrorism, espionage and other
concerns. In the last year, lawyers in the division found themselves
assigned to review the Jeffrey Epstein files to prepare them for
release, and elite sections dedicated to prosecuting terrorists and
catching spies have endured turnover.
About half of the division's counterterrorism prosecutors have left
since the beginning of the Trump administration, along with about a
third of its senior leadership, according to estimates from Justice
Connection, a network of department alumni.
A Justice Department spokesperson said the division's singular focus
remains “keeping the American people safe from threats foreign and
domestic” and that there are no known or credible threats to the
homeland.
FBI Director Kash Patel has fired dozens of agents, most recently
about a dozen employees who worked on the counterintelligence
investigation into Trump's retention of classified documents at his
Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.
“This is not an exaggeration to say that they are not as capable as
they were a year and a half ago,” Matthew Olsen, who led the
National Security Division during the Biden administration, said
this week on the Lawfare podcast, adding that “they’ve lost, forced
out, fired, the most capable, the most experienced FBI agents, FBI
officials and DOJ prosecutors, that were working on the Iran
threat.”
In the national security realm, where experience and source
development are vital, the loss of institutional knowledge and
community relationships can be a crushing blow, said Montoya, the
former FBI official.
“There was no transition,” Montoya said of the agents who have been
abruptly fired. “These guys were just walked out of the building.
The new guys can call them and say, ‘Hey, can you tell me what you
were doing?’” but even so, “you're still introducing a brand new
face into the equation.”
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