WASHINGTON (TNND) -- As attacks continue to be carried out across the Middle East, there are growing concerns about the ones that haven't yet happened, here at home in the United States.
"You have people who entered the United States illegally and may have a strong affiliation to Iran or a direct affiliation to Iran, and they might be here for the purpose of acting against us," said Bernard Zapor, in an interview with Sinclair Monday.
Zapor is the former Deputy Assistant Director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.
He said rising fears about sleeper cells - those quietly living and hiding in the United States- are legitimate and should be taken seriously since many in Iran are taught from a young age that they will be rewarded in the afterlife for carrying out certain actions, and the current attacks in Iran and the killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei could be a motivation.
"It's a direct call to action for somebody that has radicalized Islamic beliefs, and they're called to act, and they're using the justification the highest justification for murdering people," he said.
The weekend shooting at a bar in Austin, Texas, that left two dead and more than a dozen injured, is being investigated as "potentially an act of terrorism."
The suspect is 53-year-old Ndiaga Diagne. Fox News shared a photo of him wearing a "Property of Allah" sweatshirt, with reports that his T-shirt underneath contained a photo of the Iranian flag.
Possible threats like this have given Republicans on Capitol Hill another round of ammunition for their arguments that the pause to funding for the Department of Homeland Security should be lifted.
In an interview on Fox News Monday, Sen. Tom Cotton, R, Arkansas, said, "I did speak with (FBI Director) Kash Patel yesterday I can tell you that the FBI is taking every potential threat around the nation very seriously. This is by the way another very compelling reason that we need to fund the Dept of Homeland Security immediately. The Democrats are highly irresponsible to keep Homeland Security unfunded while we're in the middle of a war against the world's worst state sponsor of terrorism," he said. Cotton is the Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman.
It's an argument Democrats say they aren't buying.
"The Republicans are saying that because they launched an illegal, disastrous war in Iran, we should give them permission to continue using ice to murder American citizens to allow them to get the funding to tear gas schools. No. we need to stand up for the American citizens that ICE is murdering, the kids that they are terrorizing. They should stop this illegal war and they should stop ICE from terrorizing our communities. We should demand that they do both things," said Sen. Chris Murphy,D,Connecticut,in an interview Sunday on CBS's "Face the Nation."