The FBI confirmed reports that the suspect in the Jan. 1 attack in New Orleans had placed an Islamic State flag on the van he used to drive into a crowd before dying during a shootout with police.
Even before the commotion over the Lethal New Year's Day terrorist attack in New Orleansearly indications from the investigation pointed to a scenario that American law enforcement and security agents have long feared: a plot inspired at least by the Islamic State terrorist group.
The FBI on Wednesday confirmed reports that the suspect had placed an ISIS flag on the van he used to plow into a crowd on Bourbon Street in the early hours of Wednesday morning before being killed during a shootout with police.
On Wednesday night, US President Joe Biden said the FBI discovered the suspect had taken other steps “just hours before the attack” to make his allegiance known.
Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a 42-year-old U.S. citizen and former Army reservist, had “posted videos on social media that indicated he was inspired by ISIS,” Biden said, using another name for the terrorist group.
Regardless of whether there are other conspirators or connections, the details of the New Orleans attack itself correspond with tactics that IS propagandists have long advocated.
“The situation is very fluid,” Biden added. “The law enforcement and intelligence community continues to look for connections, partnerships or co-conspirators,” he said.
However, that investigation included the execution of search warrants at several locations in New Orleans and other states, an operation by the FBI and other law enforcement officials at a traffic intersection in Houston and questions about whether there could be any connection to the explosion of a Tesla Cybertruck in front of the Trump Hotel in Las Vegas.
“What we saw fits the common pattern we have seen in the Islamic State for some time,” said Aaron Zelin, a member of the Washington Institute for Near East Policywhich specializes in jihadism. “They've been calling for hit-and-run attacks for years.”
“Every day they make calls to supporters, potential recruits, anyone who will do something in their name,” Zelin told the Voice of America.
One of the first IS-linked attacks in which a vehicle was used as a weapon took place in Nice, France, in 2016. A 31-year-old Tunisian-born Frenchman, divorced and suffering from depression, broke into an ISIS Day celebration. the Bastille and killed more than 80 people.
Months later, a 24-year-old Tunisian man used a truck to plow into a crowd at a Berlin Christmas market, killing 13 people. He also posted a video in which he pledged allegiance to IS before carrying out the attack.
ISIS also claimed responsibility for a truck attack in New York in November 2017 that killed at least eight people, in which police officers said the attacker followed ISIS instructions on vehicle attacks “almost to the verbatim.”
Although the IS terrorist group retreated from the counterterrorism push in places like Syria and Afghanistan, its leaders never gave up the quest to inspire attacks around the world.
“In Afghanistan…ISIS-Khorasan continues to harbor intentions to conduct external operations and maintains English-language press releases that aim to globalize the group's local grievances among Western audiences,” warned Secretary of Homeland Security United States, Alejandro Mayorkas, in written testimony before Congress in October 2023.
Even the most recent Homeland Security threat assessment, issued in September, warned that IS, along with other terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda, “maintain an enduring intent to carry out or inspire attacks on the homeland,” calling the level of threat as “stop.”
The September assessment further warned that IS online media groups were also seeking to capitalize on the conflict between Israel and Hamas in the Middle East “to inspire more violent action.”
FBI Director Christopher Wray has also repeatedly said that the agency's domestic terrorism workload remains high, with around 1,000 ISIS-related investigations each year spanning all 50 US states.
According to data collected by Seamus Hughes, senior researcher and faculty member at the National Center for Counterterrorism Innovation, Technology and Education (NCITE), more than 250 people have been charged with IS-related activities since 2014.
Most of those cases, according to Hughes, have resulted in guilty pleas or convictions; Justice Department prosecutors have only lost one case that went to trial.
Meanwhile, the FBI has been successful in disrupting terrorist plots linked to or inspired by ISIS.
In October, for example, agents arrested a 27-year-old Afghan national in Oklahoma City, accusing him and an underage accomplice of attempting to carry out a mass shooting on Election Day.
So far, ISIS has not claimed the New Orleans terrorist attack as its own, but Aaron Zelin of the Washington Institute said the attack is already generating excitement among ISIS supporters on social media.
Some U.S. counterterrorism officials worry that the enthusiasm works in the terrorist group's favor.
“From their point of view, it is less important that an attack kills a large number of people than it is simply that it attracts a lot of media attention,” Brett Holmgren, acting director of the US National Counterterrorism Center, told an audience in Washington in November.
However, some officials and counterterrorism experts say they are concerned that the attacks could become more lethal.
The NCTC has warned that IS has benefited from an improvement in finances and has even established an external planning unit in Syria, with a focus on carrying out attacks against the United States.
“Throughout last year there was an uptick in the pace of Islamic State plots and attacks,” Zelin told the VOA. “We saw five attack plots in the United States last year, while in 2023 there were none.”
That activity may not be limited to the United States, as some analysts point to deadly IS attacks last year in Kerman, Iran and Moscow.
“This corresponds to a broader trend that we have seen in the United States, but also in other parts of the world, where we have seen more plots and attacks in Europe, Russia, Turkey, Iran and Central Asia,” Zelin said.