Farrell: Soleimani’s Death Highlights The Need To Fortify Our Southern Border

From Chris Farrell’s Op-Ed for The Daily Caller:

Iran’s threat to retaliate over the U.S. precision strike to eliminate Quds Force Gen. Qasem Soleimani should increase attention on the vulnerability of our southern border, and the nefarious long-standing alliance between Mexican cartels and terrorist organizations.

The Judicial Watch investigative documentary, “The Sun City Cell,” uncovered a narco-terror truck bomb plot based out of Juárez, Mexico and El Paso, Texas against Chicago landmarks. The investigation exposed the ease of movement by terror operatives across the U.S./Mexican border and their ability to prepare and launch attacks from within the United States.

In 2017, Americans learned of an Obama administration decision to shut down an aggressive and successful DEA program against drug trafficking by the Iranian-backed terrorist group Hezbollah. “Project Cassandra” was thwarted by the Obama White House, which was determined to broker a nuclear deal with Iran at any cost. The Hezbollah-cartel alliance generated more than $1 billion a year from drug and weapons trafficking, money laundering, human smuggling and other criminal acts.

Blind political ambitions for an Obama foreign policy “legacy” shutdown a successful law enforcement operation and delivered $1.7 billion to Iran — the world’s state-sponsored terror leader and drug cartel ally — including $400 million cash in Euros, Swiss francs and other currencies (also known as “ransom”) by jumbo jet landing in Tehran on Jan. 17, 2016.

In another case dating back to 2011, the DEA recorded meetings between a known Los Zetas cartel member and Quds Force operative Manssor Arbabsiar, planning an explosives attack on Saudi Ambassador to the U.S. Adel al-Jubeir at a Washington D.C. restaurant. Other meetings between the Los Zetas and Quds force plotters included bombing the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C. and the Saudi and Israeli embassies in Argentina.

As recently as October 2019, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) published a report warning, “Iran has cultivated relations with leaders in Latin America that share Iran’s distrust of the United States, and it has sought to position IRGC-QF [Quds Force] operatives and Hezbollah members in Latin America to potentially carry out terrorist attacks there.” The “there” may now be here.

Further, Iran has long made use of South America’s “tri-border” region. The CRS report states, “U.S. counterterrorism officials also have stated that the tri-border area of Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay is a ‘nexus’ of arms, narcotics and human trafficking, counterfeiting, and other potential funding sources for terrorist organizations, including Hezbollah.”