California leaders said on Wednesday there was no imminent threat to the state from Iran after the FBI sent a warning to local police about a potential plan to strike the west coast, which was based on “unverified information”.

The FBI’s alert caused significant anxiety and confusion in California after it was made public in an ABC News report. State leaders and police officials have since emphasized there was no credible threat from Iran, and FBI and White House officials have also said there was no cause for concern.

Organizers of the Oscars ceremony on Sunday in Los Angeles said they would nonetheless increase security in the wake of the report, and the LA sheriff’s department said that “out of an abundance of caution”, it was increasing patrols around “prominent locations”.

After the ABC News report widely spread across social media, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said the FBI’s original alert was “about a single, unverified tip”. She wrote on X.com, “TO BE CLEAR: No such threat from Iran to our homeland exists, and it never did.”

An FBI spokesperson also published a screenshot of the FBI’s message sent to its partners in a joint terrorism taskforce, which is a consortium of law enforcement agencies. The alert said: “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 US conducted strikes against Iran.”

The FBI alert said: “We have no additional information on the timing, method, target, or perpetrators of this alleged attack.”

The version of the FBI report ABC initially quoted did not include the claim that the information was “unverified”.

These kinds of threat alerts are regularly shared between law enforcement and are meant to be kept internal, but are not classified and at times become public.

California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, said Wednesday there was no imminent threat, saying drone concerns “have always been top of mind”, and adding: “We’ve been aware of that information … It’s all about a posture of preparedness for worst-case scenarios.”

The LA police department said in a statement that it “continues to monitor global events and any potential related threats that could impact Los Angeles”, but added “there are no known or specific threats to Los Angeles”.

When Donald Trump was asked Wednesday night about the concerns, he told a reporter: “It’s being investigated, but you have a lot of things happening. All we can do is take ’em as they come.”