IPT News
December 27, 2011

A series of recent law enforcement actions indicates the depth of Iranian-tied criminal activity in Mexico may be greater than previously known.

In October, a Texas-car salesman was arrested in connection with an Iranian plot to kill Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to Washington. Prosecutors say officials in Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps believed they were dealing with a “large and sophisticated” Mexican drug cartel to carry out the hit. A $100,000 down payment on the hit shows the Iranians were comfortable dealing with the cartel representative, who in fact was a Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) informant.

Earlier this month, prosecutors in Virginia unsealed an indictment charging a Lebanese man, Ayman Joumaa, with smuggling more than 100 tons of Colombian cocaine with the Los Zetas Mexican drug cartel. Hizballah, an Iranian proxy in Lebanon, “derived financial support from the criminal activities of Joumaa’s network,” the U.S. Treasury Department claimed earlier this year.

Hizballah has a long history of violent attacks against U.S. and Israeli targets. In 1983 the Lebanon-based group was accused of bombing the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut that killed 240 soldiers. Hizballah, along with its patron Iran, have been hconsidered responsible for the attacks on the Israeli Embassy in Argentina in 1992 and a Jewish cultural center in Buenos Aires in 1994. Hizballah also has extensive contacts in Latin America and within the United States.

Read More:

http://www.investigativeproject.org/3358/hizballah-fundraising-and-operations-in-the-us