The Trump administration has warned of Iranian “sleeper cells” operating in America as the United States braces for Tehran’s response to strikes on three of its nuclear sites over the weekend.

Sleeper cells generally refer to foreign agents who lie low, going about their seemingly normal daily life, until called on to carry out a mission or attack.

NBC News reported that Iran sent a communique to President Trump in the days before the strikes threatening sleeper-cell terrorist attacks inside the U.S. in retaliation.

Former national security and defense officials say the threat should be taken seriously, even if it’s less likely than other forms of Iranian retaliation.

“Look, they operate that way, not just in the United States, but around the world,” former Defense secretary and CIA chief Leon Panetta told CNN earlier this week. “That’s something that Iran is very capable of and has shown that it can do that in other areas.”

Retired Gen. Wesley Clark told MSNBC he believed Iranian agents in the U.S. could “self-activate” in response to American bombings, potentially seeking to murder certain officials or blow up the electric grid.

However, he said there was a “low probability” of such attacks, and that an Iran-linked militia attacking U.S. troops in the Middle East was more likely.

Javed Ali, a former counterterrorism director at the National Security Council during Trump’s first term, said Iran had little to gain........

© The Hill