STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Our next guest is asking whether Iran could respond to the U.S. attack by launching attacks here. Matthew Levitt spent years working in counterterrorism at the FBI, the Treasury Department and the State Department. When we talked, Levitt recalled a man named Ali Kourani arrested in 2017.
MATTHEW LEVITT: Ali Kourani spoke to the FBI at one point and described himself as a sleeper cell. I don't like the term. It's too Hollywood for me, but it's how he described himself. And when the FBI asked him under what circumstances he thought he might be called upon to actually act on the preoperational surveillance and off-the-shelf planning that he'd put together in New York and elsewhere over the years, he cited a couple examples - maybe this, maybe that - but then he said, but definitely if there was ever a direct war between the United States and Iran.
INSKEEP: That man, now in prison, was an operative of Hezbollah, a group aligned with Iran. Matthew Levitt says most Iranian plots in the United States over the years have failed, but he adds that they would only need to succeed once.
LEVITT: In January 2020, in his first term, President Trump oversaw the assassination of the head of Iran's Quds Force - their external operations arm - and immediately, the Iranians pledged to exact revenge. And there have been several plots that have been thwarted, one on trial right now in New York, where purportedly the Iranians were hiring criminals to try and either kill the president and/or other individuals.
INSKEEP: How good are the Iranians at hacking?
LEVITT: The Iranians are good enough at hacking. They're not at the level of the United States or China or others or Russia, but they are good enough at being able to disrupt services, banking services. They got into the system of a dam in Pennsylvania, Boston Children's Hospital, and so that is another issue that people are concerned about, but it's kind of less kinetic.
INSKEEP: There's an Iranian diaspora in the United States, but they're widely understood to be people who are here because they oppose the Iranian regime, not because they have some sympathy with it.
LEVITT: Overwhelmingly, the Iranian diaspora is not in favor of the regime, which, by the way, is true for people back in Iran as well. But there are people who support the regime in the diaspora, and one concern is not just that we might see Iranian plots, but that you could see lone-offender plots where people decide on their own to carry out an attack. And early indications suggest that the attack in Austin a few days ago might be something like that, though it's a little early to know for sure.
INSKEEP: Why don't you describe what happened in Austin?
LEVITT: In Austin, there was a shooting attack, and the perpetrator wore a T-shirt with Iranian flag under a sweatshirt that had a message about Islam. It's not entirely clear that was about Iran, but authorities are treating it as a potential terrorist incident that may have been tied to Iran. And authorities in general over the years have been concerned that Iran is actively trying to radicalize people, including in the United States, to carry out lone-offender attacks.
INSKEEP: What is the state of the U.S. defenses against this sort of attack?
LEVITT: In general, U.S. defenses are really quite robust, both at the border and domestically, but there are concerns that there have been a lot of departures from the FBI, been a lot of people fired from the FBI, including purportedly some people who worked on investigations into President Trump who were actual Iran experts. And there's concern that a lot of agents who were working counterterrorism full-time were pulled to immigration work and now purportedly are being pulled back. But there's some measure of gap, people worry. I think we're actually in a pretty good place, but there is some concern about how constant and consistent our counterterrorism focus has been.
INSKEEP: What do you mean by that?
LEVITT: Well, if people are being pulled off counterterrorism work to work immigration, then there are fewer people working counterterrorism, and you can't just surge people back in the moment and expect that they'll be up on everything that's been happening over the past few weeks. The way you thwart these plots is being on top of things on a regular and consistent basis.
INSKEEP: Matthew Levitt is with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Thanks so much.
LEVITT: Thank you, Steve.
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