FBI Director Kash Patel said he put the bureau’s counterterrorism and counterintelligence teams on high alert Saturday after the US and Israel launched a sweeping military assault on Iran.
Iran retaliated with strikes on US military bases and allies in the region after President Donald Trump urging Iranians to overthrow the government.
In New York, the FBI and the New York Police Department’s Joint Terrorism Task Force were monitoring pro-Iran groups who were active on social media Saturday praising Iran’s response and urging supporters to mobilize — rhetoric officials described as hostile but not yet operational, according to a task force situational awareness report. No specific threats against US targets had been identified.
“Last night, I instructed our counterterrorism and intelligence teams to be on high alert and mobilize all assisting security assets needed,” Patel said in a statement on social media.
Officials were watching Hezbollah closely. The Iranian-backed terror group had previously indicated it would stay out of the fight if American strikes on Iran were limited, but its leadership has long maintained that any move against Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei would change that. The task force said it was monitoring the group for any sign of a shift.
The Department of Homeland Security remains without full congressional funding, and Secretary Kristi Noem said Saturday she was coordinating with federal intelligence and law enforcement partners to monitor and thwart any potential threats.
Iran has spent years trying to silence its critics on American soil, and New York has been a repeated target. In 2022, the Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested a man carrying a loaded military-style rifle outside the Brooklyn home of Masih Alinejad, a Voice of America host and one of Iran’s most prominent dissidents, and investigated the case as a possible assassination plot. A year earlier, federal authorities said Iranian intelligence had organized a kidnapping plot against her. Tehran denied it.
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