Unfinished Business: The 2020 Assassination Shadow
Perhaps most chilling is the bulletin’s acknowledgment of Iran’s “long-standing commitment to target US Government officials it views as responsible for the death of an Iranian military commander killed in January 2020.” This reference to Qasem Soleimani’s assassination during Trump’s first term in office, reveals how past military actions continue casting shadows over current threat assessments.
US law enforcement agencies have been playing a deadly game of chess with Iranian operatives since 2020, successfully disrupting “multiple potentially lethal Iranian-backed plots” while Iranian agents have “unsuccessfully targeted critics of its regime who are based in the Homeland for lethal attack.” This track record suggests both the persistence of Iranian intentions and the effectiveness of American counterintelligence operations.
The bulletin’s most sobering warning concerns the potential for Iranian religious authorities to issue a fatwa or similar religious ruling calling for retaliatory violence. Such a decree could transform scattered sympathizers into active threats, providing religious justification for attacks against American targets.
