By Ted Hesson, Jonathan Allen and Rich McKay
WASHINGTON, March 13 (Reuters) – U.S. law enforcement officials are on heightened alert as the Iran war enters its third week, but the limits of their vigilance were on display as seeming lone-wolf attacks unfolded more than 500 miles apart in Virginia and Michigan on Thursday alone.
In Michigan, where a Lebanon-born gunman rammed a pickup truck laden with fireworks and jugs of gasoline into a synagogue, sparking a fire, it appeared to be one of the first known instances of a specific bombing in the Iran war leading to retaliatory violence on American soil since the U.S. and Israel launched airstrikes on Iran on February 28.
Authorities have not suggested a motive for the attack on Temple Israel in the Detroit suburb of West Bloomfield, which ended when the pickup driver fatally shot himself in the head in the midst of a gunfight with a security guard.
But the suspect, identified by U.S. officials as Ayman Ghazali, 41, carried out his attack a week after Israel bombed his family’s town in Lebanon on March 5, killing two of his brothers and a niece and nephew, according to news reports.
Around the same time as the synagogue attack, a man convicted in 2016 on a federal charge of providing material support to the Islamic State fatally shot one person and injured two others, both U.S. Army personnel, at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, which has close ties to the U.S. military. The Virginia attacker, who had been released from prison in 2024, was killed by Reserve Officer Training Corps students in the class who subdued him.
The FBI said on Friday it has no indication the incidents in Virginia and Michigan were connected.
SELF-RADICALIZED ATTACKERS HARDEST TO DETECT
These kinds of lone-wolf outbursts of retaliatory violence are the hardest to spot in advance and intercept, counter-terrorism experts say.
“Someone who is self-radicalized, a lone wolf, is the hardest to track,” said Kenneth Gray, a former FBI counter-terrorism agent who now teaches at the University of New Haven. “Normally there would be opportunities to track weapon transfers, foreign training, or transfers of funds. We apparently have none of that.”
The latest incidents took place with the U.S. engaged in a war that is already deeply unpopular among American voters and was launched after President Donald Trump made drastic cuts to the Department of Homeland Security’s intelligence unit.
Except for a security guard knocked down when the truck crashed through the entrance, everyone at the synagogue, including the children at its preschool, escaped unharmed, although dozens of law enforcement officers were treated for smoke inhalation.
The FBI said Ghazali, who became a U.S. citizen in 2016 and lived in nearby Dearborn Heights, lacked any previous criminal history or registered weapons and had never been the subject of an FBI investigation.
Shawn Brokos, who was an FBI official in Pittsburgh when 11 people were killed in the Tree of Life synagogue shooting in 2018, credited Temple Israel for a “textbook reaction” that protected those inside.
However, the FBI was still looking into why Ghazali apparently failed to draw any scrutiny from security personnel while he sat parked in his truck in the synagogue parking lot for two hours before launching his attack, Special Agent Dominique Evans told reporters on Friday.
The Michigan incident also showed the need for the public and authorities to be on the alert for someone who might be embracing “a grievance narrative,” Brokos said.
“They’re upset about current events,” said Brokos, now the director of community security for the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh. “They’re starting to access weapons. They’re starting to make plans. These are all the things that are helpful for us to know so we can do these checks and share it with law enforcement.”
Dearborn Heights Mayor Mo Baydoun said Ghazali’s attack must be unequivocally condemned, while also noting that Ghazali had been affected by the Iran war, in which more than 2,000 people have been killed, mostly in Iran and Lebanon.
“The tensions we see across the world too often find their way into our own neighborhoods, reminding us how deeply connected our shared safety is,” Baydoun said in a statement.
MULTIPLE SECURITY INCIDENTS, FEWER IN DHS INTELLIGENCE
Since the war began, security scares have affected airports in Kansas City and the Washington, D.C. suburbs; two men were charged with terrorism-related crimes after throwing home-made bombs at an anti-Muslim rally in New York City; and a man who expressed pro-Iran views online killed four people after opening fire at a bar in Austin, Texas.
Trump has sought to defend his war to some lawmakers in Congress and, according to polls, many skeptical voters, including some of his “America First” base.
The Department of Homeland Security communicates significant threats to the American public through alerts under the National Terrorism Advisory System. DHS issued such an alert in June 2025, saying brief hostilities between the U.S. and Israel and Iran had caused a “heightened threat environment” in the U.S.
That alert, which cited the risk of cyber attacks or violence from extremists already in the U.S., expired in September 2025.
There are no current NTAS advisories. And, last week, the White House halted a bulletin from DHS, the FBI and the National Counterterrorism Center warning state and local agencies of a heightened threat to the U.S. because of the Iran war.
Since Trump’s return to the White House last year with vows to slash the federal workforce, the DHS Intelligence and Analysis unit went from about 1,000 employees to some 500-600, three former agency officials told Reuters. DHS did not respond to a request for comment.
Travis Nelson, director of Maryland’s homeland security office, said DHS has been focused on Trump’s mass deportation efforts in its public communications rather than the possible threat posed by the Iran conflict.
“It’s all about immigration enforcement,” Nelson said. “We haven’t seen anything from Homeland Security about the potential risk to the homeland as a result of what’s going on in the Middle East.”
(Reporting by Ted Hesson and David Shepardson in Washington, Rich McKay in Atlanta and Jonathan Allen in New York; Additional reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Writing by Jonathan Allen; Editing by Donna Bryson, Bill Berkrot and Diane Craft)
