‘No such threat from Iran to our homeland exists’: Karoline Leavitt frantically walks back warning of Iran attack on California

Eyebrows were raised earlier this week when reports emerged of the FBI warning California police departments that they were in danger of being attacked by Iranian drones. This would apparently be in retaliation for Trump’s war against Iran, but seemed a bit of a headscratcher in terms of simple geography.

The FBI warning read:

“We recently acquired unverified information that as of early February 2026, Iran allegedly aspired to conduct a surprise attack using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) from an unidentified vessel off the coast of the United States homeland, specifically against unspecified targets in California, in the event the U.S. conducted strikes against Iran. We have no additional information on the timing, method, target, or perpetrators of this alleged attack.”

This was accompanied by a note saying:

“This message contatins raw ifnormaton subject to revision and is provided for your situational awareness only” (and yes, those typos were in the original)

As you might expect, the FBI warning cops to watch out for killer Iranian drones became a major news story. However, the sheer unlikelihood of this happening also led many to conclude someone was laying the ground for a “false flag” attack on California that the Trump administration could use to pep up Americans’ war fervor.

“A single, unverified tip”

Now Karoline Leavitt has rushed in to frantically say that, actually, there is “no such threat” from Iran and there never was. Taking to X, she scolded ABC for reporting it in the first place, saying:

This post and story should be immediately retracted by ABC News for providing false information to intentionally alarm the American people.

They wrote this based on one email that was sent to local law enforcement in California about a single, unverified tip. The email even… https://t.co/jKey9ahsNk

— Karoline Leavitt (@PressSec) March 12, 2026

“This post and story should be immediately retracted by ABC News for providing false information to intentionally alarm the American people. They wrote this based on one email that was sent to local law enforcement in California about a single, unverified tip. The email even states the tip was based on *unverified* intelligence. Yet ABC News left out this critical fact in their story! WHY?”

Leavitt underlines her point:

“TO BE CLEAR: No such threat from Iran to our homeland exists, and it never did.”

Good, I guess. But if this is the case, why is the FBI sending out emails to law enforcement telling them about it? What are cops supposed to do with this kind of information? If I received an official notice from the FBI, I’d assume there was at least some reason to take it seriously. Why else would they send it to me?

The answer seems to be simple incompetence from top to bottom, with an administration that’s constantly chasing its own tail. Leavitt is, of course, ready to blame journalists for the Trump regime’s buffoonery, but if a newspaper sees an FBI report about an Iranian drone attack on California from a ship in the Pacific, what are they supposed to do? Ignore it?