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For that reason, it would be far more preferable if the United States could cite an Iranian provocation as justification for the airstrikes before launching them. Clearly, the more outrageous, the more deadly, and the more unprovoked the Iranian action, the better off the United States would be.
Iran’s sponsorship of international terrorism would take on a new and terrifying dimension. As president, Mitt Romney’s strategy will be to end Iran’s pursuit of a nuclear weapon, eliminate the threat of Iranian nuclear terrorism against the United States and our allies.
Our homeland-security professionals must be able to focus on the threats to come, not
simply the threats that came before.
Focus on Domestic Radicalization: Rising alongside cyber-attacks as an emerging threat
to the homeland is the radicalization of U.S. citizens and residents leading to “homegrown” Islamist terrorism. The number of terror plots hatched by domestic Islamist terrorists has spiked in recent years as our terrorist adversaries abroad have been less successful in trying to infiltrate us from outside and focused more on radicalizing and recruiting American citizens and residents to become operatives. The Fort Hood shootings, carried out by a member of our armed forces, and the attempted Times Square bombing, planned by a naturalized U.S. citizen, are only the most well-known of these plots
Those who subscribe to conspiracy theories may create serious risks,including risks of violence, and the existence of such theories raises significant challenges for policy and law.
Consider the Oklahoma City bombing, whose perpetrators shared a complex of conspiratorial beliefs about the federal government. Many who shared their beliefs did not act on them, but a few actors did, with terrifying consequences. James Fearon and others argue that technological change has driven down the costs of delivering attacks with weapons of mass destruction, to the point where even a smallgroup can pose a significant threat.
If so, and if only a tiny fraction of believers act on their beliefs, then as the total population with conspiratorial beliefs grows, it becomesnearly inevitable that action will ensue.
The things I worry about are two...I worry about homegrown terrorism, which is to say the recruitment of American citizens or residents and making them into terrorists because that exploits people already in the country and have knowledge of how the United States operates...I also worry about experiments with chemical weapons and biological weapons...the effects would be catastrophic, so these two things strike me as areas we need to remain vigilant...
(When questioned on who is enemy number one?-)
...I think Iran, they are determined to obtain a nuclear weapon which would transform the situation in the middle east...we’d have to be concerned about the possibility of some of that nuclear technolgy leaking out to a terrorist group, such as Hezbollah, so if you ask me what is top of the list, I would have to say Iran...