Dr. Jonathan Schanzer, executive director at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, joined “Forbes Newsroom” to discuss the threat of ISIS to the U.S. and the global community following the terror attack in New Orleans.
The perpetrator of the deadly New Year’s attack on New Orleans’ Bourbon street, 42-year-old Texas man Shamsud-Din Jabbar, pledged his affiliation with ISIS in online videos, and an ISIS flag was attached to the truck he used to kill 15 people, per the FBI. He is believed to have acted alone, but his actions, Schanzer says, point to the ever-present international threat of ISIS.
“We know that ISIS still exists in pockets in the Middle East and in Africa,” Schanzer said. “We know the same about al Qaeda, and now, in fact, we’ve seen an al Qaeda group take over an entire country – we’re talking about Syria.”
While Schanzer anticipates states in the Middle East as falling under jihadist influence, he sees the threat of ISIS in the West as more likely to manifest from “lone wolves” or “secret cells” than a top-down organizational hierarchy.
“There will be cells operating in the United States or in Europe run by jihadis,” he warned. “I expect we’re going to see more and more of this. It’s hard to track, you know, especially when these operatives are, you know, that they’re carrying out attacks in the form of cells as opposed to more formal structures.”
Schanzer said the threat presents an intelligence problem for agencies tasked with keeping the homeland safe.
“I suspect that right now we’ve got a lot of people at the FBI scrambling to figure out how many more possible cell members there may be.”
Watch the full interview above.
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