Iran Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei could activate ‘sleeper cells’ in the West as Israeli attack intensifies
WASHINGTON, DC: Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei might be reaching into his darkest playbook, and it could mean bad news for the West.
According to Middle East watchers, the embattled regime could be trying to stir up terrorist “sleeper cells” across the globe, as Tehran continues to lash out and reject pressure from President Donald Trump.
With Iran getting slammed harder than Israel in the now-week-old conflict, it seems like Khamenei is getting desperate.
“The very fact now that the Iranian regime is volatile, it’s targeted, and it’s highly vulnerable — that’s what actually makes it increasingly dangerous to the West,” Barak Seener, a research fellow at the Henry Jackson Society, told the New York Post. “It has nothing to lose. It has this sense of nihilism, and it affects the rational calculus.”
Seener's warning came during a press call hosted by the America-Middle East Press Association.
Khamenei remains defiant
Khamenei isn’t backing down. Just this Wednesday, he spoke out against Trump’s calls to surrender Iran’s nuclear program. He dismissed the demands as nothing but “absurd rhetoric” and warned Washington not to meddle.
“The US entering in this matter is 100% to its own detriment,” he said. “The damage it will suffer will be far greater than any harm that Iran may encounter.”
The problem is that Iran might not even have the hardware to back up the threat. Israeli military experts say Tehran is running low on ballistic missiles and launchers, which means a conventional confrontation with the US is rather unlikely.
Furthermore, Iran’s usual go-to strategy — unleashing its proxies — isn’t going according to plan either.
Hamas and Hezbollah 'sitting this one out'
Since Hamas's October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, things have spiraled for Iran’s proxy network. Both Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon have taken a back seat.
“The very fact that Hamas and Hezbollah are sitting this one out is also a humiliation to Iran,” Seener said. “They don’t have their proxies to insulate them, which they have previously had.”
“These proxies have been significantly degraded, opening the skies directly for Israel to get to Tehran,” Seener added. “And as a result of that, where can the IRGC flex? The only place where it can really flex now is the international community — to potentially activate sleeper cells and to conduct malign activities at an even greater capacity than it had beforehand.”
Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is also taking major hits. Just last Friday, IRGC commander Hossein Salami was killed by the Israel Defense Forces. His replacement is former Iranian Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi. But Seener isn’t convinced Iran’s terror operations will stay intact.
“To what end does it have its ability to activate its sleeper cells or IRGC networks internationally, if the IRGC’s command and control has been decapitated?” Seener asked. “Who gives the orders? Is somebody willing to put themselves on the line to conduct a terrorist activity, if they may not even get paid for it, right?”
“These are all questions,” he continued, before adding, “Though perhaps contingency measures have been created where malign activities can go on unaffected.”
A history of Iranian plots in the US
It's worth noting that the feds have already stopped multiple Iranian-backed terror plots on American soil.
In 2011, Iran’s Quds Force tried to pull off a Hollywood-style assassination. They recruited and funded Manssor Arbabsiar, an Iranian-American who planned a murder-for-hire scheme to kill Saudi Arabia’s ambassador in Washington, DC.
The plot was to blow up the Saudi embassy and maybe take out some restaurants the ambassador liked to frequent.
Arbabsiar was sentenced to 25 years after it turned out the “Mexican drug cartel” hitmen he hired were actually DEA informants.
Then there was Ali Kourani, a Bronx resident who doubled as a Hezbollah “sleeper” agent. Between 2002 and 2015, Kourani scouted out airports, federal buildings, and military facilities for Hezbollah. He was sentenced to 40 years in 2019 for giving material support to the terror group.
In 2022, Shahram Poursafi — a member of the IRGC — was charged with trying to orchestrate the assassination of former National Security Adviser John Bolton for a bounty of $300,000.
Authorities say it was likely revenge for the US killing of Qassem Soleimani, another top IRGC commander, in a 2020 airstrike in Baghdad. Poursafi remains at large.
Could desperation push Hezbollah over the edge?
With all these setbacks, some experts are starting to wonder what Iran might do next.
“Iran or Hezbollah could turn to terrorism as a tactic in the coming months because both actors have been so badly weakened and have fewer options,” said Brian Carter of the American Enterprise Institute’s Critical Threats Project. “Iran has historically used Hezbollah as a tool for its terror acts, and it is possible Iran could do so again.”
Still, not everyone’s convinced Iran’s threats will translate into results. Reuel Marc Gerecht, a scholar at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, says Iran’s operatives abroad aren’t exactly at the top of their game.
“The clerical regime has sometimes been persistent; it has never shown much competence or ingenuity,” Gerecht told the Post. “They might get lucky, of course. But the current generation IRGC intel and intelligence ministry operatives may be the least impressive overseas since the revolution.”
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