{"id":4123,"date":"2026-03-24T14:55:51","date_gmt":"2026-03-24T14:55:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/03\/24\/will-iran-turn-to-terrorism-foreign-affairs\/"},"modified":"2026-03-24T14:55:51","modified_gmt":"2026-03-24T14:55:51","slug":"will-iran-turn-to-terrorism-foreign-affairs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/03\/24\/will-iran-turn-to-terrorism-foreign-affairs\/","title":{"rendered":"Will Iran Turn to Terrorism? – Foreign Affairs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Since its founding in 1922, Foreign Affairs<\/em> has been the leading forum for serious discussion of American foreign policy and global affairs. The magazine has featured contributions from many leading international affairs experts.
MATTHEW LEVITT<\/span> <\/em>is Fromer-Wexler Senior Fellow and Director of the Reinhard Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He is the author of Hezbollah: The Global Footprint of Lebanon\u2019s Party of God<\/em><\/a>.<\/em>
Why a Desperate Regime Might Go After Soft Targets<\/a>
Matthew Levitt<\/a>
At the outset of Operation Epic Fury, U.S. authorities went on a nationwide high alert against acts of terrorism carried out by Iran and its proxies\u2014with good reason. Days after U.S. and Israeli strikes killed Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps\u2019s <\/strong>Qods Force broadcast over Iranian television a warning that \u201cthe 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.\u201d
Since the threat, operatives acting at Iran\u2019s behest have been tied to plots in Azerbaijan, Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and the United Kingdom. According to U.S. President Donald Trump, Iran may be trying to activate sleeper cells in the United States. \u201cWe know a lot of different things that have happened that have been very bad,\u201d he announced, adding that Washington was \u201cvery much on top of it.\u201d
Iran<\/a> has long employed terrorism as a tool of foreign policy, not only to export the revolution abroad by supporting like-minded proxy groups in the Middle East but also to strike fear in the regime\u2019s perceived enemies, including Iranian dissidents, Israelis and Jews, diplomats from Europe, the Gulf states, and the United States. But Tehran has typically been careful about how, when, and where to employ terrorism to achieve these goals. It favored operations for which it could assert reasonable deniability, hoping to avert retaliation in the form of sanctions, diplomatic isolation, or reprisal attacks. Iranian plotters practiced strategic patience and did not act on every opportunity that presented itself. Today, however, the regime feels its revolutionary project to be under existential threat by the United States and Israel. The assassination of Khamenei and other senior officials, along with open discussion in Washington and Jerusalem of regime change, has convinced Tehran that it should <\/strong>go to any length possible to stop the war\u2014including by bringing it home to the United States.
With its leadership badly damaged and its security establishment humiliated by deep Israeli and U.S. intelligence infiltration, Iran sees little downside in greenlighting a wide variety of attacks, from small scale plots to potential mass-casualty events, with little regard for potential repercussions. <\/strong>It is likely wagering that the American public and its politicians lack the stomach to withstand civilian losses, and that, should it successfully carry out a mass casualty event, the political cost of continuing the war will become prohibitive for the Trump administration<\/a>.
As bombs continue to fall, the regime could resort to increasingly desperate <\/strong>acts of <\/strong>terrorism to show Washington that, though it may be down, it is not yet out. With nothing to lose, it may go to unprecedented lengths to carry out attacks, <\/strong>particularly against soft targets, <\/strong>as it plans for more sophisticated attacks against harder targets. <\/strong>Iran has rarely <\/strong>succeeded in targeting the United States<\/a> at home or around the world. But the long track record of foiled and failed plots should not give Washington a false sense of security. <\/strong>After all, counterterrorism officials need to get it right every time; bad actors need to succeed only once.
The Qods Force message may indicate a relative consensus in Tehran today about the utility of terrorism as a geopolitical tactic, but there was once a contentious debate inside the regime about when and how it should be used. In the mid-1980s, the CIA assessed that revolutionary leadership was divided between \u201cIslamic radicals,\u201d who advocated for the use of terrorism as a legitimate tool of state policy to export and defend the principles of the revolution,<\/strong> and regime \u201cpragmatists,\u201d who condoned the selective use of terrorism because they saw it as an effective instrument for furthering national interests, even as they sought improved economic ties with other countries.
Over time, the radicals won out. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps came to play an increasingly important role in policymaking as former IRGC officials rose to senior regime positions. As a result, terrorism became a tool of choice in Tehran, though for years Iran avoided plotting attacks in the United States for fear of retribution. That changed in 2011, as Iran engaged in a shadow war with the West over U.S.-and-Israeli-led <\/strong>efforts to undermine Tehran\u2019s nuclear program. Iran pursued what U.S. investigators called \u201ca jumble of overlapping plots\u201d targeting U.S. and Israeli diplomats and Jewish targets between 2011 and 2012. One in particular forced Washington to change its understanding of the threat.
In October 2011, U.S. officials foiled an Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States <\/strong>in Washington, D.C. After the discovery of the plot, the U.S. intelligence community concluded that \u201csome Iranian officials\u2014probably including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei<\/a>\u2014have 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.\u201d At the time, Iranian officials concluded that the threat the United States, Israel, and other Western powers posed to Iran\u2019s nuclear program\u2014evident in joint offensive cyber-operations such as the Olympic Games campaign, sabotage <\/strong>at IRGC missile bases, and assassinations inside Iran\u2014warranted the creation of the Qods Force\u2019s Unit 400. The unit\u2019s sole mission was to carry out attacks against countries trying to undermine Iran\u2019s nuclear program, including the United States.
Then came the January 2020 killing of IRGC Commander Qasem Soleimani, head of the Qods Force, by a U.S. airstrike in Iraq. Iranian officials quickly pledged to avenge his death and plotted several attacks targeting current or former U.S. officials the regime believed to be involved in Soleimani\u2019s death. \u201cU.S. law enforcement has disrupted multiple potentially lethal Iranian-backed plots in the United States since 2020,\u201d the Department of Homeland Security reported in June 2025. Many of these foiled attacks <\/strong>were products of Iran\u2019s yearslong investment in developing a \u201chomeland option\u201d in which Iranian operatives, criminals hired to carry out attacks at Iran\u2019s behest, and terrorist proxies would be positioned to wreak havoc in the United States. In 2016, for example, a Hezbollah operative in New York described himself to the FBI as a sleeper agent carrying out preoperational surveillance for Hezbollah in the United States and Canada, to be activated if the United States were to go to war with Iran. Around the same time, another Hezbollah operative was caught stockpiling 300 pounds of explosive precursor materials in the Houston area.
Earlier this month, <\/strong>a Brooklyn jury convicted a Pakistani man and trained IRGC operative of terrorism and murder-for-hire in a plot targeting U.S. politicians or officials, including Trump, in 2024. Iran has also attempted to enlist criminal networks with no previous links to Tehran to maintain plausible deniability and reduce the likelihood of retaliation. After multiple failed attempts to kidnap Iranian American dissident and human rights activist Masih Alinejad from New York and bring her to Iran, in 2022 the IRGC hired members of an Azerbaijani faction of the Russian mafia as part of an unsuccessful assassination scheme. Iranian operatives have taken to recruiting other European criminals through Telegram channels, offering cash for surveillance and potential acts of violence. \u201cThey will literally hire anyone to commit arson, criminal damage, assault,\u201d one British official told The i Paper, <\/em>adding that \u201cprofessional criminals are recruited for the more sophisticated operations.\u201d In other cases, most notably a recent series of attacks on Jewish institutions in several European countries, those criminal groups have outsourced the work to local teenagers.
In its 2025 threat assessment, published just weeks prior to the 12-day war in June, <\/strong>the Office of the <\/strong>Director of National Intelligence predicted that Iran \u201cwill continue to directly threaten U.S. persons globally and remains committed to its decade-long effort to develop surrogate networks inside the United States.\u201d Since then, the United States and Israel have launched two wars against the country, first targeting its nuclear capabilities and now its leadership, ballistic missile and other conventional military capabilities, and the remnants of its nuclear program.
According to NBC News, <\/strong>as the Trump administration mulled over striking nuclear facilities at Natanz and Fordow last June, Iran sent a message to the president threatening to \u201cactivate sleeper-cell terror inside the United States\u201d if the U.S. military followed through. That did not happen\u2014perhaps because U.S. law enforcement was on high alert\u2014but within days, European authorities exposed an Iranian plot to target Israeli and U.S. embassies in Sweden and another to target Jewish institutions and individuals in Germany.
Nine months later, Israel<\/a> and the United States are again at war with Iran\u2014and have wrought far more damage with Operations Epic Fury and Roaring Lion than they did with Operations Midnight Hammer and Rising Lion. <\/strong>Israel has continued to target top Iranian officials for assassination after Khamanei\u2019s death, <\/strong>and Israeli and U.S. leaders have explicitly mentioned regime change as a preferred, if not imminently likely, outcome.
A senior Israeli National Security Council official told the Jerusalem Post<\/em> that Tehran has fundamentally changed its operational doctrine in response to the strikes, removing any operational constraints and instructing any agents to carry out whatever attacks they can. Iranian officials \u201cfeel they have nothing to lose,\u201d the official explained, adding that unlike past plotting, which was more calculated and considered, today \u201cwhere they can act, they act.\u201d To that end, the Israeli official said, Iran has issued an unprecedented call for action, recruiting widely among organized crime groups, mercenaries, Iranian agents, and Shia militants from Azerbaijan and Afghanistan, and hoping to inspire lone actors.<\/p>\n

U.S. officials appear to concur with the Israeli assessment. According to a federal government alert shared with U.S. law agencies, encrypted communications believed to have originated in Iran and intercepted by U.S. authorities may have been \u201can operational trigger\u201d activating \u201csleeper assets\u201d outside the country in the wake of Khamenei\u2019s death. The intelligence community is also worried about lone wolf attacks by individuals inspired by Iranian and proxy incitement. In its 2026 threat assessment released last week, ODNI concluded that after prominent Shia religious leaders in Iran issued religious decrees calling to avenge the death of Khamenei, some individuals could be inspired \u201cto seek to conduct terrorist activities against U.S. targets worldwide.\u201d
These assessments already appear to be bearing out. In the weeks since the start of the war, two different Iranian operations targeting Israeli diplomats in the United Arab Emirates were thwarted by Emirati authorities. Qatari authorities announced the arrest of two cells of operatives accused of collecting intelligence on \u201cvital and military infrastructure,\u201d \u201cconduct[ing] sabotage activities,\u201d and having trained on the use of drones at the direction of the IRGC. The UK Metropolitan Police announced the arrest on counterterrorism charges of one Iranian and three dual British-Iranian citizens accused of conducting \u201csurveillance of locations and individuals linked to the Jewish community in the London area\u201d as part of a \u201clong-running investigation\u201d predating the war, the start of which appears to have accelerated preparations. And Azerbaijan\u2019s State Security Service agents foiled what they described as a \u201cseries of planned terrorist and intelligence operations . . . orchestrated by Iran\u2019s intelligence service\u201d targeting an oil pipeline, the Israeli embassy in Baku, a leader of the local Jewish community, and a synagogue. Euronews<\/em> has reported that authorities identified IRGC Colonel Ali Asgar Bordbar Sherami as \u201cone of the main organizers\u201d of the plots. As the war continues, still more plots are likely to be uncovered.
U.S. and Israeli decapitation strikes, along with Israel\u2019s weakening of Iranian proxies across the Middle East since Hamas\u2019s October 7 attacks, could at least partially constrain the regime\u2019s ability to plan acts of terror. But Iranian security agencies and their proxies may attempt to overcome those losses by pooling their remaining resources and work together to carry out attacks targeting their shared enemies around the world. They already have the institutional framework for such missions. The Qods Force unit 3900, organized by the Qods Force\u2019s Palestine Branch and Hezbollah and Hamas, plans <\/strong>joint attacks abroad. In 2023, authorities in Sierra Leone uncovered what Israeli authorities describe as a joint Qods Force and Hezbollah plot. More recently, European officials thwarted a series of Hamas plots planned by operatives in Lebanon, working in concert with Unit 3900.
That none of Iran\u2019s plots have succeeded to date is as much a credit to counterterrorism authorities as it is an indictment of the capabilities of the Iranian operatives and proxy agents involved. But <\/strong>as long as the war persists\u2014and likely well after it ends\u2014the threat of Iran-related terrorism will remain high, precisely because Iran is so militarily and politically weak. The strategic patience Iran once exhibited may go by the wayside now that Tehran <\/strong>believes this war is truly existential. <\/strong>Simply put, the more concerned the remaining leaders of the Islamic Republic are that the revolution is under threat, the higher the likelihood that they employ terrorism against those they perceive to be undermining the regime.
With every leader decapitated by the United States and Israel, a further weakened Iran grows more likely to be dominated by the IRGC, which, despite having lost several key leaders and commanders itself, could seek to strike back against its enemies, just as it did after Soleimani\u2019s death. Exacting revenge in this way could also serve a tactical purpose in the eyes of the regime. Tehran may believe that a successful terrorist attack on U.S. soil could fan the political flames in the United States, prompting protests against an unpopular war and forcing the Trump administration to find an off-ramp.\u00a0
Such an attack could produce the opposite result: a \u201crally around the flag\u201d effect that gives the war the mandate among the U.S. public it so far lacks. But at the moment, Iran may see no option other than hitting back as hard as it can, wherever it can. Tehran remains a desperate regime. U.S. officials should take its desperation\u2014and the danger that desperation entails\u2014seriously.
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Since its founding in 1922, Foreign Affairs has been the leading forum for serious discussion of American foreign policy and global affairs. The magazine has featured contributions from many leading international affairs experts.MATTHEW LEVITT is Fromer-Wexler Senior Fellow and Director of the Reinhard Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence at the Washington Institute for Near East […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4124,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-4123","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4123"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4123\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4124"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}