President Donald Trump, who seeks to prevent the Islamic Republic of Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, wants to secure a new nuclear agreement with that country. Trump’s motive is honorable. Difficult diplomacy is preferable to military strikes on Iran. But numerous complications stand in the president’s way, and perhaps none of these complications is more significant than the growing threat of Iranian terrorist attacks.

Yes, formalizing a viable Iran nuclear agreement represents a big challenge in and of itself. For one, Iran has engaged in more than two decades of deceptive conduct via its covert research of nuclear warheads. Any deal would thus need to ensure prompt inspection access to any sites suspected of being used to conduct illicit nuclear weapons research. The 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action had woefully inadequate safeguards in this regard.

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Another difficulty arises in the Trump administration’s new insistence that Iran suspend all nuclear enrichment, even at very low purity levels, in return for any deal. This demand conflicts with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s belief that his Islamic Republic should be allowed to engage in some enrichment as a matter of honor. Khamenei might well regard the risks of U.S. military action as less concerning than the loss of prestige and regime confidence that would go with suspending all enrichment activities. Allowing Iran to maintain its nuclear facilities, albeit in a nonoperational status, might allow the regime to save face. But probably not.

Regardless, as talks between U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff and the Iranian foreign minister progress, Iran’s terrorist threat will continue to loom very large just below the political surface.

This threat was underlined by the arrest of two separate Iranian terrorist cells in the United Kingdom earlier this month. The British government said these were “some of the biggest counter-state threat and counterterrorism operations that we have seen in recent years.” Indeed, one of the terrorist cells was assessed to pose such a serious threat that British military special forces were involved in the arrest operations. The cell’s target was the Israeli Embassy, using explosives, firearms, or a combination of both.

The other cell, involving Iranian intelligence operatives operating absent diplomatic cover, has been criminally charged with targeting Iranian opposition journalists in London. The Washington Examiner understands that both cells engaged in significant operational security measures to avoid detection, an indication of training by Iranian state security services or capable proxy groups. But the U.K. incidents are only the tip of the iceberg. In April, Jordan’s GID intelligence service wrapped up a major IRGC terrorist cell. The Washington Examiner further understands that active Iranian terrorist conspiracies are currently being investigated by the FBI and by a number of security services in Western Europe.

Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps possess various compartments responsible for planning attacks abroad. Today, these efforts predominantly focus on opponents of the Iranian regime, Jewish and Israeli interests, and individuals that Tehran deems to be responsible for the January 2020 killing of IRGC general Qassem Soleimani. Iranian terrorist activities have escalated since damaging Israeli attacks on Iran’s radar and air defense networks in October 2024.

Khamenei and the IRGC want to reestablish deterrence against Israel and the U.S. following those Israeli attacks. This Iranian concern is exacerbated by the devastation Israel has imposed on Iran’s primary terrorist proxy group, the Lebanese Hezbollah. Iran fears that its loss of deterrent power will precipitate an Israeli and/or U.S. military attack on its nuclear program, or motivate more hawkish policies by the U.S. and its allies.

Still, the Soleimani revenge consideration looms largest with regard to the U.S.

A joined personal-theological priority for Ayatollah Khamenei, Soleimani’s ghost has seen numerous Iranian assassination plots against officials, including Trump, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former Iran policy tsar Brian Hook, top U.S. military officers, and, as first reported by the Washington Examiner, former national security adviser John Bolton. These threats were deemed so concerning that security details were assigned to these officials even after they left office (Trump retained Secret Service protection between 2020 and 2024 as a former president). Even though the underlying threat assessments were unchanged, Trump later canceled the security details for Bolton, Pompeo, and others.

Some Western analysts seek to underplay Iran’s terrorist threat by observing that a successful attack linked to Iran would entail highly damaging sanctions or military reprisals. These assessments underestimate two other factors. First, the vital importance of the foreign perception of Iranian power in terms of Khamenei’s broader strategy. Second, the enduring tolerance for very great retaliatory risk in Iranian terrorist plotting. On this second point, abundant history shows that once Iran has decided on the priority need to eliminate a target, it will relentlessly pursue that objective.

In 2011, for example, IRGC operatives following Soleimani’s orders sought to blow up the then-Saudi ambassador to the U.S. as he dined at Washington, D.C.’s Cafe Milano restaurant. That restaurant has a glass exterior that would have acted as a shrapnel shredder were a bomb detonated in proximity to it. Unfortunately for the IRGC’s U.S.-based operative, however, he hired a U.S. government informant whom he believed was a Mexican drug cartel operative to carry out the attack. When that informant warned the IRGC operative that attacking Cafe Milano would kill civilians, including U.S. Senators, the operative responded, “They want that guy done, if a hundred go with him, f*** ’em … no big deal.”

Here we see how Iranian terrorists revel in a warped interpretation of the Battle of Karbala in 680 AD. That battle, critically important to Iran’s governing Khomeinist ideology, saw an outnumbered Shia Muslim force earning perceived eternal glory by resolutely fighting a far greater force of perceived evil. Put simply, those who assess Iranian strategy through a Western cost-benefit analysis lens are making a grievous mistake.

But note also the IRGC’s 2011 employment of what it believed was a Mexican drug cartel. This is a favored tactic by Iranian intelligence and security services, the IRGC in particular. By relying on groups with existing access to weaponry and established freedom of movement in target locales, the IRGC can both save money and create a layer of separation to hide its culpability (Russia’s GRU intelligence service has more recently begun employing a similar strategy in its sabotage/assassination plots against the West). There are numerous recent instances of Iran’s employment of organized crime groups for its terrorism. As the Washington Examiner reported in January 2023, the IRGC hired elements of the Russian mafia to assassinate Iranian dissident journalist Masih Alinejad in her New York City home.

Ultimately, we need to recognize that Iran will absolutely continue to pursue terrorist attacks that risk heavy civilian casualties. Tehran currently gambles that any Western retaliation to a successful attack will be worth the perceived strategic success of damaging enemies of its Islamic revolution.

But what will Trump do if Americans or American allies are massacred via Iranian terrorism?

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While Trump’s natural impulse is to avoid foreign military entanglements wherever possible, the president has a far greater tolerance than either Barack Obama or Joe Biden for authorizing limited but highly aggressive CIA and U.S. military operations against terrorists. In a sense, then, even if Iranian diplomats move closer to reaching a new nuclear deal with Trump, Iran’s terrorist antics may end up being Iran’s own worst enemy in pursuit of that deal.

And even if Trump limits U.S. military retaliation following a prospective Iranian attack, it’s hard to see how the president could politically justify agreeing to a nuclear accord in the aftermath of a bloody attack.