http://www.geostrategy-direct.com/geostrategy-direct/secure/2011/07_20/2.asp

Hizbullah's N. American network called 'insurance policy' for Iran

WASHINGTON — The Iranian-sponsored Hizbullah has established a network of operatives that could attack the United States.

Congress has been told that Hizbullah was operating a network in North and South America directed by Iran. Former officials and members of Congress agreed that the network could easily target the United States or American interests amid any Western crisis with Teheran.

Mexican federal policemen and explosives experts work at the site of a car bomb attack in Ciudad Juarez July 16, 2010.

"I am getting the sense that we are sitting ducks here," Rep. Kathy Hochul, a New York Democrat, said.

In a July 7 hearing of the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence, witnesses testified that the Hizbullah network was being financed by Iran as well as drug trafficking. They said the Hizbullah threat to the United States was not imminent, but operatives were already infiltrating the southern border with Mexico as well as Canada. In July 2010, the first improvised explosive device exploded in the U.S.-Mexico border town of Ciudad Juarez.

"If our government and responsible partners in Latin America fail to act, I believe there will be an attack on U.S. personnel, installations or interests in the Americas as soon as Hizbullah operatives believe that they are capable of such an operation without implicating their Iranian sponsors in the crime," former Assistant Secretary of State Roger Noriega said. "They have the motivation and they have been steadily increasing their capacity to act."

Hizbullah operatives have been identified and arrested in the United States over the last decade. Several of them were prosecuted on drug and weapons trafficking charges, but none has been accused of planning attacks in the United States.

"Hizbullah can be described as a potential insurance policy of sorts for the Iranian regime," Ilan Berman, vice president of the American Foreign Policy Council, said.

At this point, witnesses said, Hizbullah operatives appeared to focus on drug trafficking and other criminal activities, reported to garner $20 million a year.

But the subcommittee was told that the collapse of the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad or the international indictment of Hizbullah members accused of assassinating former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri could prompt action by the Shi'ite militia.

"You don't infiltrate an area unless you have an intent," Rep. Brian Higgins, a New York Democrat, said.