When a report it emerged earlier this month that the FBI had notified California police departments that Iran could attack the state from a ship off the West Coast, it is understood. raise concerns among the residents.
But the FBI’s warning, which was sent in late February, was based on unconfirmed information. The White House quickly reduced the notion that there was a threat of Iranian drones to that country. On March 11, US President Donald Trump he told it reporters that the nefarious drone plot was being “investigated,” but neither was he he said that he was not worried about Iran carrying out a domestic terrorist attack on American soil. On the same day, California Governor Gavin Newsom he said that drone issues have “always been a concern” but that he was not aware of any “imminent threats” to California.
Most recently, unidentified drones have been spotted flying over a military base where US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth are—and officials are reportedly considering moving them amid concerns about possible Iranian retaliatory strikes.
Although there does not appear to be any concrete information indicating an attack by Iranian drones on US soil, experts warn that Washington still needs to be prepared for such threats. And even if Iran does not decide to take direct action against the United States, its allies or lone wolf actors may use drones in an attack.
“The United States should be very concerned about all possible emergency situations. Although flying into buildings was an act of fiction, it happened in real life on September 11, 2001,” said Colin Clarke, an international security expert and executive director of the Soufan Center. “The 9/11 Commission Report said the failure to prevent 9/11 was a failure of imagination. So the same would apply to novel threats (the drone) that could affect the US.”
James Patton Rogers, an expert on drones at Cornell University, said he has been concerned that drones could be used in a “surprise attack” against the United States for years.
“We know the drone’s greatest strength is its ability to be maneuvered, remotely piloted or autonomous, and operate at great distances. … And we also know that drones are very mobile,” Rogers said, noting that small systems can be mounted on shipping vessels, launched from the ocean, and travel up to 1,200 miles.
The United States has intervention forces and significant naval assets on the West Coast, where this unconfirmed threat was first reported, but “we all have vulnerabilities,” Rogers said.
“If we’re talking about general defense against some quadcopter systems that appear over a military base or some one-way incoming drones like the Shahed-136, (then) does the United States have the ability to defend against that? Yes, absolutely, as it has repeatedly done in this current conflict with Iran,” Rogers said. “Does it have enough firepower and weapon depth to continue to defend against them? I’m not sure about that.”
Kate Bondar, a former adviser to the Ukrainian government who is now a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank, said that when she saw the news about possible Iranian drones in California, it seemed “a little absurd.” But according to “the broader context of this threat, this is something that the United States should think about,” he said.
“We’ve been watching for four years what’s going on in Ukraine, and the biggest issue with this new kind of warfare, especially drones and all kinds of unmanned systems in all domains, is that they’re accessible, they’re very cheap, and they’re easy to produce by basically anyone,” Bondar said.
The Shahed-136, an inexpensive and brutally efficient long-range, single-aisle aircraft that has been attacking. is known as the “poor man’s cruise missile,” it is the most important aircraft in Iran’s arsenal. Iran is launching these “kamikaze” drones in large numbers to overwhelm its enemy’s defenses—and if even one gets through, the impact can be devastating and devastating. The Shahed-136 has a range of 1,200 miles, a cruising speed of about 115 miles per hour, and can carry a warhead up to about 110 pounds. The Shahed drones are easy to transport and can be launched from the back of a truck (or ship).
The potential of drones like the Shahed-136 has been on full display since the war with Iran began on February 28. Six US soldiers were killed by an Iranian drone that attacked a tactical operations center in Kuwait on the second day of the war. This was the worst event in the American war to date. More than 230 American soldiers have also been injured in the war. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine he said in mid-March that many of the injuries could be attributed to unilateral drone strikes.
Drones launched by Iran and its allies have also been launched to penetrate the defenses of allies in the region, it hit US military bases and embassies, hit ships in the Strait of Hormuz, and hit buildings in civilian areas in the Gulf. The situation should also be a warning regarding the defense of the country. Rogers said even Israel’s modern Iron Dome system has faced challenges in dealing with some of Iran’s drones.
“If that’s the most advanced air defense system in the world, then it shows that we all have weaknesses,” Rogers said.
The Shahed-136 drones do not have the range to be launched from Iran to hit the United States, but they could theoretically be launched from ships to defeat it. “By their very nature, the Iranians have to approach America as equals, so while I think something like this would be very difficult to pull off, it’s impossible to conceive,” Clarke said.
While the Shahds have proven to be a powerful weapon in Iran’s arsenal, experts tend to think it is far more likely that commercially available drones could be used in a hypothetical attack on US soil—and any such event would not directly involve Iran.
“The most likely form of a domestic terrorist attack would be an Iranian-directed or Iranian-led attack using a commercial drone in an urban environment or against soft targets. The resources needed to carry out such an attack are limited, and the skills are not hard to come by,” Clarke said.
Similarly, Bondar emphasized that first-person drones can be purchased on Amazon and modified to carry explosives. “Basically anyone can do it,” Bondar said. “This threat has been greatly underestimated.”
That said, the United States has never experienced any state-sponsored attacks or attempted attacks openly linked to Iran since the war began on February 28. And experts believe that attacks against the United States are not a high priority for Tehran at the moment due to its success in cutting the Strait of Hormuz, which has caused world oil prices to rise and put Trump in a bad economic position.
Iran believes it has a “strategy to win right now” by putting pressure on the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20 percent of crude oil and liquefied natural gas flow, said Alex Plitsas, a former US Defense Department official who is now a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. Tehran believes they will “pressure President Trump to stop the operation because they are convinced he is worried” about the possible negative impact of war on Republicans in the upcoming midterm elections in November.
The Iranian regime also has additional options it can rely on before escalating to attack the US, Plitsas said, including seeing the Houthis in Yemen try to cut off the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, another important shipping route on the other side of the Arabian Peninsula. The Houthis they have not yet joined the warbut they are closely monitored by the United States and its allies after they have already demonstrated their ability to do damage. shipping in the Red Sea.
Plitsas emphasized that while Iran is a “reasonable actor,” it can still move to additional threats to balance, including international terrorism, if it feels backed into a corner in the future of war. But even if Iran goes down that path, drones aren’t necessarily the first choice in a tool Tehran would reach for. Iran would probably try to do something “more spectacular” than a drone strike to have an effect, Plitsas said, such as assassination.
For years, Iran has secretly sent intelligence officers to the United States to “target future attacks” and has tried to recruit people into assassination plots or assassinations – including. alleged conspiracy targeting Trump—and has a known history of ties to international terrorism through proxy groups like Hezbollah, Plitsas said. At the same time, questions have been raised about whether Iran could activate the so-called “sleeper cells” of operatives in the United States, which Trump recently. he said the government is monitoring carefully.
Plitsas also said it is possible that there could be lone wolf cases where the person responding to the conflict with Iran decides to take matters into his own hands. On March 1, a man wearing a sweatshirt that said “Allah’s Property” – with what authority he said there was a shirt underneath that had a pattern on the Iranian flag—a mass shooting at a bar in Austin, Texas. The incident, which killed three people (including the shooter) and injured more than a dozen, is being investigated as a possible terrorist act. The shooting raised concerns about a backsliding in Iran’s war.
So far, Iran has “deliberately moved up the ladder,” Clarke said. It may be that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps sees “attacks on the US as a last resort, but one that they would be willing to take if they felt the need to do so,” Clarke said, adding that “a US ground operation could be a three-way street for the Iranians.”
It is difficult to predict what will happen next in the escalating US-Israeli war with Iran. Trump has claimed that ceasefire talks have begun between the US and Iran, which Tehran has denied. Meanwhile, the United States is moving more military assets, including thousands of Marines, to the region — fueling speculation that it may soon have boots on the ground in Iran for the first time since the war began.
