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The emergence of the bulletin reflects how seriously US agencies are treating the prospect of retaliatory action on American soil during a period of sharp escalation with Iran. Reuters said the alert was distributed through the Los Angeles Joint Regional Intelligence Center and appeared to have been issued before the current outbreak of hostilities, meaning US authorities were already considering the possibility of Iranian revenge attacks against the homeland before the war expanded. The same Reuters report said a Department of Homeland Security threat assessment had concluded that Iran and its proxies probably posed a threat of targeted attacks inside the United States, even if a large-scale physical strike was considered unlikely.
That broader context matters because Iranian drone capabilities are not theoretical. For years, Iran has invested heavily in unmanned aerial systems and has supplied drone technology, or versions of it, to allied groups and proxy forces across the region. The systems that have drawn the most attention internationally are one-way attack drones designed to fly into a target and detonate, often at comparatively low cost and in large numbers. Analysts and military officials have long argued that the danger lies not only in the destructive power of a single aircraft, but in the challenge of detecting and stopping multiple low-flying drones approaching at once, particularly when they are aimed at civilian infrastructure rather than military formations.
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