Intercepted communications indicate Iranian sleeper cells inside the United States are being activated. This is the front that most Americans are not prepared for.
Iran's Assembly of Experts has selected Mojtaba Khamenei as the new Supreme Leader. He is 56 years old, deeply tied to the IRGC, and more hardline than his father. He participated in the suppression of the 2009 protests. His power base is rooted in the most anti-American factions of Iran's military and clerical establishment. The situation did not improve when we removed the previous leader. It rarely does.
Iran is executing a rope-a-dope strategy. They absorb strikes while expanding the battlefield horizontally through proxies and asymmetric action. We fought this same war in Afghanistan and Iraq. We lost both. No protest leaders have emerged inside Iran capable of organizing a viable alternative to the regime. The IRGC has not fractured. The protesters are on their own and at grave risk if U.S. forces withdraw before conditions change.
Federal, state, and local law enforcement must operate with heads on a swivel. The threat is real. Congress needs to stop playing politics with DHS funding. Now is not the time.
We are in this war whether we wanted it or not. The question now is how we define victory, how we protect the American people at home, and how we avoid repeating the mistakes of the last two decades. Those answers have to come fast.
