House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-TX) on Tuesday released a monthly assessment on terror threats that face the United States and its allies.
“This week’s Islamist terror plots in Canada and Europe are a grim reminder of the heightened threat environment America and our allies confront,” McCaul said. “ISIS and al-Qaeda are growing deeper roots in their sanctuaries around the world while plotting terror against the West. The Iranian regime grows more emboldened as it capitalizes on the economic stimulus afforded to it by President Obama’s disastrous nuclear deal. Unfortunately, these trends will continue to worsen without a resolute, U.S.-led strategy to defeat Islamist terrorists and restore global order.”
Key takeaways of the assessment include intelligence suggesting that ISIS commands a “sophisticated external plotting network” from its sanctuaries and continues to inspire jihadist recruits, reports that the Iranian regime and its proxies are responding to Obama’s nuclear deal with growing aggression and building a “complex terror infrastructure,” reports that al-Qaeda is poised to build on recent territorial gains, and reports that Islamist terrorists are infiltrating the West by exploiting massive refugee flows.
There have been 83 arrests of confirmed ISIS-linked militants while a total of 23 plots have been thwarted by counterterrorist officials since 2014.