The U.S. saw four high-profile acts of violence with suspected ties to jihadist ideology in the past two weeks.
Authorities have traced a March 1 shooting in Texas, an attempted bombing in New York on Saturday, and a Virginia shooting on Thursday on suspects with radical Muslim allegiances, according to multiple reports. Officials also suspect that a man who died attacking a Michigan synagogue with a bomb-filled truck on Thursday had family ties to the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah, though they are waiting on forensics to confirm the identity because his body was disfigured, NBC News reported.
Homegrown radicals could be using the U.S. war in Iran to capture more public attention through violence, a counterterrorism analyst told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
“Whenever the U.S. is engaged in military operating in the Middle East, jihadist groups like [Islamic State] and Al Qaeda, or their supporters, may seize on this as an opportunity to raise their profile by conducting attacks in the West,” said Bill Roggio, a U.S. military veteran and researcher for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “U.S. and Israeli launch strikes on Iran is a moment for these groups and their supporters to capitalize on free publicity.”
Attorneys for the two New York bombing suspects did not respond to the DCNF’s requests for comment. The Texas, Virginia and Michigan suspects all died in their rampages.
The Evidence
Ndiaga Diagne, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Senegal, opened fire outside a bar on March 1 in Austin, Texas, while wearing a “property of Allah” hoodie, according to law enforcement and surveillance footage. He killed two people and wounded 14 more before police fatally shot him.
Diagne was also wearing a shirt with the Iranian flag’s colors, and the bloodshed appeared to be retaliation against U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran that President Donald Trump announced a day prior, police said. The military attacks killed Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on the first day.
On the following weekend, Emir Balat and Ibrahim Kayumi were arrested near Democratic New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani‘s Manhattan mansion for allegedly throwing bombs at anti-Islam protesters. The two admitted to acting in support of the Islamic State in law enforcement interviews, with Balat saying he wanted to kill more people than the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, officials said. No one was harmed by the homemade explosives.
“This isn’t a religion that just stands when people talk about the blessed name of the prophet,” Balat allegedly told police, referring to the Prophet Mohammed. “If I didn’t do it someone else will come and do it.”
One of the suspects’ devices contained triacetone triperoxide, a volatile explosive used in bombings worldwide, New York Police Department Commissioner Jessica Tisch said Monday. The substance is nicknamed the “Mother of Satan,” and law enforcement has linked it to numerous terrorist incidents in the U.S.
The two Pennsylvania teens planned the New York bombing for at least a week, weighing other possible targets such as shopping centers, law enforcement sources ABC News. However, ISIS followers in the U.S. may not necessarily be acting in support of Iran, Roggio told the DCNF.
“IS acolytes and IS itself do not support Iran. In fact they are sworn enemies,” Roggio said. “The timing of these attacks suggests the IS supporters are using this moment to take advantage to spread fear and uncertainty as well as capitalize on a heightened media environment that ensures their actions get maximum coverage.”
“Some of these idiot jihadi wannabes may not even understand the difference between Iran and ISIS,” Roggio told the DCNF.
Suspected extremists took more lives less than a week after New York City’s crisis. Authorities named ISIS ally Mohamed Jalloh as responsible for a shooting targeting an Army ROTC class at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, multiple media outlets reported. Jalloh said “Allahu akbar” just before the gunfire, which killed an instructor and injured two more people, the FBI said. An ROTC cadet reportedly stabbed him to death at the scene.
Jalloh, a former National Guard member, was sentenced in 2017 for material support for terrorism over his stated plans to carry out an ISIS attack and trying to send money to the terrorists, court records show. He was a naturalized U.S. citizen from Sierra Leone, prison records show.
“The defendant suggested to [an undercover FBI source] that Ramadan was a good time to conduct an attack, and he said that he was working on himself to ensure his heart would be strong and not fail him at the moment when it was needed most,” the Department of Justice said in a sentencing memo asking for a 20-year prison sentence. Jalloh instead received 11 years with credit for time served and was released in December 2024.
A man also rammed an explosives-filled truck into a West Bloomfield Township, Michigan, synagogue on Thursday in what the FBI called an attack targeting Jews. Agencies have tentatively identified the culprit as Ayman Mohamad Ghazali, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Lebanon, NBC News reported. The man’s two brothers were reportedly Iran-backed Hezbollah members killed by Israel in the ongoing war.
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