Europe as the Forward Theater
Europe may serve as both a near-attack theater and an early-warning environment for the United States. Recent reporting indicates that Iran-linked incidents have emerged more rapidly in European contexts. For U.S. policymakers, developments in Europe should be treated as leading indicators of evolving threat patterns rather than isolated incidents. Some analysts are expecting an uptick in plots and attacks in Europe for the latter half of 2026.
The intelligence and law enforcement cooperation built through decades of counterterrorism partnership with European allies represents an asset that should be actively leveraged rather than allowed to atrophy. Allies in Europe, the Gulf states, and South and Southeast Asia face parallel threat vectors from both Iranian proxy networks and al-Qaeda-inspired violence, and their proximity to these networks in some cases exceeds that of U.S. domestic law enforcement. Clarke and Costa have argued, correctly, that counterterrorism must be integrated at a strategic level as an essential component of U.S. foreign policy rather than treated as an afterthought to military operations.[i]
What a Serious Counterterrorism Strategy Requires
The United States does not currently have a counterterrorism strategy commensurate with the threat environment its own foreign policy has helped create. It has threat assessments, law enforcement operations, and military capabilities. These are not the same as a strategy. A genuine counterterrorism strategy must address not only the immediate operational threat but the conditions that produce and sustain it. The current approach does neither adequately.
In the short term, several immediate adjustments are warranted. Counterterrorism resources that were redirected away from terrorism toward immigration enforcement in the period preceding this conflict must be restored. The CTC’s analysis confirms that this reallocation created meaningful gaps at precisely the wrong moment.[ii] Financial intelligence networks tracking both Iranian proxy funding and al-Qaeda fundraising must be resourced and empowered to operate at scale. European, Gulf state, and other partners must be treated as genuine partners in a coordinated response rather than secondary considerations. Cyber defense of critical infrastructure, particularly energy and water systems, must be elevated to the same priority level as physical security. The longer certain countries wait to address this threat, the more dire the circumstances will be in the long run.
The United States has long projected a narrative of universal values and equal protection, yet its treatment of Muslim communities, both domestically and internationally, has frequently told a different story. The mass surveillance of Muslim-American communities after September 11, the discriminatory application of counterterrorism tools along religious and ethnic lines, and the stark contrast between American responses to the killing of civilians in some conflicts versus others have generated a deep and widening mistrust. The prolonged killing of civilians in Gaza, including tens of thousands of women and children, and the failure to hold anyone accountable for those deaths, have sharpened that mistrust considerably within Muslim-American communities, among Muslim populations, and among considerate communities worldwide. This hypocrisy is not merely a moral problem. It is a strategic one. It erodes the credibility and the cooperative relationships that effective counterterrorism depends upon. Muslim-American communities should be recognized as partners in prevention, not simply populations to be monitored. These communities have consistently provided law enforcement with information that has disrupted domestic plots, and their continued cooperation depends on a relationship of mutual respect and transparency that aggressive surveillance and discriminatory enforcement actively undermine. The counterterrorism community has understood this for twenty years. The degree to which it continues to be ignored is itself a measure of strategic failure.
In the longer term, the United States must confront the structural problem that brute force has never resolved a terrorism challenge and never will. Military operations can degrade organizational capacity, kill leaders, and disrupt logistics. What they cannot do is address the conditions that enable radicalization. A long-term prevention strategy must be built on principles that current policy systematically violates. The United States must apply consistent standards. When American forces or their allies cause civilian deaths, those deaths cannot be treated as acceptable collateral damage or managed through diplomatic language. The U.S.-Israeli airstrike on the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ primary school in Minab on February 28, 2026, which killed at least 165 schoolgirls between the ages of 7 and 12, condemned by UN human rights experts as a grave violation of international humanitarian law, is not a policy inconvenience.[iii] It is a moral failure and a strategic one. Inconsistent standards destroy American credibility precisely among the populations whose cooperation is most essential to long-term counterterrorism success.
The United States must also invest seriously in the political and economic conditions in conflict-affected regions. Post-conflict reconstruction in Afghanistan and Iraq was chronically underfunded, poorly coordinated, and ultimately abandoned before it could produce the stable governance structures that are the only durable alternative to extremist organizations. Military victory without political consolidation is not a victory. It is the creation of a new problem. Sustainable security requires a political framework, economic recovery, and a credible American commitment to the principles it formally endorses.
Threat Hierarchy: A Disaggregated Assessment
A disaggregated assessment yields a clearer, more operationally useful hierarchy. At the lowest probability, directly attributable Iranian state attacks inside the United States are assessed as the least likely near-term manifestation. Iran’s operational doctrine, institutional caution, and current military vulnerability all militate against directly authorized, attributable attacks on American soil. While the regime’s threat to activate sleeper cells is not empty theater, the deployment of that threat would represent a fundamental departure from a doctrine that has served the Islamic Republic’s survival interests for four decades.
At moderate probability, criminal proxy operations and surrogate activity represent the more plausible mid-term vector. Iran’s surrogate infrastructure provides deniable reach into the United States and its allied partners without requiring formal state authorization for individual operations.
At the highest probability in terms of frequency, three categories converge: lone-actor violence mobilized by the conflict’s emotional, economic, and moral resonance; cyber and infrastructure disruption operations that offer Iran high-impact options below the threshold of armed attack; and al-Qaeda-inspired attacks drawing on the operational architecture al-Adl has developed over two decades and the fresh grievance narrative the current war provides. This model aligns more closely with both Iranian doctrine and current intelligence reporting than the scenario most prominently featured in public discourse.
Conclusion: The Real Question
The United States faces a real and elevated threat environment in the context of the war with Iran. Some of that threat, however, was not inevitable. It has been shaped, in part, by policy choices: the decision to strike without an adequate post-conflict framework, the generation of civilian casualties without accountability, and the continuation of a pattern of engagement in the Muslim world that has consistently produced more instability than it has resolved. Acknowledging this is not an act of self-blame. It is a prerequisite for strategic seriousness and a comprehensive approach to counterterrorism.
The threat is not singular or centralized. It is diffuse, multi-domain, and evolving, shaped by proxy networks, cyber operations, lone actors, economic hardship, and opportunistic extremist exploitation. Addressing it requires more than military capability. It requires justice, consistency, and the willingness to recognize domestic threats with the same rigor applied to international ones. Far-right violence, anti-Muslim hate crimes, and ideologically motivated domestic attacks must be treated as counterterrorism priorities equal to those originating abroad. This includes actors whose mobilization stems less from foreign identity politics than from domestic economic resentment, anti-elite anger, and perceptions that public resources are being diverted abroad while hardship grows at home. A strategy that selectively identifies threats based on the perpetrator’s identity or the victim’s religion is not a counterterrorism strategy. It is a political posture masquerading as one.
History has handed the United States this situation before. In 2003, a decision to use military force without an adequate post-conflict strategy generated a decade of instability and ultimately produced ISIS. The current conflict carries similar structural risks. There is a deeper irony that demands acknowledgment: in its conduct of the war against Iran, and in the years of policy that preceded it, the United States has, however unintentionally, continued to validate the very narrative that Osama bin Laden spent his life constructing. The grievances he cited, American military action in Muslim-majority countries, the deaths of Muslim civilians treated as acceptable costs, the unconditional support to Israel, and the application of one standard for some lives and another for others, have not been refuted by American behavior. They have been reinforced by it. Every civilian casualty without accountability, every inconsistent application of humanitarian principles, quietly confirms the message al-Qaeda has always sought to amplify. That is not an argument for inaction. It is an argument for acting differently.
The question is not whether the threat exists. It is whether the United States will adopt a counterterrorism strategy aligned with the realities of that threat: grounded in justice, consistency, and prevention. Security and moral credibility are not in conflict; they are mutually reinforcing.
References
[i] Clarke, C. P., & Costa, C. P. (2025, June 25). Terrorism Means Something Different Now, Foreign Policy. https://foreignpolicy.com/2025/06/25/counter-terrorism-iran-united-states/
[ii] Combating Terrorism Center at West Point. (2025, August). Tehran’s homeland option: Terror pathways for Iran to strike in the United States. CTC Sentinel. https://ctc.westpoint.edu/tehrans-homeland-option-terror-pathways-for-iran-to-strike-in-the-united-states/
[iii] Amnesty International. (2026, March 18). USA/Iran: Those responsible for deadly and unlawful U.S. strike on school that killed over 100 children must be held accountable. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2026/03/usa-iran-those-responsible-for-deadly-and-unlawful-us-strike-on-school-that-killed-over-100-children-must-be-held-accountable/ & Human Rights Watch. (2026, March 7). US/Israel: Investigate Iran school attack as a war crime. https://www.hrw.org/news/2026/03/07/us/israel-investigate-iran-school-attack-as-a-war-crime
