After American and Israeli forces bombed its nuclear facilities, Iran launched retaliatory missile and drone strikes against U.S. military assets across the Gulf — targeting bases in Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates — and has vowed there are more to come. The question isn’t whether Tehran will act again — it’s whether we are prepared to stop an attack, especially in the homeland.
When Charlie Kirk was assassinated in September, I spoke with a former national security official — someone who handled the most serious threats this country faces — about how President Joe Biden’s Justice Department would have responded operationally. That former official’s answer was immediate: Call Steve Jensen and Brian Driscoll, two FBI leaders with decades of domestic terrorism experience and critical incident expertise between them.
The question isn’t whether Tehran will act again — it’s whether we are prepared to stop an attack, especially in the homeland.
But by that point, Driscoll, a former acting FBI director, and Jensen, who was leading the Washington, D.C., field, had already been among the senior FBI agents and national security officials that Kash Patel’s FBI had fired — not for cause or misconduct, but for failing the only test that matters in Trump’s Washington: blind loyalty to Trump. MS NOW reported in August that according to a dozen current and former FBI officials who declined to be named for fear of retaliation, Driscoll and Jensen were dismissed for refusing to fire a subordinate who had been targeted for political reasons.
And if those two firings affected an investigation into a crime the government now alleges was committed by a lone gunman, then imagine how the loss of that domestic terrorism expertise and critical incident expertise could hinder a response to a coordinated attack from a hostile, if wounded, nation-state.
The numbers are damning. After the U.S. dropped bombs on Iran in June, NBC News reported that staff levels in the DOJ National Security Division had dropped as much as two-thirds in some sections, and four of the top officials ousted from the division had nearly 100 years of combined experience between them.
“The senior ranks of the FBI’s and DOJ’s national security teams have been decimated,” one former senior DOJ official told NBC News. “The FBI and Justice Department are completely unprepared to respond to a crisis, including the fallout from the current conflict in the Middle East.”
Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., said it plainly in a Senate floor speech in November: “Firing agents who investigate terrorists, foreign spies, cyber hackers and child predators does not make America safer.”
The cyber threat deserves equal attention — because Iran doesn’t just retaliate with missiles. It retaliates with malware. The FBI and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency have documented Iran-linked cyberattacks on U.S. critical infrastructure, including ransomware operations and destructive intrusions into water systems, hospitals and energy networks. Yet Sen. Warner said during that floor speech that more than a third of CISA had been fired or pushed out, even as ransomware attacks hit state and local governments in at least 44 states.
U.S. Cyber Command has been without a permanent commander since April 2025.
U.S. Cyber Command has been without a permanent commander since April 2025, when Trump fired its leader without explanation. A nominee is pending Senate confirmation. And the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force, established specifically to counter secret campaigns by Iran, China and Russia, was disbanded by Attorney General Pam Bondi on her first day in office.
In the wake of the U.S. and Israeli military striking Iran, the threat of retaliation is not hypothetical. Iran also has a long, documented history of striking American interests — at home and abroad — when it believes the moment is right. Defending against that threat requires continuity, institutional memory and the kind of hard-won expertise that takes years to build. It requires the Steve Jensens and Brian Driscolls of the world. Trump’s purges haven’t just created these vacancies — they have created disarray inside the very agencies charged with keeping us safe. Morale has reportedly cratered. Remaining professionals spend nearly as much energy watching their backs as watching our adversaries. The interagency cooperation that became the gold standard after Sept. 11, 2001 — the hard-won commitment to finally connecting the dots — corrodes when people don’t know who they can trust, who’s been pushed out or who might be next. There is also a cost that rarely makes headlines: what these purges signal to our allies. The intelligence-sharing partnerships the U.S. built with partners in Europe and the Middle East rest on a foundation of trust and professionalism. When those partners watch experienced American officials get fired for political reasons and replaced by loyalists with thin résumés, they may pull back. They may share less. They may hedge. And during a moment when we need every available data point about Iranian intentions and capabilities, any hesitation has a cost. The core lesson of Sept. 11 was devastatingly simple: When we fail to connect the dots, Americans die. Trump’s purges have gotten rid of people and weakened systems responsible for connecting them. If a retaliatory attack from Iran affects the homeland, then the American people shouldn’t have to work hard to figure out exactly who made us more vulnerable.
Anthony Coley
Anthony Coley is a legal analyst for NBC News, MSNBC and CNBC. He was director of the Justice Department’s office of public affairs from February 2021 until January 2023. 
