Hours after Operation Epic Fury killed Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and multiple senior Iranian officials Saturday morning, counterintelligence and counterterrorism experts warned that terrorist sleeper cells inside the United States could be preparing to retaliate.
The warning landed with weight. By early Sunday, a bloodbath at Buford's Backyard Beer Garden in Austin had law-enforcement sources telling The Post it was potentially an act of vengeance over the US attack on Iran.
Former assistant FBI director Chris Swecker did not mince words:
If ever there's going to be a Hezbollah cell or a Hamas cell act in the United States in a violent way, it's now.
No specific credible threats have yet been publicly revealed. But the federal government is not waiting for one.
FBI Director Kash Patel moved immediately. He announced Saturday that US counterterrorism and intelligence agents had been placed on high alert, writing on X:
Last night, I instructed our Counterterrorism and intelligence teams to be on high alert and mobilize all assisting security assets needed.
Patel said teams nationwide are working 24/7 to address and disrupt any potential threats. He framed the division of labor clearly:
While the military handles force protection overseas, the FBI remains at the forefront of deterring attacks here at home – and will continue to have our team work around the clock to protect Americans.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem echoed that posture, stating she is "in direct coordination with our federal law enforcement partners" as her department continues to closely monitor and thwart any potential threats to the homeland.
This is what a government operating on a wartime footing looks like. No ambiguity. No bureaucratic hedging. Direct action matched with direct communication.
Swecker connected the threat directly to the border crisis that defined the previous administration. His assessment was blunt:
We just come off four years of open borders, and I have said before that that was an open door for terrorists to terrorist cells and terror sympathizers to infiltrate.
The numbers bear scrutiny. More than 700 Iranian nationals were allowed to remain in the US after crossing the border illegally in the past four years. That figure alone should end any debate about whether the open-border policies of the Biden era carried national security consequences. They did. Those consequences may now be arriving.
Swecker noted that many operatives and sympathizers were already in the country before the border collapsed, but added that it would be "impossible" for hostile actors not to have infiltrated alongside the waves of illegal immigrants. He pointed to protest groups as one vector:
We know that they have cells here. We also know that there are lone sympathizers, many of whom have come out in these protest groups.
These aren't people who simply hold unpopular opinions. Swecker described them as catalysts and enablers, individuals who embed within activist networks and can be activated when the moment demands it. Saturday morning's strikes on Iran may be exactly that moment.
The timeline is difficult to dismiss. Operation Epic Fury launched Saturday morning. By early Sunday, a mass casualty event struck Buford's Backyard Beer Garden in Austin. Law-enforcement sources told The Post it was potentially an act of vengeance tied to the US attack on Iran.
Details remain thin. Sources said the killer came from Senegal, became a naturalized US citizen in 2013, and applied for asylum in 2016. The investigation is ongoing, and the word "potentially" is doing a lot of work in that law-enforcement assessment. But the speed of the incident, arriving less than 24 hours after a strike that killed a head of state, demands serious scrutiny rather than reflexive caution.
If it was retaliation, the target selection tells its own story. Not a military installation. Not a government building. A beer garden on a Sunday morning. Soft targets, civilian spaces, ordinary Americans going about their lives. That is the signature of the threat Swecker described.
None of this should come as a surprise to the intelligence community. Last summer, Customs and Border Protection warned about the increased possibility of terrorist sleeper cells in a leaked memo obtained by The Post at the time. The threat was identified. The question was always when, not if.
Four years of policy failure at the southern border created the conditions. A decisive military strike against the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism may have lit the fuse. Those are two separate facts, and they are both true simultaneously.
The administration inherited a compromised homeland security posture and is now managing the consequences of that inheritance while simultaneously projecting strength abroad. That is an extraordinarily difficult needle to thread. The speed with which Patel and Noem mobilized federal assets suggests they understood the domestic risk before the first bombs fell on Iranian targets.
Counterterrorism agencies are already dedicating resources to the threat, according to those familiar with the situation. The apparatus is in motion. But the harder truth is that sleeper cells, by design, are invisible until they act. The 700-plus Iranian nationals who entered illegally represent only the fraction we know about. Lone sympathizers radicalized online or through protest networks are even harder to track.
Americans should understand what this moment requires. The strikes against Iran were a projection of strength that eliminated a regime responsible for decades of terror, proxy wars, and American bloodshed. The domestic threat that follows is the price of refusing to let evil fester unchallenged.
Every foreign policy action carries risk. Inaction carries more. The Biden administration chose inaction on the border and appeasement abroad. This administration chose decisiveness on both fronts. The question now is whether four years of open doors left enough threats inside the house to extract a cost.
The FBI is working around the clock. Homeland Security is coordinating across agencies. The military is handling force protection overseas. The machine is moving.
But somewhere in America, in a city no one is watching, the next soft target sits unguarded. That is the legacy of a border that was left open on purpose.
