Dr. Majid Rafizadeh, is a political scientist, Harvard-educated analyst, and board member of Harvard International Review. He has authored several books on the US foreign policy. He can be reached at dr.rafizadeh@post.harvard.edu
SECRET SERVICE – WE ARE AT WAR – BE PREPARED
April 27, 2026
PLEASE CLICK ON THE LINK TO VIEW THE VIDEOWe Are At War – Time For Secret Service To Act Like It
by Sam Faddis April 27, 2026Post on X directed at President Trump by Ali Larijani, Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, on March 10, 2026That’s just one of an almost endless number of Iranian threats to kill Trump and his family. There is, in fact, a formal fatwa or religious edict, issued last year by Grand Ayatollah Naser Makarem Shirazi, calling on “Muslims of the world” to assassinate the President.
Maybe the Secret Service didn’t get the news. It is otherwise impossible to understand how the President and a long list of other senior American officials were all assembled in one place recently and so recklessly exposed that a lone gunman came perilously close to killing them.
The attack occurred around 8:34 p.m. EDT on April 25, 2026. The suspect, Cole Tomas Allen, charged past a security checkpoint, opened fire with a shotgun, and was ultimately tackled by Secret Service agents and other law enforcement officers. When he was brought down, he was inside the hotel at the top of a staircase leading down to the ballroom where the White House Correspondents’ dinner was in progress. At that point, he was sixty feet inside the main security checkpoint.
Inside the ballroom were President Trump, First Lady Melania Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and:
- White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt
- Secretary of State Marco Rubio
- Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth
- Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent
- Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
- Energy Secretary Christopher Wright
- EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin
- FBI Director Kash Patel
- Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche
- House Speaker Mike Johnson (and his wife)
- White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller (and his wife Katie Miller)
Allen had traveled cross-country by train to carry out the attack. He was a guest at the hotel. He had brought weapons, including a shotgun, handgun, and multiple knives, into the hotel and stored them in his room before the attack. In a manifesto reportedly sent to his family 10 minutes before the assault started, Cole mocked security at the dinner. “I walk in with multiple weapons and not a single person there considers the possibility that I could be a threat,” the suspect said. He also ridiculed the lack of cameras, agents, and metal detectors.
- This is a guy with no intelligence or military background, ostensibly acting alone and largely making it up as he went along, who got inside the event venue with at least one firearm and ultimately was perilously close to entering the room where the President and other senior officials were gathered before he was brought down. Imagine if, instead of a one gunman with no training or other resources, the attack had been carried out by trained operatives sent by the Islamic Republic of Iran.A great many people would likely have died.
The guy running Iran now is Ahmad Vahidi. One of his prior positions was as head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Qods Force. Those are the guys who work with groups like Hezbollah worldwide to carry out terrorist attacks. There is an international arrest warrant out for Vahidi for his role in the 1994 attack on a Jewish Community Center in Argentina. That attack killed 85 people and wounded over 300. If you want to know what the Iranians are capable of, this is a good attack to study.
A suicide bomber drove a white Renault Trafic van packed with explosives into the front of the community center. Inside the van was a 600-pound bomb made of ammonium nitrate fertilizer and fuel oil. The bomb was configured as a shaped charge (or explosively formed penetrator) to focus the blast wave toward the building, maximizing structural damage.
The driver of the van was a member of Hezbollah. He was later honored by that group as a martyr.
- Iranian operatives planned, directed, and ordered the attack before turning over the execution of the plan to Hezbollah. A dedicated Hezbollah cell operated in Argentina for years before the attack. Explosive materials and other components were smuggled into Argentina concealed in everyday consumer items such as shampoo bottles and chocolate boxes. The van was purchased locally. A whole host of front companies and Iranian intelligence officers provided support for the operation.
- This is what a real Iranian terrorist operation looks like. It is prepared methodically over a long period of time. The men involved know their business. They are murderers, and they are very good at that line of work. They don’t show up and rush a checkpoint, hoping to get lucky. They take the whole building down, and the bigger the body count, the better they feel about what they have done.What happened in Argentina has happened many, many other times in many, many other places around the world. We must be prepared for the possibility of such attacks here. We have men and women who know how to defeat such threats. It is transparently obvious, however, that we are not allowing them to do what is necessary to safeguard the President and other senior officials. Instead, we are treating security as some kind of theater, providing the illusion of protection and ignoring the scope of the threat we face.
We are at war. It’s long past time for the Secret Service and our counter-intelligence agencies to act like it.