When a senior Iranian Revolutionary Guard adviser recently said that Iran had not yet entered “asymmetric warfare,” which he defined as war on Wall Street and in Manhattan “at any place and any time,” he was not merely threatening a skyline. In remarks carried by Iranian state media , he was identifying the kind of pressure Tehran believes it can bring to bear against the United States if the conflict deepens: disruption aimed at American finance and the infrastructure that sustains it.
The natural temptation is to hear that warning as a New York problem. It is not.
Charlotte sits squarely inside the financial target set. The City of Charlotte is the country’s second-largest financial center, with more than 104,000 financial-services workers across the region. Bank of America is headquartered here and reported $3.4 trillion in assets at the end of 2025, serving roughly 69 million consumer and small-business clients in its annual report . Truist, also headquartered in Charlotte, reported $547.5 billion in assets and 15 million clients in its 2025 filing .
The relevant danger is not the fantasy that a strike on an Uptown office tower would somehow collapse American banking. These institutions have redundancy and hardened continuity plans. The more plausible danger is an incident that forces them into containment, disrupts normal transactions, or makes it difficult to establish whether critical data can be trusted. In finance, uncertainty can become an instrument of coercion long before a system actually fails.
Iran has already shown the kind of capability that should concern Charlotte.
In April, a joint advisory from the FBI, CISA, NSA, the Energy Department, EPA, and US Cyber Command warned that Iran-affiliated actors had targeted operational technology used across American energy, water, and government systems. The agencies said the activity had produced operational disruption and financial loss, and they assessed that Iranian targeting had escalated in response to hostilities involving Iran, the United States, and Israel.
This was not routine data theft. Investigators found Iranian actors manipulating information visible to operators of physical systems. That is how a cyber intrusion becomes a real-world disruption.
Duke Energy gives Charlotte a second layer of strategic importance. The company is headquartered here, serves 8.7 million electric customers across six states, and owns 55,700 megawatts of generating capacity, according to Duke’s current investor overview .
The military connection is not speculative. An Army planning document states that Duke Energy provides electrical power to Fort Bragg. Duke Energy Progress has also committed to provide 4.8 million megawatt-hours of carbon-pollution-free power to five major military installations in the Carolinas through 2041, as the Army announced in 2024 .
Fort Bragg is home to Army Forces Command, US Army Special Operations Command, and the XVIII Airborne Corps. It is one of the country’s foremost power-projection installations. When the Army convened its Defense Critical Infrastructure Summit this year, Duke Energy sat alongside CISA, the Energy Department, the Justice Department, and military leaders because the civilian infrastructure surrounding Fort Bragg is inseparable from Army readiness.
No responsible analysis should claim that one power plant in Charlotte directly feeds Fort Bragg. That is not the issue. The relevant fact is that Fort Bragg’s normal electricity supply depends on Duke’s wider system, making the company’s resilience a matter of national security rather than merely regional reliability.
Iran’s threat is not confined to cyberspace. The FBI’s current Iran threat assessment describes a regime that has pursued terrorism, espionage, and cyber operations against American interests. Earlier this year, a federal jury convicted an Iranian intelligence operative who had been sent to the United States to recruit people for political assassinations, according to the Justice Department .
That history matters because it shows the physical threat need not resemble a conventional military attack. Iran has demonstrated a willingness to use covert action inside the United States when it believes doing so advances its interests.
Charlotte’s leaders should therefore treat this as a focused national security problem. The city’s financial institutions, Duke Energy, state officials, and federal agencies should conduct an Iran-specific threat review that examines how banking operations would continue through a serious disruption, how Duke would coordinate with defense partners during a regional emergency, and how leaders would get verified information to the public before rumor fills the vacuum.
There is no public warning of a specific plot against Charlotte. There does not need to be one before leaders act.
When Tehran says “Wall Street,” it is speaking about the American financial system. Charlotte has too much of that system, and too much energy responsibility tied to it, to assume the warning belongs only to New York.
Our stories may be republished online or in print for free. We ask that you edit only for style or to shorten, credit Carolina Journal and the author, and link to the original.
Carolina Journal stories may be republished for free, in print or online, under the terms of our republishing policy . Credit Carolina Journal and the author, link back to the original article, and edit only for style or length. Images credited to outside sources may not be republished. Questions: [email protected] .
by Colton Overcash, Carolina Journal November 10, 2026
Colton Overcash is the founder of Vertex Strategies, a Charlotte-based government relations and strategic advisory firm with a presence in Washington, DC. He previously held two presidential appointments at the US Department of Homeland Security, where he advised senior leadership on immigration and border security issues during the Trump administration. He's also a former staffer for US Sen. Thom Tillis and US Rep. Virginia Foxx.