WASHINGTON (TNND) \u2014 As attacks continue to be carried out across the Middle East, there are growing concerns about the ones that haven\u2019t yet happened, here at home in the United States.<\/p>\n
“You have people who entered the United States illegally and may have a strong affiliation to Iran or a direct affiliation to Iran, and they might be here for the purpose of acting against us,” said Bernard Zapor, in an interview with Sinclair Monday.<\/p>\n
Zapor is the former Deputy Assistant Director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.<\/p>\n
He said rising fears about sleeper cells – those quietly living and hiding in the United States- are legitimate, and should be taken seriously, since many in Iran are taught from a young age that they will be rewarded in the afterlife for carrying out certain actions, and the current attacks in Iran and the killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei could be a motivation.<\/p>\n
“It\u2019s a direct call to action for somebody that has radicalized Islamic beliefs, and they\u2019re called to act, and they\u2019re using the justification the highest justification for murdering people,” he said.<\/p>\n
The weekend shooting <\/a>at a bar in Austin, Texas, that left two dead and more than a dozen injured, is being investigated as \u201cpotentially an act of terrorism.\u201d<\/p>\n The suspect is 53-year-old Ndiaga Diagne. Fox News shared a photo <\/a>of him wearing a “Property of Allah” sweatshirt, with reports <\/a>that his T-shirt underneath contained a photo of the Iranian flag.<\/p>\n Possible threats like this have given Republicans on Capitol Hill another round of ammunition for their arguments that the pause to funding for the Department of Homeland Security should be lifted.<\/p>\n In an interview<\/a> on Fox News Monday, Sen. Tom Cotton, R, Arkansas, said, “I did speak with (FBI Director) Kash Patel yesterday I can tell you that the FBI is taking every potential threat around the nation very seriously. This is by the way another very compelling reason that we need to fund the Dept of Homeland Security immediately. The Democrats are highly irresponsible to keep Homeland Security unfunded while we\u2019re in the middle of a war against the world\u2019s worst state sponsor of terrorism,” he said. Cotton is the Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman<\/p>\n It\u2019s an argument Democrats say they aren\u2019t buying.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Republicans are saying that because they launched an illegal, disastrous war in Iran, we should give them permission to continue using ice to murder American citizens to allow them to get the funding to tear gas schools. No. we need to stand up for the American citizens that ICE is murdering, the kids that they are terrorizing. They should stop this illegal war and they should stop ICE from terrorizing our communities. We should demand that they do both things,” said Sen. Chris Murphy, D, Connecticut, in an interview<\/a> Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON (TNND) \u2014 As attacks continue to be carried out across the Middle East, there are growing concerns…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":499898,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":{"0":"post-499897","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-united-states-of-america","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","14":"tag-us","15":"tag-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499897","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=499897"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499897\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/499898"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=499897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=499897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=499897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}