Counterterrorism Expert Issues Chilling Warning On Iranian Sleeper Cells In ‘Rural’ America

Iranian sleeper cells may be hiding “in plain sight” throughout parts of rural America, according to one counterterrorism official who said their plots have been years or decades in the making.

President Donald Trump’s blistering series of attacks on the Middle Eastern nation may have activated Iranian terrorists embedded deep in the fabric of American life, said Jonathan Gilliam, a former FBI special agent who has worked on joint task forces seeking to uncover a nexus of dark forces lingering beneath the surface of domestic tranquility.

Those sleeper cell individuals may be right in plain sight, he said in a recent interview.

“Where these sleeper cells may be is in plain sight,” Gilliam explained. “And that’s the real terrifying part of this is that putting people in place, as we’ve seen over the past four years, everyone’s scrambling because certain amounts of people could come in here and get in here.”

Gilliam blamed the Biden-era border policies for allowing an untold number of Iranian nationals to pour into the country undetected. Trump administration officials have reported arresting hundreds of Iranian citizens living in the U.S. since the bombing of nuclear enrichment facilities occurred last month.

“They could even go to the border and say they [want to] seek asylum, and the Biden administration, instead of putting them into DHS housing or ICE housing and holding them there so they could have their first appearance. To be vetted and whether or not they get asylum,” he said.

U.S. Border Patrol reported arresting 1,504 Iranian nationals from 2021 through 2024. Nearly half of them, or 729, were released into the U.S. pending asylum hearings.

Following the strikes by U.S. forces on June 22, a bulletin by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security warned state and local authorities to be on high alert for potential acts of Iranian-backed domestic terrorism.

“The likelihood of violent extremists in the Homeland independently mobilizing to violence in response to the conflict would likely increase if Iranian leadership issued a religious ruling calling for retaliatory violence against targets in the Homeland,” stated the bulletin. “Iran also has a long-standing commitment to target US Government officials it views as responsible for the death of an Iranian military commander killed in January 2020.”

Gilliam said it’s very likely that Iranian sleeper cells selected rural parts of the U.S. because they are “not well protected” compared to larger, urban centers.

“There is a possibility that sleeper cells could target more rural states instead of a large city. In fact, considering the evolution of attacks by fundamental Islamic attackers we’ve seen in Israel on October 7th, 2023, and in India this year, it is possible that a similar attack could happen at a rural, outdoor entertainment venue or populated vacation spot,” Gilliam told Fox News.

The FBI has reported arresting 670 Iranian individuals so far, including a former military sniper and individuals who held ranks in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, the powerful force protecting the country’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei.