Even before the shock from the deadly New Year’s Day terror attack in New Orleans could subside, early indications from the investigation pointed to a scenario U.S. law enforcement and security officials have long feared – a plot at least inspired by the Islamic State terror group.
The FBI Wednesday confirmed reports the suspect had planted an IS flag in the pickup truck he used to plow into a crowd on Bourbon Street in the early hours of Wednesday morning before he was killed during a shootout with police.
Late Wednesday, U.S. President Joe Biden said the FBI found the suspect had taken other actions “mere hours before the attack” to make his loyalty known.
Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a 42-year-old U.S. citizen and former Army reservist, had “posted videos on social media indicating that it was inspired by ISIS,” Biden said, using another name for the terror group.
“The situation is very fluid,” Biden added. “The law enforcement and intelligence community are continuing to look for any connections, associations or co-conspirators,” he said.
However, that investigation included the execution of search warrants at various 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 as to whether there could be any connection to an attempt to blow up a Tesla Cybertruck in front of the Trump Hotel in Las Vegas.
Regardless of additional conspirators or connections, details of the New Orleans attack itself correspond with tactics long espoused by IS propagandists.
“What we saw fits in with the common pattern we’ve seen from the Islamic State for a while,” said Aaron Zelin, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, who specializes in jihadism. “They’ve been calling for car ramming attacks for years.”
“Every day they put out pushes for supporters, prospective recruits, anyone to do something on their behalf,” Zelin told VOA.
One of the first IS-linked attacks using a vehicle as a weapon took place in Nice, France, in 2016. A 31-year-old Tunisian-born Frenchman who was divorced and suffered from depression plowed into a Bastille Day celebration, killing more than 80 people.
Months later, a 24-year-old Tunisian man used a truck to drive into crowds at a Christmas market in Berlin, killing 13 people. He, too, posted a video pledging allegiance to IS before carrying out the attack.
IS additionally claimed a November 2017 truck ramming attack in New York that killed at least eight people, in which police officials said the attacker followed IS instructions on vehicle attacks “almost exactly to a T.”
Even as the IS terror group retreated from counterterrorism pressure in places like Syria and Afghanistan, its leaders never abandoned the quest to inspire attacks around the world.
“In Afghanistan … ISIS-Khorasan, continues to harbor intent to conduct external operations and maintains English‑language media releases that aim to globalize the group’s local grievances among Western audiences,” U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas warned in written congressional testimony in October 2023.
Even the most recent Homeland Security threat assessment, issued in September, cautioned that IS, with other terror groups such as al-Qaida, “maintain the enduring intent to conduct or inspire attacks in the Homeland,” rating the threat level as “high.”
The September assessment further warned that IS online media groups also sought to capitalize on the Israel-Hamas conflict in the Middle East “to inspire more violent action.”
FBI Director Christopher Wray has also said repeatedly that the bureau’s domestic terrorism caseload remains high, with about 1,000 IS-related investigations each year spanning all 50 U.S. states.
According to data compiled by Seamus Hughes, a senior researcher faculty member at the National Counterterrorism Innovation, Technology and Education Center, or NCITE, more than 250 individuals 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 had success in disrupting IS-linked or inspired terror plots.
In October, for example, agents arrested a 27-year-old Afghan national in Oklahoma City, charging him and a juvenile co-conspirator with attempting to carry out a mass shooting on Election Day.
IS has so far yet to claim the New Orleans terror attack as its own, but the Washington Institute’s Aaron Zelin said the attack is already generating excitement among IS supporters on social media.
Some U.S. counterterrorism officials worry that excitement will play to the terror group’s advantage.
“From their view, it’s less important that an attack kills large numbers of people than it simply garners a lot of media attention,” Brett Holmgren, the acting director of the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center told a Washington audience in November.
Some counterterrorism officials and experts, however, say they worry the attacks could become deadlier.
The NCTC has warned IS has been benefiting from improved finances and even set up an external planning unit in Syria, with a focus on carrying out attacks against the U.S.
“All of last year that there was an uptick in the tempo of Islamic State plots and attacks,” Zelin told VOA. “We saw five attack plots in the United States last year, whereas in 2023 there were none.”
That activity may not be limited to America, with some analysts pointing to deadly IS attacks last year in Kerman, Iran, and Moscow. [[
“It falls in line to a broader trend that we’ve seen in the U.S., but also in other parts of the world where, you know, we saw more plots and attacks in Europe, Russia, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia,” Zelin said.
