NEW YORK — New York City is bracing for the increased risk of a terrorist attack after the killing of Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani by U.S. forces in Iraq, Mayor Bill de Blasio said Friday.
“No one has to be reminded that New York City is the number one terror target in the United States,” de Blasio said at a press conference at City Hall that he called in response to the killing.
“We have to recognize that this creates a whole series of dangerous possibilities for our city.”The NYPD will deploy additional, heavily armed officers at prominent sites around the city, officials said.
Iran has vowed “severe revenge” against the U.S. for killing the powerful commander in an airstrike at the Baghdad airport.
“We are at this point in a de facto state of war between the United States and Iran. None of us knows how this will play out,” de Blasio said.
The mayor charged that President Donald Trump had failed to consider the risk to U.S. cities in ordering the strike, which he said should have been approved by Congress.
“We’ve heard nothing from Washington to suggest there’s a cognizance of the ramifications of what’s happened here, and what it could mean for people right here,” he said.
There is no specific, credible threat against the city, and officials said they expected any effort to target New York locations could take weeks or months to plan, with more immediate retaliation more likely overseas.
“There will not be a moment where we let down our guard,” de Blasio said. “What we have to assume, based on previous knowledge, is that the Iranians would have an interest in prominent targets — well-known American locations — so we’ll obviously keep special watch over those.
”The NYPD was notified of the strike shortly after it happened by the Joint Terrorism Task Force, said John Miller, the deputy commissioner of intelligence and counterterrorism.
The police department has personnel on the ground in Qatar, Israel, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates and received briefings from those units overnight, Miller said.
While the city has thwarted numerous terror plots in the nearly two decades since the Sept. 11 attacks, de Blasio said a conflict with a powerful state actor was different than anything confronted before.
“We are now potentially facing a threat that’s different and greater than anything we have faced previously,” he said.
Article originally published on POLITICO Magazine