The threat to the United States posed by Iranian-backed Hizbullah terrorists is growing and U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies have failed to adequately address the problem, according to U.S. intelligence officials.
Hizbullah is continuing to build up its terrorist infrastructure within the United States through infiltration operations across the Mexican border and through other U.S. entry points.
However, little of the activity has been detected by the FBI, which has not been able to identify the networks, other than through some of its semi-covert fundraising operatives who have been caught.
| Isn't the CIA s'posed to know everything happening right up to the U.S. border? What do they know? |
U.S. officials fear that if the U.S. or Israel take military or covert action against Iran's nuclear program preemptively, that Iran will unleash clandestine Hizbullah operatives in the United States to conduct major terrorist attacks.
| Is that why President Obama is so willing to allow Iran to have nuclear weapons? |
The office of the National Counterintelligence Executive, a part of the director of national intelligence, launched a counterintelligence initiative several years ago to try and identify U.S.-based Hizbullah networks but the effort has been largely unsuccessful, U.S. officials said.| Y'know, if we sealed the border, the problem would be smaller... |
Michael Braun, former assistant administrator and chief of operations at the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) told The Washington Times last year that Hizbullah is using the same southern narcotics trafficking routes as Mexican drug networks.
| So then let's seal the border, to cut off both. |
Hizbullah relies on "the same criminal weapons smugglers, document traffickers and transportation experts as the drug cartels," Braun said.| Oddly enough, we've known about that here at Rantburg for years. |
Concerns about Hizbullah in the United States followed a recent Pentagon report on Iran that stated that "we assess with high confidence that over the last three decades Iran has methodically cultivated a network of sponsored terrorist surrogates capable of conducting effective, plausibly deniable attacks against Israel and the United States."
| I'm not going to say a single, blessed word. Not one. |
Through Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Qods Force, Iran has maintained terrorist surrogate capabilities around the world including the Middle East and North Africa, the report said, noting that "recent years have witnessed an increased presence in Latin America, particularly Venezuela."
"If U.S. involvement in conflicts in these regions deepens, contact with the IRGC-QF, directly or through extremist groups it supports, will be more frequent and consequential," the report said. |