Whilst many of us marvel at the military achievements of the US and Israeli armed forces who are at the time of writing heavily engaged with the Islamist regime in Tehran, we should not forget that this military action is almost certainly going to have blow-back. A military may achieve much on the battlefield and may even achieve its primary objective but it can then be faced with problems that come out of that victory. The failure to nation build in Afghanistan and the collapse of post-Saddam Iraq are both blow-backs.
One of the likely blow-backs. from the joint Israel / USA action against the regime in Iran is going to be an increasing incidence of Islam inspired terrorism and a rise in aggressive and politicised religiosity among some Muslims in the West. Don’t get me wrong, there’s going to be a lot of Muslims in the West who will be more than happy should the Mullahs in Iran get a proper mullering, but they are not going to be a problem so that they can mostly be safely ignored for the purposes of risk analysis. These guys are not going to go all kinetic on us.
What we do need to worry about is Iranian terror cells who may have been lying low in places like the USA, the UK, Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere across the West. If the Iranians have been clever and sent to the West those who are ‘clean skins’ with no record of religious extremism or crime or questionable connections, then we, or rather our governments may have no real idea just how many Iranian sleeper cells may be in our countries or where they are. An enemy weapon like that is a very very dangerous one. If there are lots of Iranian regime sleeper cell agents in Western nations then it may well be that what pushes their activation buttons could be the fall or seemingly immanent fall of the Islamist regime in Tehran. These might do immense damage. As we don’t know where they will be we don’t know if any of them are working in sensitive areas such as infrastructure, we could be in a position where a small attack, not a mass casualty attack like Manchester Arena, on a piece of critical infrastructure creates more and longer term problems than a mass casualty attack would.
If there are Iranian regime sleeper agents in the UK and other Western nations then we might see these come out into the open as the Tehran regime dies and engage in acts of the most dreadful violence, where these death cultists kill as many of us before death finds them. These attacks could take the form of large mass casualty attacks as well as more random and lower casualty ones of the sort that we see regularly in France where lone individuals kill or attempt to kill French police officers.
But the other source of terrorist blow-back. from the war against the Islamic regime in Iran is from individuals, many of whom will not have come to the attention of the authorities for religious extremism, who self radicalise to the point that they commit a terror attack. The heightened tension in the Middle East region is likely to stir those likely to go down this path into an absolute tizzy of hatred for the West which may well increase should the West win against the Mullahs of Iran. These might be the quiet guys at the back of the mosque or even a mosque non attender who you might never expect to take this route, until they do decide to take their religious anger to a more kinetic level. These are the lone wolf terrorists, the ones who whip themselves up into a frenzy and assisted by drugs and mental illness, pick up knives in order to slash at random passers by or drive a truck into a crowd of shoppers at a Christmas market. The sort of terrorists who would carry out a Bataclan or a Manchester Arena or a 7/7 attack are the organised ones and whilst dangerous may well be less common than the self radicalised individual. Also organised groups may well be big enough for investigating authorities to counter via looking at the connections between known Islamist extremists. There is no such peephole or back door when it comes to stopping attacks by those self radicalised individuals, the randomness with which these individuals can go from quietism to kinetic is what makes them so dangerous to society. Anyone anywhere could be the victim of a self radicalised individual, at the shops, waiting for a bus, on a train, in a cinema or just about anywhere else where the self radicalised individual can find enough victims.
I was thinking of the issue of blow-back. and how it relates to the current military action in Iran when I read a story from USA Today about a lone jihadist who had gone on a shooting spree in Austin, Texas in the United States. Here we have a guy who appears to be a completely clean skinned individual with no current suspicions about extremism made public who dressed himself in a tee shirt that read ‘Property of Allah’ before shooting up a bar. The suspect, Ndiaga Diagne, aged 53 who was from Senegal but who became an American citizen, used his firearm to kill two people and injure 14 others before he was shot dead by police.
USA Today claims that the case is being examined by the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) to see if there is a terrorist aspect to it. Personally going out in a tee shirt that says ‘Property of Allah’ is planting a great big banner saying ‘terrorist’ in the ground. I do wonder whether when this man became an American citizen were his political or religious views properly looked into? Assuming they were then this man could well have self radicalised on US soil and only went full fraggle when his anger over the Iran war boiled over.
USA Today said on March 1st:
“The Federal Bureau of Investigation on Sunday, March 1, said it is investigating “indicators” that suggest a possible terrorism link after a bar shooting in Texas left at least two people dead and 14 others injured.
At about 2 a.m. local time on March 1, officers responded to a report of an active shooting on West 6th Street, the Austin Police Department announced on Facebook. When officers arrived at the scene, they fatally shot the suspect, Austin Police Department Chief Lisa Davis confirmed.
According to authorities and emergency medical personnel, at least two people were found dead at the scene, and 14 others were injured in the attack, with three remaining in critical condition. The victims’ identities were not disclosed. Law enforcement officials said the suspect had a history of mental health conditions, according to an internal update from the National Counterterrorism Center reviewed by Reuters. A law enforcement official told Reuters that the shooter wore a shirt with an Iranian flag and a sweatshirt that said “Property of Allah” on it.”
So there we have it. Madness, religious mania and anger, what a terrible and dangerous combination this is. This guy might have been likely to ‘go off’ in some way at some point but he timed his atrocity to coincide with the current war for Iran when the Mullahs are on the back foot.
This is just the first of these incidents to come to my attention but I suspect that we might see more over the coming days, weeks or months and especially if the current Iranian government falls. Those vulnerable to self radicalisation, in particular those who are mad in some way, might come to some sort of mental crisis when the dissonance between their belief that their belief system is superior to everyone else’s meets the reality that Jews and Christians have beaten a state built around Islam, which might send them over the edge in to violence. They might want to hit out when they freak out and want to ‘put one over on the kuffar’ by carrying out a terror attack or just die killing non-Muslims because their mind is addled with illness and extremism, in a form of ‘suicide by cop’.
We may be in for a period where there is much more religiously inspired and mental health aided terror attacks and especially lone wolf terror attacks and we need to really be aware of our surroundings and who is in them and what they are doing. All conflicts run the risk of blowbacks but the Iranian one is what we have consider now. The Mullahs in Tehran might want to carry out some horrendous last ditch of symbolic attack on a Western nation or nations and could use any operational assets they’ve got in the West to that. This is of course a problem but we must also be aware and guard against the self radicalised random killer who is not sent or instructed by the Iranian government or an Iranian sponsored group, who any of us could face at any time. We live in both interesting and dangerous times I’m afraid and we are going to have to probably endure some horrific attacks by religiously inspired terrorists and those in a position to do so and who come into contact with those at risk of self radicalisation will need to learn to spot early those who are going down this path and intervene to stop them on their destructive path. I hope I’m wrong but I believe that things are going to get bad with regards random terrorist attacks of the sort we’ve seen in Austin, Texas.
