Let's ask ourselves this: Did this story make any sense at all when ABC News first published it? It certainly caught everyone's attention yesterday evening, purportedly raising the stakes for the US 'homeland' in the war against Iran. But did anyone exercise any critical thinking about it after its publication?
Or better yet, before its publication?
Just to refresh memories, here is what ABC News reported about Iran's 'aspiration' in a war with the US. Supposedly, Iran plans to accomplish what the Imperial Japanese Navy could not in four years of war with the US in World War II, not even with several aircraft carriers faced off against an American Pacific Fleet that had been mostly destroyed after the attack on Pearl Harbor:
The FBI warned police departments in California in recent days that Iran could retaliate for American attacks by launching drones at the West Coast, according to an alert reviewed by ABC News.
"We recently acquired information that as of early February 2026, Iran allegedly aspired to conduct a surprise attack using unmanned aerial vehicles from an unidentified vessel off the coast of the United State Homeland, specifically against unspecified targets in California, in the event that the US conducted strikes against Iran," according to the alert distributed at the end of February. "We have no additional information on the timing, method, target, or perpetrators of this alleged attack."
The warning came just as the Trump administration launched its ongoing assault against the Islamic Republic. Iran has been retaliating with drone strikes against targets throughout the Mideast.
The information about Iran’s aspirations for a surprise drone attack on the West Coast came before the U.S. and Israel launched strikes against Iran, and a senior law enforcement official said it's believed the 12-day bombardment has severely degraded Iran's capabilities to carry out such an attack.
We'll get back to critical thinking in a moment. It turns out that ABC News partially cooked this story by leaving an important qualifying word out of the material they quoted in the report. The FBI's assistant director for public affairs, Ben Williamson, pointed it out earlier this morning:
On the left is the way ABC (or their source) reported the FBI alert.
— Ben Williamson (@_WilliamsonBen) March 12, 2026
On the right is the actual FBI alert that went to JTFF partners.
You will notice the word left out —“Unverified.” https://t.co/zSBHObisAI pic.twitter.com/XEZPeNKmDA
The report noted that the FBI had "recently acquired unverified information," which changes the context of this alert significantly. The Joint Terrorism Task Force shares a wide range of information with its partners, and given the nature of the mission, likely overshares to some extent. No one wants to discover that they failed to pass along intel that might have saved lives, based on a skeptical assessment of the source. The 9/11 attacks proved that oversharing is far better than undersharing, and that lesson has stuck, thankfully.
The JTTF's partners understand this distinction and handle such information accordingly. They don't go public with it, but still prepare for the scenarios that might apply. That is their job. If the threat information had been verified, the response would be much more robust, including public warnings, military deployments, and advisories on civil defense in case of such attacks.
This got leaked to ABC News for political purposes. The leak was intended to rattle Americans in the first days of the war with Iran, and it worked ... briefly. Karoline Leavitt blasted ABC News for publishing it and demanded a retraction (via Right Scoop):
This post and story should be immediately retracted by ABC News for providing false information to intentionally alarm the American people.
— Karoline Leavitt (@PressSec) March 12, 2026
They wrote this based on one email that was sent to local law enforcement in California about a single, unverified tip. The email even… https://t.co/jKey9ahsNk
The email even states the tip was based on *unverified* intelligence. Yet ABC News left out this critical fact in their story! WHY?
TO BE CLEAR: No such threat from Iran to our homeland exists, and it never did.
Leavitt asks the right question: why? There is another question to be answered along with that, which is who? Williamson allows for the possibility that the ABC News reporters got snookered by their source. While that's possible, it overlooks the obvious fact that Iran doesn't have the resources or the infrastructure to attack the US West Coast, not even with drones, a fact that should be painfully obvious to anyone after a moment of critical thinking.
First off, Iran isn't buying drones from Best Buy or Amazon. The kind of military drones that Iran uses requires significant launch resources and a platform close enough to targets to reach them, even one-way. Theoretically, one could suppose that Iranian sleeper cells may have smuggled in the kind of military drones in use by the IRGC, but it's very unlikely – and such sleeper agents would still need launch platforms in range of their targets, as well as facilities for flight control.
To launch attacks on the West Coast, Iran would need naval assets in drone range that have launch capacities. Needless to say, we have a very good handle on naval vessels in the Pacific Ocean, especially in the eastern Pacific, where our security would be at risk. Iran may have the capability to send submarines in our direction, but Iran operates diesel subs with limited range, and which almost certainly can't launch drones, let alone direct them on target.
In other words, the idea is absurd. The FBI and the JTTF nevertheless still have to account for it, because again, no one wants to be the focus of a post-attack investigation that resulted from a failure of imagination. Publishing unverified and speculative scenarios as real threats is incredibly irresponsible, however, and arguably malicious. Other than as a political attack intended to sap morale, it defies explanation, especially given how the ABC News report left out the nature of the information. It's yet another example of the Protection Racket Media crafting narratives to suit its political purposes.
