WASHINGTON (TNND) — FBI director Kash Patel said the U.S. foiled 640 planned terror attacks last year as the country is facing a heightened threat environment at home and abroad with new threats emerging alongside the war in Iran.
The level of attacks appears to be the latest spike in a long-term rise in disruptions. After fluctuating during the 2010s, the number of foiled plots surged in 2020 and climbed since, nearly doubling from 299 that year to 640 in 2025, according to FBI data.
Investigators have disrupted an average of more than 400 plots of domestic terrorism annually since 2021.
The FBI defines a disruption in the data as “the interruption or inhibition of a threat actor from engaging in criminal or national security-related activity,” which can include early-stage plots or interventions.
The pace of disruptions has accelerated in recent years, with double-digit increases in each of the last two years as the country faces an elevated threat level with prolonged turmoil in the Middle East that has spurred fears of new threats at home. It comes as the U.S. is trying to get a handle on rising political violence that has brought record levels of threats targeting public officials.
Patel has said the bureau is investigating some 1,700 domestic terrorism cases, many of which involve nihilistic violent extremism, a term officials use to classify individuals who engage in criminal conduct “in furtherance of political, social, or religious goals that derive primarily from a hatred of society at large and a desire to bring about its collapse by sowing indiscriminate chaos, destruction, and social instability.”
The U.S. is also grappling with its own issues of domestic terrorism and an increased level of threats and attempts to attack its public officials. Threats have mounted in recent years as politics have become more heated, reaching nearly 10,000 last year compared to under 4,000 in 2017.
Patel released the figures for 2025 in a post on X announcing the thwarting of four holiday terror plots in December.
FBI agents arrested four members of the Turtle Island Liberation Front on Dec. 12, which he described as a “far-left, anti-government” group, accused of planning a New Year’s Eve bombing of multiple businesses in Southern California.
An individual was arrested on Dec. 21 in Pennsylvania who Patel said was researching ISIS propaganda to use in an explosives attack campaign. On Dec. 29, an “ISIS sympathizer” was arrested in Texas for allegedly trying to provide bomb-making materials to a foreign terrorist organization.
The FBI also arrested an individual in North Carolina on Dec. 31 who Patel said wanted to be an “ISIS soldier” and carry out a mass casualty attack that night.
The arrests highlight a more challenging threat landscape the U.S. has been operating under for years, now intensified by the war with Iran. Fears of backlash escalated after U.S. and Israeli strikes killed Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, a move that Iranian officials have vowed to avenge and could lead to retaliatory attacks targeting the United States or its interests.
Recent incidents highlight the growing threat. A man rammed a car into a Detroit-area synagogue while a preschool was in session after Israeli strikes killed several of his family members in Lebanon. Israeli officials have claimed the man was a commander for Hezbollah, a militant group in the Middle East that serves as a proxy of Iran.
On the same day, a former Army National Guard member who had already been convicted of attempting to aid ISIS opened fire on a classroom at Old Dominion University in Virginia, killing one person and injuring two others.
Last weekend, two teenagers from Pennsylvania were arrested after allegedly tossing makeshift bombs at a protest outside New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s home in what authorities describe as an ISIS-inspired attack. Both suspects cited ISIS when speaking to investigators, according to court documents.
Federal authorities are also trying to crack down on a group known as 764, an international group that targets children. Federal officials say the organization operates largely in the shadows of the internet where predators pose as peers and manipulate minors into performing violent acts.
Patel has said the FBI has seen a nearly 500% increase in arrests associated with the movement.
“This is a scatter group throughout the world that goes online and targets our youth. And what they literally do is cause and convince young people to be radicalized. They cause them to self-inflict mutilation, and in some cases, they even cause the kids to kill themselves,” Patel told the National News Desk in October.
