While law enforcement agencies in the United States have not announced immediate plans to boost visible police presence in light of a strike that killed a top Iranian commander in Iraq, multiple agencies say they are keeping a watchful eye on events overseas and will adjust as appropriate or as intelligence warrants.
There is concern that Iran could retaliate and that U.S. interests overseas could be targeted or that proxies could be deployed to strike Americans or their interests abroad, the sources said.
Those areas include Africa and South America, as well as Yemen and Lebanon, they said.
The Defense Department late Thursday announced the death of Qassim Suleimani, the commander of Iran’s secretive Quds Force, in a strike said to have occurred near Baghdad International Airport.
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The strike, which the Pentagon said was conducted at President Donald Trump’s direction, comes amid heightened tensions between the United States and Iran, and it could ratchet up the conflict.
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U.S. law enforcement officials say the first step is for various Joint Terrorism Task Forces — groupings of local police and the FBI — to check in with their Hezbollah sources and with sources in Iran or sympathetic communities. They will want to know whether any Hezbollah-connected individuals who have been investigated previously may need a second look in light of Suleimani’s death.
In November, a New York City man who considered himself a “sleeper agent” of Hezbollah, Iran’s state-sponsored terrorist organization, was sentenced to 40 years in prison.
Federal prosecutors said at the time that the man, Ali Kourani, was “recruited, trained and deployed by Hezbollah’s Islamic Jihad Organization” to plan and execute terrorist attacks around New York, although none were carried out. As part of the case, prosecutors revealed the group’s drive to accumulate bomb-making materials from China and to stockpile them around the world.
A top law enforcement official said it is important that the intelligence community is tuned in to foreign interceptions of communications that could be used to detect possible attack planning and directives from Iran.
Neither the Los Angeles Police Department nor the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department has taken any step beyond their annual New Year’s deployment increases, officials said. But they are communicating with local, state and federal partners.
New York police had not yet issued a statement, but the department’s intelligence and counterterrorism units are aware of Thursday’s developments in Baghdad, the sources said.
A senior police official said the department is monitoring events and moving some resources as a precaution.
