Friday’s terror attacks in Paris killed at least 129 people and left the world feeling shaken and vulnerable.

Already nearly forgotten is the terror attack in Beirut the day before the Paris attacks. Twin suicide bomb blasts in the Lebanese capital killed 43 people and wounded 239.

Who will radical Islam target next?

Where will be the next surprise attack? New York? London? Los Angeles?

How about Tehran?

Few Americans would consider the Iranian capital a target of Islamic State aggression. But Iran, largely a Shiite Muslim country, has led the opposition to the Sunni-dominated Islamic State since its formation in the spring of 2013.

Iran is right next door to the ISIS threat. Iran is allied with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his brutal but secular dictatorship. It’s the alliance with Assad that makes Iran an enemy of ISIS.

Iran’s minister of intelligence, Mahmoud Alavi, takes the ISIS threat seriously.

At a security conference Sunday in Tehran, Alavi said one of the most dangerous threats to Iran comes from the same terrorist group that attacked Paris and Beirut. He said Iran has taken the necessary precautions but added, “The recent bombings are a serious warning to us that needs the consideration of specialists.”

Likewise, the commander of Iran’s ground forces cautioned Tuesday that ISIS forces might be massing on Iran’s western border in a neighboring Iraqi province. But a terror attack from inside Iran is as likely as a military assault from outside.

Wherever ISIS strikes next, analysts say the jihadists are likely to bide their time and wait awhile. They site a pattern that has emerged over the past decade of high-profile terrorist strikes that kill dozens or hundreds, followed by a year or two without incident. This was true for attacks in London in 2005, Mumbai in 2008 and then Paris last week.

ISIS stages highly visible and bloody terror attacks with the intent of raising money and recruiting new fighters. Its only objective in Paris and Beirut was carnage.

ISIS leaders “are worried about their recruitment profile and their donation profile, and they’re trying to combat the perception that they’re stalemated,” says Stephen Biddle, an adviser to Gens. David Petraeus and Stanley McChrystal during the Iraq War. “What they want is an occasional spectacular [attack]. They don’t want steady attrition that would motivate someone to send 200,000 troops.”

Police in Washington, New York and elsewhere have stepped up security — they call it a “heightened security posture” — in and around government buildings, landmarks and transportation hubs after an offshoot of ISIS reportedly released a video this week saying it will carry out a Paris-style attack on the nation’s capital.

Fortunate for Americans is our geographic distance from the Syrian and Iraqi territories controlled by the Islamic State. The distance protects us. So does our continued vigilance since the al-Qaida attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

Terrorist groups like ISIS are dangerous because they are unpredictable. But we should try to predict their next move, nonetheless.

Reality and perception often are not the same thing — this is especially so in the Middle East, and nowhere more so than Iran, where the supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei recently modified his definition of “Death to America” as directed at U.S. policies, but not its people.

The reality — that Iran could be the next target of a sweeping ISIS attack — might be beyond most Americans’ perception.

It shouldn’t be.