Drug smuggling

Trump’s Generals, Part 4: John Kelly vs. The Narco-Terrorists

The connective tissue between terrorists, drug cartels and smuggling networks makes narcoterrorism a potent threat. For instance, in 2011, an Iranian operative named Mansour Arbabsiar approached an extremely violent Mexican drug cartel with a murder-for-hire proposal. Arbabsiar was working for the Iranian military, and he proposed that a cartel hit man assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States — not with a sniper’s single bullet, but by bombing a popular restaurant in Washington, D.C., that the ambassador frequented. Luckily, and only by chance, the individual Arbabsiar approached was a DEA informant, and the plot was thwarted.