by Steven Richards
Tehran’s actions include organizing assassination plots against an American president, steadfastly refusing to cease its nuclear program, and seeking deadly anti-ship missiles from China to directly threaten U.S. naval vessels.
Media outlets, think tanks, and lawmakers from the left and the right have claimed in recent days that Iran posed no imminent threat to the United States, but the body of evidence shows that Iran has in recent years grown more aggressive toward the United States.
Tehran’s actions include organizing assassination plots against an American president, steadfastly refusing to cease its nuclear program, and seeking deadly anti-ship missiles from China to directly threaten U.S. naval vessels.
In the days leading up to the latest round of fighting between Iran and the U.S.-Israeli coalition, and while negotiations with the United States about Tehran’s nuclear program were still ongoing, Iran’s late Supreme Leader addressed a threat to the U.S. more directly. He said that the U.S. military could “receive such a slap that it cannot rise” if Trump continued to pressure Iran to give up its nuclear ambitions.
Trump: "A dire threat to every American"
In the days after he launched Operation Epic Fury, targeting the Iranian regime’s military assets, President Donald Trump said Iran's ballistic missile program, nuclear program, and sponsorship of terrorist proxies throughout the Middle East posed the main threat to the United States.
“An Iranian regime armed with long-range missiles and nuclear weapons would be a dire threat to every American,” the president said in a video statement earlier this month.
Since the U.S. attack, the president’s assessment of the Iranian threat has been directly challenged by media outlets, think tanks, Democratic lawmakers and even a former senior official in his own administration.
This week, the Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Joe Kent, resigned from his post in protest over President Trump’s decision to launch a preemptive strike against Iran. "I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran," he said in a letter delivered to the president.
"Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby," he insisted. At the same time, he said it has "been an honor" to have served under President Trump and ODNI Tulsi Gabbard.
CIA operative who worked in Iran: "The threat is indisputable"
Not everyone agrees with Kent. Iran has presented a unique threat to the United States for years–whether through its sponsorship of terrorism or illicit nuclear program, Charles “Sam” Faddis, author of "Beyond Repair: The Decline and Fall of the CIA" and a former CIA operative with experience in Iran told Just the News.
“They've been a threat to us for a long time. They've killed one way or the other, directly or through surrogates, God knows how many thousands of Americans. I don't care what the IC assessment is at any one particular time point in time, because I think in a lot of cases, it's based on lack of access. It is crystal clear, they've had a nuclear weapons program, and they've been after a nuclear weapons program for a long time, and we can't tolerate that,” Faddis told the John Solomon Reports podcast.
“So they are a huge threat. And have they been for a long time? Without question, if I have any caveat to that, it would be then the question is, how do we approach dealing? What do we do in response to that? But the threat is indisputable,” he added.
The revolutionary Iranian regime has positioned itself as an adversary of the U.S. ever since it came into power decades ago in 1979, directing a host of terrorist attacks against U.S. troops, diplomats, and citizens. Those operations killed hundreds of Americans, such as the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, Just the News reported last month.
Iran sponsored assassination attempts in U.S.
“I think Iran has been a constant threat to the United States for an extended period of time and posed an immediate threat at this time,” CIA Director John Ratcliffe told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence at its annual worldwide threats hearing on Wednesday.
In addition to steadfastly refusing to end its illicit nuclear program, a defiance that sparked President Trump’s first strikes against Iran last summer in the 12-Day War, the regime has also threatened the lives of U.S. political figures in recent years, including President Donald Trump and former officials in his first administration.
The trial for one of those attempted assassins, a Pakistani national who was charged with attempting to organize an assassination plot against now-President Donald Trump on behalf of Iranian intelligence, resulted in a conviction earlier this month. The defendant, Asif Merchant, was charged in the murder-for-hire plot and during the trial admitted that he was working on behalf of Iranian intelligence.
Separately, the Justice Department filed charges against Afghan national Farhad Shakeri for an alleged role in a similar murder-for-hire plot directed by an unnamed Iranian intelligence official, Just the News previously reported. Shakeri remains at large and is believed to be living in Iran.
Faddis told Just the News that another concern is whether Iran operates sleeper cells inside the United States capable of carrying out terrorist attacks on U.S. soil in retaliation for the war.
“The guys we caught are the ones that are easy to catch,” said Faddis. “We caught the sloppy [ones]. The guy who's got his act together and is here as part of a cell and knows how to do this well…we don't see him. That does not mean he is not here.”
The illegal immigrant connection
In January, the Homeland Security Department announced that it had deported three Iranian nationals living illegally in the United States that were former members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, a U.S. designated terrorist organization and key pillar of the regime’s security apparatus. All three individuals entered the United States illegally across the Southern Border in 2024.
Last year, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested 11 Iranian nationals also living in the United States illegally. At least three of those individuals had ties to the Iranian military, Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, or were otherwise designated as suspected terrorists, the agency said.
There are also indications that, before the war, Iran’s growing ballistic missile program was geared specifically toward conflict with the United States, a review of intelligence assessments and public reports show. Before war broke out last month, Tehran was reportedly close to a deal with China to purchase anti-ship cruise missiles that could directly threaten U.S. naval vessels, including aircraft carriers, in its proximity.
The Chinese missiles, the supersonic CM-302, were deployed by China more than a decade ago and were described by one expert as “the most dangerous anti-ship missile” China has produced so far. Because of its high speed, U.S. air defense crews would only have about 45 seconds from identification to impact to intercept the missile.
Iran’s late Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei — killed in late February 2026 at age 86 during U.S. and Israeli airstrikes on Iran — made no secret of what his country would do with such a missile. Responding to President Trump’s decision to deploy an aircraft carrier to the Middle East to pressure Iran, Khamenei told "Iran Inisght," a London-based Persian-language news channel “an aircraft carrier is a dangerous device, but more dangerous than the carrier is the weapon that can send it to the bottom of the sea.”
In December, Iran also signed a $589 million deal with Russia for thousands of advanced shoulder-fired missiles, The Financial Times reported.
Various missiles ordered, under development by Iran
The portable, shoulder launched air defense missiles are one of the most modern tools in Moscow’s arsenal and are capable of targeting cruise missiles, low-flying aircraft, and drones. Because of their portability, soldiers can fire the weapon quickly and disperse, increasing survivability compared to traditional air defense systems that rely on fixed radars.
The Financial Times reported that Russia was set to make deliveries of the launchers and rockets beginning in 2027. There is no indication that any were expedited to Iran ahead of the start of the conflict with the U.S. last month.
Before the war, Trump warned that Iran also had the potential to develop Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles, or ICBMs, that could one day reach the United States using knowledge derived from its nascent space program. ICBMs are long-range missiles capable of delivering nuclear warheads, though they do not exclusively do so and can deliver conventional payloads.
“They’ve already developed missiles that can threaten Europe and our bases overseas, and they’re working to build missiles that will soon reach the United States of America,” Trump said at his State of the Union address in February. “They were warned to make no future attempts to rebuild their weapons program, in particular nuclear weapons.”
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard told the Senate on Wednesday that the U.S. intelligence community assesses that Iran was likely to develop the capability by 2035 if its leadership chose to do so.
Steven Richards
Source: https://justthenews.com/government/security/media-and-lawmakers-downplay-threat-iran-regime-public-evidence-shows-true
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