A Really Scary Alliance

On Wednesday, the Center for Security Policy posted an article about the alliance between the Mexican drug cartels like Los Zetas and Hezbollah, as well as elements of the Iranian Quds force.

The article explains the roots of the alliance:

The question is, how did this deadly alliance come into existence? For decades, immigrants, legal and illegal, have been arriving in Mexico from Lebanon. This population has been growing steadily, and has a certain level of favorability with Hezbollah. One of the creations of Hezbollah in Mexico is that of well-connected global drug dealers, like Ayman Joumaa. Joumaa, indicted in 2011 is of Lebanese heritage, and has been linked to Hezbollah, and Mexico’s Los Zetas cartel. With the help of the Los Zetas, and companies like The Lebanese Canadian Bank, Ayman Joumaa has laundered between $850 and $900 million.

In addition to forming an alliance with the drug cartels, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard and Quds forces are learning Mexican culture, as well as Spanish, and are starting to blend in with native-born Mexicans. That way, when they illegally cross the border into America, they are simply assumed to be run-on-the-mill Mexican illegals. Los Zetas was the group that was going to be paid to bomb the Israeli Embassy in Washington, and the Saudi and Israeli embassy in Argentina. The alliance with Middle Eastern terrorists will simply expand their reign of terror into the United States. The Mexican government has not been successful in fighting the drug lords–even without their alliance with terror–the drug lords are brutal and have little regard for human life.

The article concludes:

The lure of criminal activity and the drug trade, coupled with the presence of Hezbollah and Iranian Quds forces in neighboring Mexico present the United States with a major threat at its borders. Dr. Matthew Levitt, senior fellow and director of terrorism studies at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, as reported in CNS News.com in 2010 stated that Hezbollah’s ties to Latin American drug smugglers poses a “significant” threat for U.S. national security and “In the event the nuclear confrontation with Iran gets worse rather than better, having a militant organization like Hezbollah on, and even within our border- it certainly does pose a threat”. The obvious question is whether or not the United States is taking the necessary precautions to counter what is likely to become an even larger problem if left undeterred.

This is certainly a strong argument for securing the border before we proceed with immigration reform.

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