TEL AVIV – Intelligence indicates there will most likely be more attempted terror attacks in the West in the coming weeks and that IS is focusing its current recruitment efforts on women, a knowledgeable Arab intelligence source told Breitbart Jerusalem.
He said that based on dozens of interrogations of jihadists in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, and North Africa, “It remains beyond doubt that the Islamic State and also Al-Qaeda, will try to carry out attacks during Ramadan in the United States and Europe, especially in the French cities where the European football championship is taking place.”
Dozens of phone calls between Syria and France have been intercepted over the past few weeks, leading to dozens of arrests in France and Belgium, the source said.
However, he says, there may have been other messages that fell through the cracks, all the more so since IS has concentrated its efforts on recruiting “lone wolves” on social media.
“The value of lone wolves for IS is much greater, because often they are under the radar of Western intelligence agencies. And even if they’re not, it’s much less likely that any measures will be taken against them,” he said.
Estimates of hundreds of terrorists-in-waiting on American soil are exaggerated, he added, “but we may certainly come to a point where there’ll be hundreds of lone wolves on American soil.”
This might happen, he said, if an American drone attack led to many casualties, or if IS made a surge in recruitment to counter its retreat in Iraq, Syria, and Libya. “We believe that there are dozens of sympathizers who wanted to sign up but changed their mind at the last minute, based on the interrogations and discoveries that were made around the world.”
It also emerged that IS have focused their recruitment efforts on women, he added, “because they assume that women are less subjected to surveillance by intelligence agencies.”