Naturally, I am with Jim on President Biden’s oh-so-careful calibrations, which inevitably make problems worse, including the challenge of Iranian aggression — now another Biden-exacerbated crisis. (See our editorial.)
I just want to highlight how the Biden crises overlap.
For many years, Iran has had an operational alliance with the Marxist totalitarian regime in Venezuela. This gives Iran a toehold in the West and a well-trod route to infiltrate operatives across the southern border. Biden has appeared blithely indifferent to this — which is no surprise when we remember the debacle last fall: Biden agreed to a “prisoner exchange” in connection with the $6 billion ransom that he paid Iran for the release of American hostages. Then it turned out that most of the Iranian prisoners, who had been or were being prosecuted by the Justice Department for clandestine activities on behalf of Tehran, were “U.S. persons” who got to stay in the United States rather than being returned to Iran.
Biden is facilitating illegal immigration from Venezuela (among other South and Central American countries) through a lawless visa scheme. In a post earlier today, I drew on a report by Andrew Arthur (of the Center for Immigration Studies) about the staggering number of illegal immigrants (371,000) who entered the country last month. Arthur relates that, despite the fact that Biden reserves for Venezuela a healthy share of the annual (illegal) parole grants from his CHNV program (Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela), tens of thousands of additional aliens from those countries are showing up illegally every month. Last month, of 61,500 such illegal aliens, 47,000 were from Venezuela. That’s bad . . . but not as bad as the 51,833 from Venezuela in September.
The mind reels. Does any rational person think Iran is not capitalizing on this scheme?
Last week, the House Homeland Security Committee reported that of the 3.2 million illegal aliens “encountered” while entering our country last year, many come from countries hostile to the United States, and 169 are persons whose names appear on the terrorist watch list (18 in September alone).
Mind you, this does not factor in the estimated 1.7 million got-aways estimated to have entered since 2021 — i.e., aliens who sneak in, evading any encounter with U.S. border agents. It is simply impossible to know how many of these may have ties to Iran and other hostile countries. In February 2021, for example, eleven Iranians were caught sneaking in — but we know that only because they were arrested.
Is Biden worried about escalating the already escalated war in the Middle East? Sure. But what Biden officials will never tell you is that, because the president has failed in his most basic duty to secure America’s borders, the administration has no idea how many Iranian operatives may be in the country — how many Iranian jihadist cells could be activated if our military responds forcefully to Sunday’s drone attack in Jordan, by which Iran killed three of our troops and wounded at least 34 others.
I’ll close by republishing testimony from FBI director Chris Wray three months ago, in which he observed that terrorist threats in the wake of Iran-backed Hamas’s October 7 atrocities were surging in a manner eerily reminiscent of the months prior to the 9/11 jihadist attacks that killed nearly 3,000 Americans in 2001. Here’s what Wray said about Iran specifically (my italics):
While historically our Hamas cases have identified individuals located here who are facilitating and financing Hamas’ terrorism overseas, we’re continuing to scrutinize our intelligence to assess how the threat may be evolving. But it’s not just Hamas.
As the world’s largest state-sponsor of terrorism, the Iranians, for instance, have directly, or by hiring criminals, mounted assassination attempts against dissidents and high-ranking current and former U.S. government officials, including right here on American soil. And, along those lines, Hizballah, Iran’s primary strategic partner, has a history of seeding operatives and infrastructure, obtaining money and weapons, and spying in this country going back years.
Given that disturbing history, we’re keeping a close eye on what impact recent events may have on those groups’ intentions here in the United States and how those intentions might evolve. For example, the cyber targeting of American interests and critical infrastructure that we already see—conducted by Iran and non-state actors alike—will likely get worse if the conflict expands, as will the threat of kinetic attacks.