To provide for a comprehensive strategy to counter Iran’s growing hostile presence and activity in the Western Hemisphere, and for other purposes. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, SEC. 2. Findings. Congress finds the following: (2) Iran is pursuing cooperation with Latin American countries by signing economic and security agreements in order to create a network of diplomatic and economic...

After a two-year manhunt, the United States Drug Enforcement Agency last week arrested Colombian drug kingpin Javier Antonio Calle Serna, a senior leader of Los Rastrojos, one of the country's most formidable drug-trafficking organizations. After being indicted last summer by the Eastern District of New York, Serna reportedly felt so squeezed by the agency and rival drug dealers that he began negotiating for his surrender. His arrest is by all accounts good news, especially due to Los...

As the United States considers the Islamic jihadi threats confronting it from all sides, it might do well to focus on its southern neighbor, Mexico, which has been targeted by Islamists and jihadists, who, through a number of tactics-from engaging in da'wa, converting Mexicans to Islam, to smuggling and the drug cartel, to simple extortion, kidnappings and enslavement-have been subverting Mexico in order to empower Islam and sabotage the U.S. According to a 2010 report, "Close to home:...

Ahmadinejad visits Venezuela in January 2012, seen here in the company of the Venezuelan president, Hugo Chávez. Details Background Information 1. Since Ahmadinejad was elected president in August 2005, Iran has extended and solidified its relations with several Latin American countries, especially Venezuela and Bolivia, and increased its efforts to obtain a political foothold in the others. According to findings brought before the American Senate Foreign Relations Committee,...

Iran and Middle East-based extremist groups are stepping up their activities in South America, aiming to make friends and score cash, a senior U.S. military official says.

Press stories, as well as a television documentary, over the past two months have detailed the growing cooperation between South American drug traffickers and Middle Eastern terrorists, proving that the United States continues to ignore the mounting terrorist threat in its own “backyard” of Latin America at its own peril. A greater portion of financing for Middle Eastern terrorist groups, including Hezbollah and Al Qaeda, is coming from Latin America, while they are also setting up...

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...

By In the wake of the September 11 attacks, the possibility of al-Qaeda infiltrating Latin America became a priority for U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials. However, the most publicized incidents of radical Islamist activity in Latin America have not been linked to al-Qaeda but instead to the Lebanese Shi’ite Hezbollah, which is ideologically and politically close to Iran. These include the March 1992 bombing of the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires, Argentina and the July...

Over the last several years Hezbollah and its patrons in Iran have greatly expanded their operations in Latin America to the detriment of inter-American security and US strategic interests. Today, Hezbollah is using the Western Hemisphere as a staging ground, fundraising center, and operational base to wage asymmetric warfare against the United States. Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez and other anti-American governments in the region have facilitated this expansion by rolling out the...

American law enforcement agencies have significantly built up networks of Mexican informants that have allowed them to secretly infiltrate some of that country’s most powerful and dangerous criminal organizations, according to security officials on both sides of the border. Typically, the officials said, Mexico is kept in the dark about the United States’ contacts with its most secret informants - including Mexican law enforcement officers, elected officials and cartel...