GOP Senators raise concerns about ISIS attacks against Americans after Moscow shooting

Sens. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said Sunday that they were deeply worried about an ISIS terrorist attack targeting Americans after the group killed over 130 people at a Moscow concert hall on Saturday.

Both Senators lampooned President Biden’s foreign policy in the wake of the attack. The ISIS-K group believed to be responsible was the same that killed 14 American service members and over 170 Afghans in a Kabul suicide bombing as the U.S. military left Afghanistan in 2021.

“It’s deeply regrettable that innocent civilians, women and children, were killed in Moscow, but the next attacks can be against an American embassy in Asia or in Europe or against students traveling to Europe on a school trip for spring break,” Cotton warned in a “Fox News Sunday” interview. “Again, this is a very dangerous echo of President Biden’s failed withdrawal from Afghanistan.”

Cotton, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, added that he is “very worried” about the potential for an ISIS attack against Americans, calling the risk a “grave danger.”

Rubio also linked the attack to the withdrawal from Afghanistan, adding that there is a potential threat of future terror on American soil.

“[ISIS-K] reconstituted itself, as we warned would happen when we had this disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan,” Rubio said in an ABC “This Week” interview with Jon Karl. “One of the reasons why we didn’t want to withdraw precipitously is because you gave them an operating space to reorganize themselves and plan externally, and since that time, they’ve attacked inside of Afghanistan.”

“They conducted an attack inside of Iran not too long ago, and now this one in Russia, and they’ll do it here in the homeland,” he said.

Rubio also linked the issue to border security, claiming that cross-border smuggling operations could be a way for terrorists to enter the country.

“Common sense tells you if they run a trafficking network of people that will most certainly use it to move operatives into the United States,” he said. So, I’m not claiming there’s an imminent threat to the U.S., but I am saying that the border situation and the existence of that network is a threat to the United States.” 

“If they could do what they did in Moscow in the United States, they would do it in a heartbeat,” he added. “They want to do it.”