German police arrested a suspected Iranian terrorist, reminding us that though we might not think much about them anymore, Islamist terrorists are out there.
The average Westerner doesn’t spend much time thinking about Islamist terror anymore, and the fact that we don’t live in fear is a victory in the War on Terror. But just because the average person doesn’t think about Islamist terrorists much anymore doesn’t mean that Islamists terrorists aren’t thinking about attacking Western targets anymore.
A 32-year-old man has been taken into police custody in the western German state of North Rhine-Westphalia for allegedly preparing an “Islamist-motivated attack,” police and prosecutors said in a joint statement on Sunday.
The man, identified as an Iranian, was “suspected of having prepared a serious act of violence that endangers the state by procuring cyanide and ricin to commit an Islamist-motivated attack.”
Ricin is a highly toxic biological weapon.
There’s an interesting detail in the Wall Street Journal‘s account of the arrest: “Acting on a tip from U.S. officials on Saturday, German prosecutors secured a search warrant and raided the suspect’s apartment around midnight, deploying Germany’s SEK antiterror unit and moving quickly to thwart a suspected plot that German officials said they thought could be in the advanced planning stages.” Score one for the good guys.
But that’s not to say all is well in U.S. counterterrorism policy.
A few days ago, A. J. Caschetta noted that for the first time since it became required in 2004, the U.S. State Department never got around to issuing its annual report on global terrorist threats during the year 2021. In previous years, the report had been delayed by a few months past the April 30 deadline, but there’s never been an administration that just blew off the legally required duty of putting together a report on the state of terrorism around the world.
Caschetta observed, “What did Antony Blinken do at the end of the year instead of ensuring that the Country Reports on Terrorism was dutifully submitted to the speaker of the House? He released his Spotify playlists — one list to tell the world that his favorite tunes of the year were sung by Taylor Swift, Lizzo, and Bad Bunny, and another list to showcase his favorite musicians from the various countries he visited in 2022.”
Some people in our government are still on the ball when it comes to terrorism, and others are acting like the threat has passed.