The latest evidence of dysfunction within the Trump administration's counterterrorism apparatus came on Monday, when Joe Kent, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, resigned, citing his opposition to the war in Iran. But the disorder is not new.
In July 2025, Sebastian Gorka, senior director of counterterrorism on President Trump's National Security Council, announced that he was “about to release the new unclassified US presidential counterterrorism policy.” Yet eight months later, as the United States wages war against a notorious state sponsor of terrorism, the strategy has yet to be made public.
Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security has not published a National Terrorism Advisory since September and has not released the annual National Threat Assessment report since Trump returned to office. This remains the case even as counterterrorism experts I have warned about the possibility of Iranian-backed sleeper cells being activated due to the current conflict with Iran.
Without a strategy that clearly lays out American priorities and responses, America's counterterrorism defenses are divided, disorganized, and under-resourced. It is this malfunction that led Trump to answer the question of whether Americans should expect more violence in their country with a effective shrug: “I guess.”
The domestic reaction to the conflict with Iran began on March 1, when a naturalized U.S. citizen opened fire at a bar in Austin, Texas. The gunman, who was wearing clothing that points to his support for IranHe killed three before being shot dead by police. On March 7, two teenagers inspired by the Islamic State improvised explosive devices were thrown to a group of far-right protesters in front of the New York City mayor's mansion. On March 12, two attacks occurred. First, a shooting broke out at Old Dominion University, when a former member of the US National Guard had been indicted for conspiracy related to the Islamic State. killed an ROTC instructor. So, a US citizen with family ties to Lebanon drove his vehicle at Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, Michigan, before being killed in an exchange of gunfire with synagogue security officers.
In three of the four attacks, the violence was stopped by heroic on-the-spot takedowns. Perhaps most notably, the Old Dominion attacker was neutralized by students, who stabbed the gunman to death. The heroic stories, although it is worth buildingThey underscore a grimmer truth: In the midst of war abroad, Americans have been forced to take control of terrorism into their own hands in their own communities, left to fend for themselves against AR-15s, improvised explosive devices, and armed vehicles.
The diversity of attacks and perpetrators makes matters worse. The attackers included a U.S. National Guard veteran who served several years in prison on terrorism charges, two teenagers who traveled to another state with violent intent, a man with an apparently long history of mental illness, and a U.S. citizen who lost family members in recent hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah. Its objectives also point to a complex and unpredictable terrorist environment.
In the absence of more predictable trends, law enforcement will be spread thin and asked to protect an impossible variety of locations across the country against an impossible variety of threats. In this environment, an effective national counterterrorism strategy would likely aim to stop terrorism further upstream, disrupting radicalization and violent mobilization at an earlier stage. However, the Trump administration has effectively gutted its prevention infrastructure, largely dismantling the Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships of the Department of Homeland Security.
It is also worth noting that none of the attacks to date appear to be coordinated or directed by the Iranian regime, but rather the war inspired lone Western actors to attack their own communities. However, Iran has long been involved in assassination plots in the United States, often recruiting third-party criminal groups, and may still attempt to activate such a program. As journalists Peter Beck and Seamus Hughes warn: “Iran's previous calculations were low-level operations in the United States, enough to keep the FBI busy but not large enough to trigger serious military consequences. Now that the latter is a reality, the Islamic Republic has less to lose by orchestrating more audacious attacks.”
The Trump administration has repeatedly invoked Iran's history of supporting terrorist proxies to justify the conflict: on March 2, for example, Trump explained that one of the objectives of the operation was “to ensure that the Iranian regime cannot continue arming, financing and directing terrorist armies outside its borders.” Indeed, if it follows its historical model, Iran will likely continue to make external operations and inspired violence a major part of its response, adding activation of sleeper cells and sponsored individuals to the ranks of homegrown violent extremists who have so far plagued US territory since hostilities broke out. But without a more defined strategy, the United States will likely struggle to mount an effective response.
If, as the old saying goes, “all politics is local,” then the modern corollary in an age of smartphones is: “all conflict is global.” Whenever there is a war in the Middle East, such as the one that began in Gaza following the Hamas terrorist attacks in southern Israel on October 7, 2023, the panorama of terrorist threats around the world, including the West, is exacerbated. When the images and videos of the errant US missile attack on a girls school flooding the Internet, raising the temperature, making attacks by lone actors and other violent extremists with only tangential connections to the conflict more likely.
However, the magnitude of the violence was neither guaranteed nor predetermined. As a Shiite-majority nation, Iran has long maintained a conflictive position and even hostile relations with Sunni jihadist actors. The extent of the violence indicates broader anti-American sentiment prevalent in diaspora communities, likely precipitated by the decades-long war on terrorism, greatly aggravated by Israeli abuses in Gaza since October 7, 2023, and punctuated by the killings of schoolchildren. In other words, the Iran war appears to be superseding previous grievances and instead uniting disparate extremist forces against the United States.
In this environment, the Trump administration must stop being so cavalier about counterterrorism. Without a real strategy and without a director of the National Counterterrorism Center, the United States is even more vulnerable to an attack on its homeland than it would be if it had such centers. Writing about X, Robert A. Pape, a veteran student of terrorism, aware: “After tracking terrorism for 25 years, this is a flashing red light, as bright as I've seen before a serious attack.”
Only a serious approach to countering terrorism will keep America safe, and now is the time for the Trump administration to show that it recognizes what is at stake. In counterterrorism, inattention can be deadly.
Jacob Ware is a terrorism researcher and co-author of “God, Guns, and Sedition: Far-Right Terrorism in America.” Colin P. Clarke is the executive director of the Soufan Center. His research focuses on terrorism, counterterrorism and armed conflict.
