WASHINGTON: The FBI warned US state and local law enforcement of \u200ban elevated threat posed by Iran\u2019s government to targets in the United States last month even as the White House sought to downplay the likelihood of an attack, a law enforcement intelligence report reviewed by Reuters shows.<\/p>\n
In the March 20 report, the FBI and other federal intelligence agencies cautioned that Iranian government \u201cposes a persistent threat\u201d to US military and government personnel and buildings, Jewish and Israeli institutions, and Iranian dissidents in the US Despite those warnings, the FBI and National Counterterrorism Center had not identified broad threats to the American public, the report said.<\/p>\n
President Donald Trump publicly has minimized the possibility of Iranian attacks on American soil in \u200cresponse to other intelligence \u200cassessments in recent months. When asked outside the White House on \u200bMarch \u200c11 \u2060whether he \u200bwas \u2060worried about Iran perpetrating an attack in the US, Trump said, \u201cNo, I\u2019m not.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Republican president escalated his rhetoric around the conflict this week, saying on Tuesday that \u201ca whole civilization will die tonight\u201d if Iran did not meet his demands but later delaying the threatened assault by two weeks.<\/p>\n
The March 20 report \u2014 titled \u201cPublic Safety Awareness Report\u201d \u2014 was issued weeks after Reuters and other news outlets reported that the White House blocked the release of a similarly described intelligence product.<\/p>\n
At the time, the White House said it was ensuring any information was properly vetted \u2060before release.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe entire Trump administration is working together to protect the homeland and the \u200cAmerican people \u2013 as they always do,\u201d White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson \u200csaid in a statement.<\/p>\n
\u201cMedia outlets should not attempt to irresponsibly sow fear \u200bby reporting on individual law enforcement memorandums that \u200cmay lack broader context.\u201d<\/p>\n
The FBI and NCTC did not immediately respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n
Ali Karimi Magham, \u200ca spokesperson for the Iranian mission to the United Nations, declined to comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WASHINGTON: The FBI warned US state and local law enforcement of \u200ban elevated threat posed by Iran\u2019s government to targets in the United States last month even as the White House sought to downplay the likelihood of an attack, a law enforcement intelligence report reviewed by Reuters shows. In the March 20 report, the FBI …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":96057,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-96044","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96044","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=96044"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96044\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":96058,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96044\/revisions\/96058"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/96057"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}