US intel chief Tulsi Gabbard declares ‘radical Islamist terrorism’ most urgent national security threat

She claimed that ‘actors tied to Iran’s government’ had sought to leverage rising anti-Israel animus by using social media to encourage and finance protests.

By Corey Walker, The Algemeiner

US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard warned in a recent interview that “radical Islamist terrorism” poses the greatest threat to the safety of the American people, potentially shedding light on her priorities as she starts the job of leading the vast American intelligence community.

While speaking with Fox News host Lara Trump, a daughter-in-law of US President Donald Trump, Gabbard dismissed the declaration made in 2021 by then-Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas that white supremacists pose the greatest national security threat to the United States.

Instead, Gabbard asserted that Americans face a greater safety threat from “radical Islamist terrorism.”

“We look at the past four years of open borders, where we had tens of millions of people coming across our borders, many of whom we don’t know who they are or what their intentions are, very specifically the threat of radical Islamist terrorism ​​here within our country is higher than it’s ever been before, not only because of [former US President Joe] Biden’s open borders, but because of his and his administration’s fear of being called Islamophobes,” Gabbard said when asked what the chief threat is to the American people’s safety

Following the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, US officials have raised alarm bells about rising Islamist extremism across the globe.

Gabbard’s predecessor, former US intelligence chief Avril Haines, warned last March that the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza may have a “generational impact on terrorism,” asserting that Islamist terrorist groups al Qaeda and Islamic State (ISIS) have been inspired by Hamas to attack Americans and Israelis.

Haines also cautioned months later that Iran, which backs Hamas and US intelligence agencies have long called the world’s foremost state sponsor of terrorism, has ramped up “influence efforts” on American soil, aiming to “stoke discord and undermine confidence in our democratic institutions.”

She claimed that “actors tied to Iran’s government” had sought to leverage rising anti-Israel animus by using social media to encourage and finance protests.

Last June, meanwhile, former FBI Director Christopher Wray warned that the “threat from foreign terrorists rose to a whole ‘nother level after Oct. 7.”

Wray revealed that following Hamas’s Oct. 7 rampage, his agency saw the emergence of a “rogue’s gallery of foreign terrorist organizations call for attacks against Americans and our allies.”

He cautioned that “individuals or small groups will draw twisted inspiration from the events in the Middle East to carry out attacks here at home.”

On New Year’s Day this year, a US Army veteran who pledged allegiance to ISIS drove a truck into a crowd in New Orleans and killed at least 14 people.

The suspect, Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a 42-year-old Texan who once served in Afghanistan, said the attack was intended to draw attention to “war between the believers and the disbelievers.”

Over the course of her political career, Gabbard has repeatedly called attention to the threat of Islamic extremism.

In 2015, the former US congresswoman repudiated the Obama administration for refusing to state that “Islamic extremists” are embroiled in an armed conflict with the United States.

In 2016, Gabbard cautioned about a “radical political ideology of violent jihad aimed at establishing a totalitarian society governed by laws based on a particular interpretation of Islam.”

In 2017, she introduced the Stop Arming Terrorists Act while in Congress to bar the Department of Defense from “knowingly providing weapons or any other form of support to Al Qaeda, Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, the Islamic State.”