When Trump was quoted in his recent TIME magazine interview saying “I guess” when asked if Americans should fear terrorist retribution for this war, I thought to myself, “Oh boy. There’s no way that even his miscreant incompetents haven’t discussed that possibility. He’s hoping for it.”
Timothy Snyder writes this in his latest piece:
A purpose of the war on Iran might well be to provoke a terrorist attack inside the United States. This would provide Donald Trump with a pretext to try to cancel or “federalize” the coming Congressional elections.
Self-terrorism might not have been the initial aim; but as time goes by, and failures and atrocities mount, its appeal will grow. Trump could think that he has much to gain; the war itself makes terrorism more likely; there are plausible vectors of terror; and the United States has let down its defenses.
Trump has already telegraphed the move. We know that he is obsessed with the fall elections, which his party will almost certainly lose by spectacular margins, and that he fears the accordant loss of power. This is clear from his own statements and actions. In a social post right after starting the war, he claimed (wrongly) that Iran had tried to hurt his cause in past elections.
We lack any other explanation for the war, at least from the American side. Trump is incoherent, and his administration is inconsistent. Much of what has been said about Iran is not true. The propaganda is contradictory. It is as though the war itself is not the main goal, but that it was simply important to somehow get the thing started.
War, famously, is the extension of politics by other means. But what are the politics? The president and especially the Secretary of Defense present the United States as a kind of war crimes central, a place where the rules do not apply. War crimes to do not win wars. Instead they provoke further war crimes and other retribution.
The Tehran regime is, so to speak, a convenient partner in the mutual provocation of terror. Iran is ruled by ruthless people with a record and a capacity for carrying out terrorist attacks beyond its borders. A terrorist attack on the territory of the United States might be a response by Iran or one of its proxies. Trump seems to have anticipated this, without seeming to care about loss of life: “Like I said, some people will die.” And if they do, he has his pretext.
I could easily see this happening. Yes, it would go to court and they would take their own sweet time and perhaps we would end up having the elections anyway, just postponed. Then they would just pull all the shenanigans they plan to pull anyway and who knows how that will all come out. But even in the best case scenario, tens of millions of people will see the election as illegitimate if Trump doesn’t win — and tens of millions of people will know the election is illegitimate if he does.
This piece in the Atlantic (gift link) discusses the potential for Iranian terrorist attacks and it is very high. They have done them for many years and even are known to have sleeper cells in the U.S.
Despite the successful record of U.S. law-enforcement and intelligence agencies in disrupting Iranian-backed plots on American soil, and even with a more feeble Iranian proxy network, there is good reason to be concerned today. Over the past several years, the U.S. government has shifted resources and personnel away from counterterrorism and toward other priorities, including China, Russia, and immigration. Because of this, the U.S. homeland is arguably more vulnerable than it has been in a long time.
And then there’s the question of Iran’s desire for retribution. Terrorists need both capabilities and intent to succeed. Even as the Iranians’ capabilities are being attenuated, their intent to attack, if anything, is growing stronger.
There is very good reason to be concerned.