Porous US border with Mexico is an immediate national security threat that could explode at a moment’s notice, experts testify.
U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials must assume that hundreds of Iranian-funded and -directed terrorist operatives with Hamas, Hezbollah, and similar groups are in the United States and can carry out lethal attacks across this country as soon as Iran gives them the green light, according to witnesses who testified at an Oct. 25 House Committee on Homeland Security hearing.
The committee’s chairman, Rep. Mark Green (R-Tenn.), asked former Ambassador Nathan Sales, “What guarantees do we have” that Hamas and other Iranian-backed terrorists aren’t among the more than 1.7 million illegal immigrant “gotaways” that have crossed the southern U.S. border since 2021.
“I don’t think we have any guarantees, Mr. Chairman. I think we have to assume the worst,” Mr. Sales replied. “We know that Iranian-linked terrorists have been found in the United States.
He pointed out that, prior to the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack from Gaza on Israel, “128 Hezbollah operatives have been arrested here over the years by the FBI.” Hezbollah, like Hamas, is funded, equipped, and directed by Iran’s radical Islamic regime.
“Within that population of however many millions or hundreds of thousands of known gotaways, we should not assume that they are all perfectly clean,” Mr. Sales said.
Mr. Sales was ambassador-at-large and coordinator for counterterrorism, as well as acting undersecretary of state for civilian security, democracy, and human rights under President Donald Trump. He also served in the Trump administration as special presidential envoy to the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS.
Mr. Sales told the House panel in his prepared testimony (PDF below) that Iran “is actively plotting to assassinate a number of former senior U.S. officials here on American soil.”
“Last year, the Justice Department announced charges against an [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] IRGC member believed to be the ringleader of a plot to murder John Bolton, the former national security adviser,” he said. “The would-be assassin reportedly also was targeting former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. These former officials and others like them now live under constant, 24-hour government protection because of the Iranian threat to their lives.”
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Nathan Sales Prepared Testimony for The Committee on Homeland Security Hearing: An Examination of the Iranian Regime’s Threats to Homeland Security, on October 25, 2023.
2023-10-18-HRG-Testimony
