Meanwhile, Jeff Sessions is quietly tackling Hezbollah and MS-13 in our backyard

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For far too long, our foreign policy, counterterrorism apparatus, and intelligence assets have been almost exclusively directed at threats in the Middle East. But what about the drug cartels, transnational gangs, and Hezbollah in the Western Hemisphere operating in our own backyard and coming over the border? After all, the purpose of foreign policy is our national security.

The Obama administration spent years covering up the threat Hezbollah and the drug cartels pose to our people right here inside our own borders. Now the Justice Department, led by Jeff Sessions, is making transnational gangs and the transnational crime that funds terrorism on our own shores a priority.

While we were refereeing endless Islamic civil wars halfway around the world, the Obama administration turned a blind eye to Hezbollah’s billion-dollar crime industry in our own hemisphere that is funding terror, often from businesses of Shiite immigrants to the U.S. In a major expose in Politico earlier this year, it was revealed that Obama shut down Operation Cassandra, the join counterterror and crime task force designed to disrupt Hezbollah in Latin America – all to appease Iran and pave the road for the nuclear deal.

“In its determination to secure a nuclear deal with Iran, the Obama administration derailed an ambitious law enforcement campaign targeting drug trafficking by the Iranian-backed terrorist group Hezbollah, even as it was funneling cocaine into the United States,” wrote Josh Meyer in one of Politico’s greatest pieces of journalism ever. Since then, a record number of people have died from cocaine, even as deaths from other drugs have plateaued.

Ironically, it was none other than the infamous Bruce Ohr who was put in charge of the operation that was undermined before it could do any work. That in itself should indicate how important Hezbollah’s Latin America operation is to Iran’s geopolitical goals: much more important to our national security and border security than, say, the Yemeni civil war.

Well, what a difference a new attorney general makes. Earlier this week, Jeff Sessions designated MS-13, Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion (CJNG), Sinaloa Cartel, Clan del Golfo, and Lebanese Hezbollah as transnational crime organizations (TCOs). He organized a Transnational Organized Crime Task Force designed to coordinate activities between drug agents, law enforcement, counterterrorism, and intelligence assets to disrupt the full spectrum of their activities in our hemisphere. Terrorism is increasingly funded through transnational crime, most prominently the drug trade, and all of these organizations pose a threat either on our own soil or to our border through the flow of Middle Eastern and Latin American migrants controlled by gangs and drug cartels – with Hezbollah lurking in the background.

Former DEA Special Operations Division head Derek Maltz told me he is heartened by the move and hopes it will finally rectify the mistakes of the past. --->

Read the rest from Daniel Horowitz HERE.

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