Political Battle in Washington: The Controversy Over Iran’s Alleged Threat to California

The Iranian threat was allegedly invented in the White House, but the story has taken an unexpected turn: California has found itself on the brink of panic over "sleeping cells."

Photo: commons.wikimedia.org by brian pink, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

Evening in Santa Monica

The White House Punished the Media for Promoting Its Own Idea

The White House demanded that ABC News remove a report about the threat of an Iranian drone attack on California. The television channel had earlier reported that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had sent a notice to California police shortly before the start of the US and Israeli military operation in Iran. According to the report, Tehran was allegedly planning a drone attack on targets in the state if Washington struck Iran.

Officially, the authorities explained their demand to the media by "considerations of national security.” However, US President Donald Trump himself had promoted the version that he ordered a "preventive strike” on Iran because otherwise Iran would have struck the United States. In effect, the White House ended up refuting its own idea.

Two Sides of the Story About the Iranian Threat

Trump's initial message was clear: the public needed to be told that the United States was not the aggressor but was protecting its cities. If Iranian drones were indeed capable of reaching the United States — something presented almost as a fact — then an attack on Iran would appear to voters as a form of salvation.

However, another opinion emerged on the other side of this "salvation.” If Washington were to acknowledge the accuracy of the ABC News report, it would mean that Iranian drones could cross the ocean and that US air defense systems could be "breached.” There is also another possibility — that "sleeping Iranian cells” could become active and carry out an operation known as "Web.”

The second scenario is now being actively promoted in social media accounts controlled by Republicans. The idea being circulated is that American intelligence is monitoring encrypted Iranian communications, and that law enforcement agencies have been warned about the possible activity of "sleeping cells” that were "deployed in advance, remained patient, and were waiting for exactly such a moment.”

Wars Trigger the Self-Destruction of the United States

Yet these narratives do not necessarily point to a real Iranian threat. Rather, they represent pressure from Republicans on Congress, which must stop "playing politics” with the funding of the Department of Homeland Security and allocate money to it. This department is currently conducting a purge among immigrants in "blue” states, identifying illegal migrants and deporting them.

ABC News belongs to the "liberal mainstream,” which does not approve of this policy. The situation provided an opportunity to show that the Trump administration failed to consider the consequences of launching aggression against Iran — namely that California could suffer. The "intra-species” struggle in the United States has reached such proportions that officials are not above inventing an Iranian threat (against the background of the Epstein files) or inflating it (against the background of events in Minneapolis) in order to defeat each other in the upcoming congressional elections.

As a result, unforeseen consequences are emerging. California is the largest economic center, and threats of strikes against its infrastructure — ports and oil refineries — could trigger a market collapse caused by mass panic and hysteria. As the saying goes, the United States has no greater enemy than itself. Most importantly, in this process of the American state's self-destruction, innocent people die in other parts of the world, as is happening now in Iran.