Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei may be attempting to activate terrorist “sleeper cells” across the West as he continues to make inflammatory statements rejecting Donald Trump’s calls for surrender, Middle Eastern experts have said. According to Henry Jackson Society research fellow Barak Seener, Khamenei may be turning to terrorist Iranian sympathisers across the world as he runs out of traditional resources.
Iran has lost far more than Israel has in the war that has plagued the region for the last week. “The very fact now that the Iranian regime is volatile, it’s targeted, and it’s highly vulnerable — that’s what actually makes it increasingly dangerous to the West, in that it has nothing to lose it has this about this sense of nihilism, and it affects the rational calculus,” Mr Seener explained during a call with reporters hosted by the America-Middle East Press Association. On Wednesday, Khamenei rejected the US President’s calls for Tehran to give up its nuclear program, labelling the president’s demands “absurd rhetoric” while refusing to back down.
“The US entering in this matter is 100% to its own detriment,” Mr Seener said. “The damage it will suffer will be far greater than any harm that Iran may encounter.”
However, Israeli military experts have said that Iran is rapidly running out of ballistic missiles and missile launchers, meaning it is becoming difficult for Tehran to follow through on any conventional threat to the US.
Additionally, Israel has effectively defeated Tehran’s proxy groups – such as Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon – since Hamas’s attack on Israel in October 2023, leaving the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) almost alone in its fight, Mr Seener added.
“The very fact that Hamas and Hezbollah are sitting this one out is also a humiliation to Iran,” he said. “They don’t have their proxies to insulate them, which they have previously had.”
“These proxies have been significantly degraded, opening the skies directly for Israel to get to Tehran. And as a result of that, where can the IRGC flex? The only place where it can really flex now is the international community to potentially activate sleeper cells and to conduct malign activities at an even greater capacity than it had beforehand.”
Mr Seener also questioned Iran’s ability to activate its sleeper cells or the IRGC networks internationally if its IRGC’s command and control has been “decapitated”: “Who gives the orders? Is somebody willing to put themselves on the line to conduct a terrorist activity, if they may not even get paid for it, right?”
The Israel Defence Forces killed IRGC commander Hossein Salami last Friday; however, he was quickly replaced by former Iranian Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi.