McCaul releases monthly terrorist threat snapshot assessment

House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-TX) released his monthly assessment of terrorist threats facing the nation and our allies on Wednesday.

“This past month’s ISIS-inspired rampage in Orlando marked the deadliest terror attack in our homeland since 9/11,” McCaul said. “The FBI recently arrested another American ISIS supporter involved in a plot to launch an attack on U.S. soil. We are in an unprecedented global war against Islamist terrorists, as the jihadist atrocities in the past weeks in Turkey, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Bangladesh demonstrated. The enemy spurs its supporters in our midst to violence while it grooms operatives to dispatch globally.

“Groups like ISIS and al Qaeda have proven resilient, and continue to dominate large swaths of territory. Iran and its terrorist proxies have continued to threaten vital American interests after the Obama Administration dangerously legitimized the Iranian regime’s nuclear ambitions. The failure to recognize the nature of these threats and to lay out a clear, viable plan for confronting them will sadly continue to endanger Americans and our allies.”

Key takeaways of the snapshot include findings that radical Islamists have escalated the pace of their attacks in recent weeks, evidence that terror operatives have infiltrated migrating refugee populations, evidence that former Guantanamo Bay detainees have returned to the battlefield and evidence that Iran has remained the “foremost state sponsor of terrorism” in the wake of the Iran nuclear deal.