The question of whether Iran will respond to escalating international pressure over its nuclear program with terrorist attacks on overseas targets is a source of growing worry to Jewish communities, with security professionals warning of potential threats to Jewish institutions around the world.
As tensions mount, and with intense speculation over how Iran would respond to a possible Israeli or American strike against its nuclear facilities, experts already are citing a series of recent foiled plots, allegedly connected to Iran or its proxies, against Jewish and non-Jewish targets.
Sources close to law enforcement say there is no specific threat of an attack, although the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security in recent weeks have intensified their monitoring of possible threats.
ABC News, citing an Israeli internal security document, reported Feb. 3 that Jewish and Israeli institutions in the United States are on high alert over concerns they will be targeted by Iran or one of its proxies.
In a letter, the head of security for the Israeli consul general for the mid-Atlantic states reportedly wrote that the security threat has increased on “guarded sites” such as Israeli embassies and consulates and “soft sites” such as synagogues, Jewish schools, restaurants and community centers, according to ABC.
ABC reported that local and regional law enforcement and intelligence officials in U.S. and Canadian cities such as New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Toronto have increased security at Israeli and Jewish institutions, and that federal officials also have increased vigilance in looking for imminent attacks.
“In the past few weeks, there has been an escalation in threats against Israeli and Jewish targets around the world,” ABC quoted a U.S. regional intelligence document as saying. “Open Source [a provider of foreign intelligence] has reported many demonstrations against Israel are expected to be concentrated on Israeli embassies and consulates. Such demonstrations have occurred internationally as well as domestically. These demonstrations could potentially turn violent at local synagogues, restaurants, the Israeli Embassy and other Israeli sites.”
An Israeli intelligence report warned that forged Israeli passports might be used by potential terrorists to leave the Middle East and enter the United States and Canada.
“The people that want to come after Israel overseas will look at Jewish targets in the host nations, as well,” said Paul Goldenberg, national director of the Secure Community Network, an effort funded by the Jewish Federations of North America that works to strengthen security for Jewish institutions. “They will look not just at embassies, but at synagogues and JCCs as secondary targets.”
In unclassified testimony submitted to the Senate’s Select Committee on Intelligence, national intelligence director James Clapper cited only the alleged plot revealed in October to assassinate Saudi ambassador Adel al-Jubeir in Washington, D.C. The attack allegedly had the backing of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.
“The 2011 plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States shows that some Iranian officials — probably including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei — have changed their calculus and are now more willing to conduct an attack in the United States in response to real or perceived U.S. actions that threaten the regime,” Clapper wrote.
For nearly two decades, since it was implicated in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish center in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Iran has seemed reluctant to attack outside the Middle East.
That might have changed with the assassination of Hezbollah’s head of security, Imad Mughniyah, by a car bomb in Syria in 2008, for which Hezbollah blamed Israel’s Mossad and threatened retaliation.
Jewish communities in the United States and overseas have issued security alerts each year on the Feb. 12 anniversary of the killing.
Another factor that has spurred Iranian threats of retribution is the spate of assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists.
“From now on, in any place, if any nation or any group confronts the Zionist regime, we will endorse and we will help,” Khamenei said Feb. 3 in a sermon translated by the Associated Press.
Mark Dubowitz, executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democ-racies, said such statements merited heightened alert.
“The overall question of what other aggressive actions the Iranians are willing to take in response to our pressure means Jewish institutions in the United States need to take reasonable precautions,” he said.