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Attacks in Canada, the United States, Europe and elsewhere are likely in the wake of the American and Israeli strikes against Iran.

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In some ways, we may have already seen people sympathetic to the regime of the late, but not missed, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei lash out at his killing and the attacks on Iran.

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The Toronto Sun’s Joe Warmington reported on Sunday about the firing of 17 bullets into the Saliwan Boxing Club in Richmond Hill. The club is run by Salar Gholami, a proud Iranian-Canadian and outspoken critic of the regime in Tehran.

Gholami told Warmington that he’s worried that supporters of Iran’s regime could try to intimidate critics like him and — despite police not yet revealing a motive behind the shooting — he believes that’s what the bullets through the windows of his club were meant to do.

Members of the Iranian regime in Canada

While most of Canada’s Iranian diaspora support an Iran free of the ayatollahs, members of the regime have been setting up bases in Canada. Some estimates said that as many as 700 members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which has been designated as a terrorist group within Canada, have moved to this country.

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Others send their children to Canada to study at colleges and universities.

Despite their repression of basic rights and the killing of as many as 30,000-40,000 of their own people in recent weeks, the Iranian regime has been seeing support pour out into the streets of North America. Many of the same people and groups who have marched to denounce Israel and in some cases voiced support for Hamas – an Iranian proxy terrorist group – have turned out on the streets of Montreal, Toronto, Washington, San Francisco and elsewhere.

Everyone should be concerned that violence could be next.

Police in the U.S. are probing possible terrorist links to a shooting in Austin, Texas, where a U.S. citizen who was born in Senegal opened fire at a bar, killing two people and injuring 14 others. The accused shooter was wearing a T-shirt sporting the flag of the Islamic Republic of Iran under a sweatshirt that said “Property of Allah.”

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Could worldwide cyberattacks be next?

Jonathan Panikoff, a former senior U.S. intelligence officer in the Middle East and currently the director of the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative at the Atlantic Council, said in an interview that the main focus of Iran’s leadership is survival and that could mean launching or inspiring attacks around the world.

“You could see a launch of asymmetric attacks not just in the region, but more likely around the world. When we say asymmetric attacks, cyber-attacks are the easier ones” Panikoff said.

“It’s terrorist attacks, which would be going back to Iran’s old playbook from really 30 years ago. South Asia, Latin America, Africa, targeting U.S., Israeli, Jewish targets have always been a part of Iran’s playbook, at least as possible efforts to retaliate.”

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Christian Leuprecht is a professor at the Royal Military College and Queen’s University in Kingston. He’s studied terrorism for years and worries that the strikes in Iran, which he isn’t opposing, could unleash the types of attacks that Panikoff is talking about.

Radicalization could increase risk of attacks

“There’s the threat of IRGC sleeper cells in Europe and North America and IRGC activating those,” he said. “There’s a threat of IRGC sleeper cells in the region to be activated against U.S. targets.

“There’s also a lone actor problem. The radicalization problem of people who just had whatever anti-American sentiment, but now feel that they somehow need to be engaged.”

That could mean an increased potential of an attack in Canada. We also need to be prepared for the possibility of cases like that of Muhammad Shahzeb Khan, who is accused of plotting an attack on Jews in New York City in 2024 after attempting to enter the U.S. from Canada.

Right now, a trial is underway in New York where a Pakistani national, allegedly backed by Iran, is on trial for plotting to kill American political figures, including U.S. President Donald Trump, in the summer of 2024.

The U.S. is on high alert for terror attacks at this point. We should be as well.

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