The FBI warned police departments in California that retaliatory drone attacks from Iran could be a threat to the West Coast, according to a Wednesday report from ABC News. The warning comes as the president continues to escalate the American-Israeli offensive against Iranian infrastructure and military assets.
“We recently acquired information that as of early February 2026, Iran allegedly aspired to conduct a surprise attack using unmanned aerial vehicles from an unidentified vessel off the coast of the United State Homeland, specifically against unspecified targets in California, in the event that the US conducted strikes against Iran,” the alert obtained by ABC News says. “We have no additional information on the timing, method, target, or perpetrators of this alleged attack.”
A source with knowledge of the memo told the Los Angeles Times that the report was based on intelligence received by the U.S. Coast Guard. Iranian drones and munitions are generally not considered to be capable of reaching the mainland United States, as the coast of California is over 12,000 miles away from Iran, far beyond the maximum estimated range of most drone models operated by Iranian forces.
In an interview responding to the report, California Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, said that the potential for drone attacks had been “aware of that information” for a while and that his office had activated California’s emergency operation centers shortly after the administration had authorized an offensive against Iran.
“Drone issues have always been top of mind,” Newsom said. “We’ve assembled work groups specifically around those concerns.”
President Donald Trump had previously blocked the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and the National Counterterrorism Center from releasing a five-page security bulletin alerting state and local authorities to heightened threats amid the United States and Israel’s war on Iran. The joint statement was spiked after the Department of Homeland Security shared it with the White House, according to a report from the Daily Mail.
“The White House stopped it, and verbalized down to DHS that any unclassified ‘for official use only’ information going forward concerning Iran has to be reviewed by the White House before any dissemination,” a senior DHS source told the Mail.
With U.S. casualties and injuries climbing, concern that the conflict could threaten Americans at home has been growing. In an interview with Time magazine given days after Trump launched the offensive, the president suggested that retaliatory attacks against the mainland United States were a possibility.
“I guess,” Trump said in response to a question about whether Americans should be worried about retaliation in the U.S. “We think about it all the time. We plan for it. But yeah, you know, we expect some things. Like I said, some people will die. When you go to war, some people will die.”
Earlier this month, FBI Director Kash Patel gutted a critical unit within the bureau tasked with foreign counterterrorism and intelligence investigations. The unit, known as CI-12, had tracked retaliatory threats by the Iranian government in Trump’s first term after the assasination of Gen. Qasem Soleimani. The agents were fired from the bureau as retaliation for their roles in the investigation into Trump’s unlawful retention of classified documents following his first presidency.
On Wednesday, while touring a factory near Cincinnati, Ohio, Trump told reporters that the war with Iran had “turned out to be easier than we thought.”
“They’ve got drones all over the place, now we’re knocking out the drone plants,” Trump said.
But even as he displays confidence for the national press, American law enforcement agencies are warning local governments to stay on alert.
