As Iran war raises terror risk, U.S. enforcement agencies are spread thin, experts say

In the hours after the U.S. began its military operation in Iran, a cascade of national security departments and agencies, including the FBI and Homeland Security, began notifying the public that they would be stepping up their activities around the country because of a heightened risk of international and domestic terrorism.

But after a year of federal budget cuts, resignations, firings, layoffs and a reshuffling of the Trump administration’s priorities, some national security experts are worried about the ability of those agencies to respond.

“The administration has reduced U.S. capabilities in this area, so the United States might be more vulnerable than it was a year ago,” said Daniel Byman, director of the Warfare of Irregular Threats and Terrorism program at the non-partisan Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.

“Key institutions like the CIA and the FBI have both had large-scale layoffs,” Byman said. “Within these organizations, we’ve seen shifts in resources. So, FBI agents, for example, were transferred from counter-terrorism to policing immigration.”

Reallocating those resources and priorities comes with risk, says Javed Ali, who previously worked for the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI, and now lectures on counter-terrorism and national security at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy.

“If you’re going to take priorities off one issue and refocus them on something else, you’re going to have to understand that there may be a higher threat profile and you aren’t going to be able to understand what a threat looks like or track as many individuals as you were before,” Ali said.

Despite all of the cuts and departures from key agencies, counter-terrorism programs continue, even if it is difficult to gauge how they might have been affected, he said.

“It’s unclear how deep of an impact that has had on the nation’s ability to continue to stay upstream with respect to identifying plots and identifying individuals and disrupting them before they conduct the attacks.”

CBC News asked the FBI how many personnel had been reassigned to immigration objectives prior to the U.S. attack on Iran. The agency did not respond to that question but provided a statement: “FBI personnel continue to be fully engaged across the country and prepared to mobilize any security assets needed to assist federal partners.”

Homeland Security in shutdown

The Iran attack also comes as the Department of Homeland Security remains in funding shutdown instituted largely by Democrats who wanted to force change in Immigration and Customs Enforcement tactics. DHS was created in 2002 under the Bush administration after the 9/11 terror attacks, with a mission to protect Americans from terror on home soil.

The DHS website, including the National Terrorism Advisory System page, has a red banner on top, noting that, “due to the lapse in federal funding, this website will not be actively managed.”

DHS did not respond to CBC News questions about how the lapse in funding might affect operations, but the Homeland Security Secretary, Kristi Noem, did appear before a Senate committee Tuesday.

In the hearing, Noem said hundreds of staff in cybersecurity have been furloughed during the shutdown, but when asked about any potential Iranian threat, she said, “We work every single day with our intelligence agencies and law enforcement partners to make sure that we are investigating and finding any threats to the homeland here within our borders.”

For the last year,  members of Congress and former national security officials have sounded alarms about job and funding cuts and shifts in priorities in some agencies. 

Just last week half a dozen states filed suit against DHS and FEMA to restore funding to a counter-terrorism program.

In November, Senator Mark Warner told the Senate that 25 to 45 per cent of FBI agents working counter-terrorism, cyber, espionage and child exploitation cases had been reassigned to the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, which he argued impeded the bureau’s ability to prevent attacks.

Scott White, director of the cybersecurity program at George Washington College of Professional Studies, says he is not “overly concerned” counter-terrorism capabilities have been diminished. 

“Since 9/11, a lot of large municipal police services have improved and created their own counter-terrorism units,” he said. “And they’re liaising with a variety of intelligence services.”

But cybersecurity remains a concern, especially given Iran’s well-developed capacity for cyber attacks.

“I fully expect to see some cyber attacks in the next, well, potentially hours or even days. How significant they will be or how advantageous they will be for the Iranians, we don’t know,” White said.

In the past year, the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) shed roughly a third of its staff, but White said there are still strong defences in place.

“We still have obviously the NSA (National Security Agency) out there electronically eavesdropping. They’re part, of course, of the Five Eyes group,” he said. 

White also said private sector companies like Crowdstrike often take on part of the intelligence-gathering load, monitoring cyber threats.

Byman said that another area of concern is that some agencies charged with keeping the nation safe have been politicized.

“You’ve had leaders come in who have demanded political loyalty to the administration as opposed to the more traditional approach, which is simply that these people be non-partisan,” Byman said. “You have concerns that analysis might be biased or otherwise not be as strong because they’re trying to please political clusters.”

Iran may have ‘no reason for restraint’

In June, when the U.S. launched airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, there were some apprehensions that Iranian sleeper cells or other proxies might mount an attack on U.S. soil. Such threats never materialized.

Byman said given the nature of the conflict and U.S. calls for regime change, this time might be different.

“They may be looking at themselves in the mirror and saying things actually can’t get worse, that there’s no reason for restraint right now,” he said.

Ali said it is most likely any related terror attack may come in the form of a “lone wolf” — often an actor sympathetic to a cause who may not be on any list or agency radar.

“That’s always very difficult to identify and stop in advance.,” he said. “And I think that’s the kind of terrorism that my former colleagues in the law enforcement intelligence world they’re gonna have to deal with.”

“What we’re looking at specifically are not necessarily Iranian operatives, but we’re definitely going to be looking at Iranian sympathizers and Iranian proxies operating in the United States,” said White.

While “hard targets” like government buildings will be well-fortified with increased security, so-called soft targets like community and religious centres, even U.S.-branded hotels and restaurants, and other countries could be more at risk, the experts said.

“There’s going to be soft targets throughout Europe and even in Canada.” he said. White, a former CSIS officer, said Canadians would have to rely on CSIS, the RCMP, and the large municipal police services.