Biden’s State Department ignores Iranian death plots inside America

It took quite a bit longer than it should have, but the State Department finally released its 2021 Country Reports on Terrorism.

As ever, the document covers the countries that experienced attacks, those that sponsored terrorism and other states of concern. It also includes information on entities “responsible for the death, kidnapping, or injury of Americans.”

The analysis never includes a focus on the threat environment in the United States itself.

But given the Islamic Republic of Iran’s alarming surge in attempts on the lives of American citizens in America, perhaps it’s time to do so.

The recent surge can be attributed in part to the regime’s thirst for revenge after the January 2020 targeted killing of Iranian terror master Qassem Soleimani.

After Soleimani’s years of murdering American and allied soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan while executing plots against civilians around the globe, President Donald Trump ordered a drone strike that killed the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force chief and others from his terrorist entourage in Iraq.

Since then, regime operatives have been busy here in America.

The Department of Justice last summer unsealed murder-for-hire charges against an Iranian agent plotting to assassinate former US national security adviser John Bolton.

According to court documents, the defendant offered operatives more than $250,000 to kill Bolton in DC or Maryland.

A “second job” worth $1 million apparently targeted former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Brian Hook, the Trump administration’s special representative for Iran, also remains under “serious and credible threat.”

The US government spends more than $175,000 per month on Hook’s security — and $2 million on Pompeo’s.

But the regime’s plots go beyond simple revenge. A decades-old fatwa Iran’s last supreme leader issued against novelist Salman Rushdie for “The Satanic Verses” inspired another attack: In August, an assailant allegedly in contact with the IRGC stabbed Rushdie at a literary event in upstate New York.

The latest high-profile plot targeted Iranian-American dissident and journalist Masih Alinejad. In January, a New York court unsealed murder-for-hire charges against three members of an Iran-backed criminal organization for plotting her assassination.

Alinejad noticed suspicious activity near her Brooklyn home last summer. When police stopped one of the suspects, they found weapons, ammunition, a ski mask and more than $1,000 in his car.

This was not the first attempt on Alinejad, one of the fiercest and most effective critics of the regime in the United States. In 2021, prosecutors charged four Iranian intelligence operatives for planning to kidnap and render her to Iran.

While these threats are recent, the Iranian regime has been operating here for years.

In 2011, Tehran tried to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington. An Iran-based Quds Force member and a dual Iranian-American citizen conspired to murder the ambassador by bombing a popular Georgetown restaurant.

The FBI foiled the plot when one of the conspirators hired a Drug Enforcement Administration informant to join the operation.

Then-FBI chief Robert Mueller stated, “Though it reads like the pages of a Hollywood script, the impact would have been very real, and many lives would have been lost.”

In 2018, two Iranian men — one a dual US citizen, the other a California resident — were indicted for “conducting covert surveillance” in the United States on behalf of the regime.

They gathered information on Jewish institutions and the Mujahedin-e Khalq, a prominent Iranian opposition group. The men allegedly discussed “clandestine methods” for transmitting the information back to Tehran.

Tehran is not shy about its activities here.

In a recent TV interview, the head of the IRGC aerospace force again threatened Americans responsible for the Soleimani assassination: “God willing, we are looking to kill Trump. Pompeo . . . and military commanders who issued the order should be killed.”

The FBI deserves immense credit for thwarting the majority of the plots.

But the regime is working hard to score a successful attack on American soil. Officials candidly tell us, “The system is blinking red.”

Perhaps the State Department, in next year’s Country Reports on Terrorism, should carve out a section on the threat level in this country, thanks to the Islamic Republic.

Better yet, the regime must be disabused of its sense of immunity to operate in the United States.

By failing to impose consequences on Iran, America will remain a country of concern, whether the State Department reports it or not.

Jonathan Schanzer is senior vice president for research at Foundation for Defense of Democracies, where Natalie Ecanow is a research analyst focusing on the Middle East. Follow Jon on Twitter @JSchanzer. FDD is a nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.