Singapore must stay vigilant for spillover security risks from Iran war

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Conflicts in the Middle East have historically influenced terrorism dynamics in South-east Asia. As the war between Iran and US-Israel forces rages on past its first month, its effects are rippling out globally, most immediately and obviously in the form of oil price shocks and market upheavals. But the war’s latent effects on security in South-east Asia, Singapore included, bear monitoring too.

To understand why, we need to consider the history of how spillovers from Middle Eastern conflicts have reached our shores and also how the current fighting involving Iran has its own unique threat dynamics.

South-east Asia experienced two major escalations of terrorism in recent history, the Al-Qaeda-linked attacks in the early 2000s, and ones associated with the Islamic State (ISIS) networks after 2014. Both were triggered by major foreign conflicts with the involvement of South-east Asian foreign fighters.

In the case of ISIS, almost 1,000 people from South-east Asia answered its call to establish a caliphate in the Middle East.

The current conflict is different in that a state actor – Iran – is involved. And it is fighting an existential war of survival against the United States and Israel.

Tehran can be expected to strike hard using all the instruments of state at its disposal. One such instrument is the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

Unlike Al-Qaeda and ISIS, the IRGC is not a terrorist group but a state-backed, well-funded military force with wide-ranging capabilities spanning conventional, proxy, cyber and diplomatic domains.

In this conflict, Iran fights not only for survival but also to punish the US for launching the offensive. It also seeks to undermine the US strategically.

Towards these ends, Tehran has not just exploited its control over the Strait of Hormuz but also employed coercive diplomacy to incrementally impose costs on third-party states for aligning with its enemies.

What this means in practice is that Iran is aiming its missile and drone strikes at not just US military assets in the Middle East but also civilian infrastructure in Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Jordan. Data centres, banking and aviation systems as well as desalination plants have all been hit.

Iranian coercive diplomacy has implications for Singapore, widely perceived to be among the friendliest countries to both the US and Israel in South-east Asia.

It is important to emphasise that Singapore is neither a treaty ally of the US nor Israel. Singapore has also contributed over $25 million in humanitarian aid to Gaza since October 2023. Nonetheless, perceptions often outweigh formal agreements.

The risk is that pro-Iranian militia groups in South-east Asia could launch attacks against US and Israeli interests in Singapore, drawing it into a proxy conflict.

In the Middle East, the IRGC has relied on proxies such as Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis to advance Iranian foreign policy objectives.

In predominantly Sunni South-east Asia, Shi'ite Iran is not without support. It comes via Iranian backing for the Palestinian cause and Hamas, which has a network in the region, in particular Malaysia.

Malaysia has maintained formal diplomatic relations with Hamas and has hosted high-ranking leaders including Khaled Meshaal and Ismail Haniyeh. The 2018 killing of Hamas-affiliated scientist, Fadi al-Batsh, in Kuala Lumpur further illustrates the Iranian presence in the region.

Hamas commanders have also admitted that its fighters trained in Malaysia to operate motorised gliders used in the Oct 7, 2023 terrorist attacks on Israel.

Malaysia was also where 15 people with alleged links to Hamas and past involvement in terrorist attacks were resettled, following their release by Israel as part of its 2025 ceasefire deal with Hamas. It is not certain if the 15 have renounced violent ideologies.

It is also worrying that others among the thousands of prisoners freed under the agreement could have subsequently slipped into South-east Asia.

History suggests that the IRGC does not rely on proxies and sympathisers alone in our region. In 2012, Thai authorities disrupted a bomb plot targeting the Israeli embassy in Bangkok. The foiled attack was traced to a wider international bombing campaign by the Quds Force, a covert arm of the IRGC, then led by Brigadier-General Qasem Soleimani.

Taken together, these activities suggest that it would be a mistake to assume geographic limits to Iran’s coercive diplomacy. Singapore is within its potential extended reach.

Online self-radicalisation

Beyond the spectre of Iran-backed militia groups, Singapore faces the dangers of online self-radicalisation, and this risk will likely increase with the war in Iran.

As an open, multiracial and multireligious society, Singapore is exposed to a diversity of views arising from conflicts in the Middle East. It is therefore unsurprising that it has experienced elevated levels of radicalisation since the 2023 Israel-Gaza war.

The vigilance of Singapore’s Internal Security Department (ISD) has resulted in the effective neutralisation of nascent threats, with six Detention Orders (DOs) and seven Restriction Orders (ROs) issued after October 2023.

Of this group, six were found to have supported and/or made preparations to engage in armed violence in support of Gaza/Iran, three were inspired by ISIS, three were radicalised by far-right narratives, and one was motivated by a mix of extreme ideologies. All of them were self-radicalised online.

A common characteristic of online self-radicalisation is ideological incoherence. While groups such as Jemaah Islamiyah and ISIS maintain coherent ideological frameworks reflecting their organisational allegiances, individuals radicalised online tend to be less “purist” in their beliefs and allegiances.

Case in point: the Akram father-son duo who killed 15 people at a Jewish festival at Bondi Beach in Australia on Dec 14, 2025. Their choice of targets points to grievances against Israel’s actions in Gaza. However, the Australian police force also found an ISIS flag in their possession.

The ease with which self-radicalised individuals pick and blend a range of causes to fight for suggests that adding Iran to the mix should not be too ideologically difficult.

Reciprocal radicalisation

The Bondi Beach shooting is also notable for offering another cautionary lesson – the risks of reciprocal radicalisation. The incident triggered a surge in Islamophobic incidents in Australia. Mosques and Islamic centres were vandalised. In one case, slurs and a Nazi swastika were spray-painted on a Brisbane mosque.

Such incidents are a problem because they act as a “permission to hate”, lowering social inhibitions against expressing or acting upon extremist sentiments. This dynamic is particularly concerning because it operates as a self-reinforcing cycle.

Acts of violence, inflammatory rhetoric or even perceived threats associated with one ideological community can generate reactive mobilisation from opposing groups. Singapore has reason for concern because it is not immune to far-right extremist (FRE) ideologies. Youth exposed to the 2019 Christchurch Massacre and the “Great Replacement Theory” may develop extreme Islamophobic sentiments.

ISD has interdicted several cases of FRE radicalisation, indicating that such ideologies have already found resonance locally, albeit at a nascent stage. In a multiracial and multireligious society such as Singapore, reciprocal radicalisation undermines the social fabric upon which its stability depends. Even isolated incidents of hate can disproportionately erode trust between communities and create opportunities for further polarisation.

What’s to be done?

Singapore is not merely a peripheral observer to the unfolding Iran conflict, but also a potential target within Iran’s broader coercive diplomacy. Unlike previous waves of terrorism driven by non-state groups such as Al-Qaeda and ISIS, the current threat environment is characterised by both state-backed proxies and ideologically incoherent decentralised actors.

This requires a calibrated response. Strategically, Singapore must carefully manage its perceived alignment within an increasingly polarised international system. Operationally, we must remain vigilant against both proxy-linked activities and opportunistic attacks against symbolic targets.

At the community level, the challenge lies in preventing the convergence of extremist narratives, both Islamist and FRE, that thrive on social polarisation.

In an environment shaped by social media, it is neither feasible nor sufficient to rely solely on content restriction.

Instead, Singaporeans must develop the psychological and social resilience to resist the hate-driven “us-versus-them” narratives. In this context, social cohesion is not an abstract ideal, but a functional countermeasure.

Dense networks of trust across racial and religious lines reduce the credibility of “us-versus-them” narratives, disrupt processes of ideological isolation, and limit the spread of reciprocal radicalisation between Islamist and far-right milieus.

This effort requires moving beyond passive notions of harmony towards active social resilience involving regular intercommunal engagement, early peer-level intervention when individuals exhibit signs of radicalisation, and the reinforcement of shared civic identity across digital and physical spaces. Such measures do not eliminate exposure to extremist content, which is inevitable, but they shape how such content is interpreted, resisted or rejected.

Crucially, public education while important is not sufficient. True resilience requires everyday practice and seemingly mundane individual acts such as maintaining friendly neighbourly relations and reaching out to a friend in need.

These interactions reinforce trust and nullify simplistic “us-versus-them” narratives which radicalisation often depends on. Individuals embedded in multiple, overlapping social networks can help inoculate against extremist interpretations of global events.

In an era when conflicts are fought not only on battlefields but also across societies and perceptions, Singapore’s resilience will depend not simply on its ability to prevent attacks, but also on its capacity to withstand sustained psychological, social and coercive pressures without fragmenting internally. Social cohesion, in this sense, is not merely a moral imperative, but a strategic necessity.

Correction note: This article has been updated with latest verified figures related to detention and restriction orders.