After successful strikes targeting Iran’s nuclear sites, President Donald Trump and his administration helped broker a ceasefire between Israel and Iran. The Islamic Republic wants intercontinental ballistic missiles, making it possible for the regime to menace the United States, Europe, and others with a nuclear attack. But another threat remains, and it’s already on American soil: Tehran’s sleeper cells.
Over the years, there has been some doubt, often in legacy media outlets, about the scope and scale of the regime’s efforts to place assets in the United States. There shouldn’t be.
When asked if Iranian agents are operating on American soil, border czar Tom Homan recently revealed that 1,272 Iranian nationals were released by the Biden administration, part of the “over 10 million” who illegally crossed. And these, it must be noted, were just those who were captured. There’s a strong likelihood that many more snuck in undetected through porous borders.
The U.S. government is certainly concerned. The commissioner of the Customs and Border Protection Agency, Rodney Scott, warned that “the threat of sleeper cells or sympathizers acting on their own, at the behest of Iran, has never been higher.” Notably, as NBC News reported, prior to the U.S. strikes, Iran threatened to activate its operatives should the U.S. hit Iran’s nuclear facilities.
On June 24, President Donald Trump confirmed the existence of such cells. “We’ll take care of it,” he told reporters. That same day, the Department of Homeland Security announced that it had apprehended 11 Iranian nationals over the weekend, a former Iranian Army sniper; a former member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps with ties to Hezbollah; a known suspected terrorist; and a man illegally carrying a firearm in his waistband were among those identified and arrested.
DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said, “We have been saying we are getting the worst of the worst out, and we are. We don’t wait until a military operation to execute; we proactively deliver on President Trump’s mandate to secure the homeland.”
Open borders have certainly contributed to the national security threat from Iran, and the Trump administration’s proactive response should be applauded. But it’s worth noting that Tehran has long used sleeper cells as part of its statecraft.
Not long after Iran’s Islamic Revolution, the regime began assassinating dissidents and critics far from the nation’s shores. In one infamous example, Iranian agents murdered Iranian-Kurdish opposition leaders in a Greek restaurant in Germany in 1992. Iran’s ambassador to Germany at the time, Seyed Hossein Mousavian, was subsequently expelled. Mousavian later got a gig at Princeton University, a perch from which he gloated over Iranian threats to murder U.S. officials on American soil.
Tehran has used sleeper cells not only to eliminate critics and rivals, but to target foreign officials, and it has done so with shocking brazenness. In 2011, for example, Iran plotted to blow up a D.C. restaurant to murder a Saudi ambassador. This happened while the Obama administration was taking a conciliatory approach toward the regime. And therein lies a lesson for how to deter Iranian agents.
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The U.S. must continue to tighten the border and apprehend dangerous foreign nationals. The administration must harden security at both soft and hard targets, from military bases to religious centers, notably in the Jewish community, that are likely to be targeted. And it must let Iran know that any attack from its agents will be met with brute force on the regime itself.
Iran has counted on plausible deniability and appeasement. But those days are over.
Sean Durns is a Senior Research Analyst for CAMERA, the 65,000-member, Boston-based Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis.