We Took Our Eye off the Ball in Mexico

Note: Each Muslim Terrorist that is smuggled over the border to TX, AZ, NM or CA is worth at least $25K to the coyote bringing 'em in... tlc

Iran in Nicaragua
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/author/toddbensman
March 17, 2009 - by Todd Bensman

I am pretty sure that I remain the only American reporter to have traveled to leftist President Daniel Ortega’s Nicaragua to find out what the Iranian government is doing there. I apologize if I missed something out there. While I appreciated having the exclusive at the time, more than a year after my travels I continue to wonder why there there is such a persistent lack of curiosity from my mainstream press corps colleagues.

The press, quite rightly, has swarmed like migrating wildebeest all over the the Islamic Republic of Iran’s burgeoning economic and diplomatic ties to Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela and, to a certain degree, Iran’s spread to other anti-U.S. countries in South America, such as Bolivia. But with the exception of my own coverage, there’s been hardly a peep about the fact that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad planted the Iranian flag so far north in Nicaragua as soon as the time-tested American nemesis Daniel Ortega took office in January 2007. In fact, Ahmadinejad considered Ortega’s ascension so important that he was in Nicaragua to attend the inauguration. Within months, Iran was promising hundreds of millions in economic projects — and quickly set up a diplomatic mission in a tony Managua neighborhood where it could all supposedly be coordinated. Now Iran is extending its reach even further north, right into Mexico City with equally under-covered proposals to vastly expand tenuous ties to America’s immediate southern neighbor.

The national security implications of Iran forging paths throughout America’s southern sphere of influence are striking. Iran has long been known for using Hezbollah — the U.S.-designated terror organization it sired — to sow mayhem against its perceived enemies from the diplomatic cover provided by Iranian embassies. When considering Iran’s move to Nicaragua, it is important to remember that Iran had Hezbollah blow up the Israeli embassy and a Jewish center in Argentina not so long ago, killing and wounding hundreds. This is according to a recent 800-page Argentine indictment and still outstanding arrest warrants for top Iranian officials and Revolutionary Guards who carried out the bombings under diplomatic cover provided by Iran’s Buenos Aires embassy.

But unlike those fairly distant countries, Nicaragua is close to the U.S. southern border and also to Mexico’s vast oil and gas infrastructure, which a small home-grown Mexican militant group was easily able to bomb at least half a dozen times in 2006 and 2007. Thousands of Nicaraguan laborers routinely cross the Mexican border and make their way over the U.S. border in search of work. It’s a pretty doable trip. And the mullahs, in addition to pushing for a greater presence in Mexico, keep on expanding in Nicaragua even now. If Iran ever got mad again about anything, couldn’t the ruling mullahs stage an Argentine repeat performance closer to home?

With all this in mind, and Bush saber rattling over the Iranian nuclear program, I persuaded my newspaper to send me to Nicaragua in October 2007. What I found should have been enough to pique the imagination of other reporters, more investigation, or even just some shallow coverage. But to date, there has been nothing more about Iran in Nicaragua, while there’s still plenty about Iran in distant Venezuela. The Iranians must be thrilled to operate in such a blackout.

Here’s what I came away with after 10 days chasing Iranians all over Nicaragua, trying to determine whether their promises of massive economic development were real or merely excuses to set up a diplomatic mission where terrorist operatives could work so close to the American and Mexican frontiers:
I found that no Iranian money or concrete planning had materialized for a promised new $350 million port on the eastern seaboard bay known as Monkey Point. The Iranians had only made at least a couple of easy day trips there and elsewhere around the country aboard helicopters. Neither had anything developed from Iranian promises to redevelop the dilapidated western port of Corinto, which supposedly would be linked to this Monkey Point port by a dry land canal. To date, no progress on either project has been reported. But the Iranian diplomatic mission that American national security experts most feared was sure up and humming with activity. It has steadily expanded its “staff,” according to some scattered local Nicaragua news reports.

I also discovered that suspected Iranian Revolutionary Guard operatives had been moving in and out of the country in unusual ways that assured secrecy. For instance, I was given ministry of migration documents that show a senior Nicaraguan minister had allowed 21 Iranian men to enter without passport processing. This was exactly the kind of activity that preceded the Argentina bombings in 1992 and 1994. It’s the same kind of secretive movement going on in and out of Venezuela that gives current and former American counterterrorism officials — and Jewish communities in the region — the cold sweats.

Upon arriving in Managua, I linked up with a local interpreter to track down the Iranians and get them talking. In Managua’s exclusive suburb of Las Colinas, I noticed the distinctive red, white, and green flag of Iran hanging limply from a pole poking up beyond rolls of concertina wire that lined the 12-foot-high walls of a compound. But Iran’s new envoy to Nicaragua, Akbar Esmaeil-Pour, appeared to be in no talking mood over the course of several days. In response to doorbell rings, the face of the envoy’s personal driver — a local Nicaraguan — appeared in a head-sized slot in the metal gate. Two Nicaraguan policemen opened a door and stepped out with AK-47s, looking leery.
“He very much appreciates that you came all the way from America just to see him,” the face said. “The ambassador will call you when he has time. Maybe in a few days.”

And so it politely went for several more days, until the personal driver, feeling sorry for me, finally gave up the envoy’s personal cell phone number. A call to it drew an angry response from Mr. Esmaeil-Pour.
Members of Ortega’s Sandinista Party scoffed at any suggestion that the Iranian intent is somehow nefarious, despite what happened in Argentina. Several lawmakers told me the Iranian move to Nicaragua and South America made perfect sense in light of the American-led trade sanctions over Iran’s nuclear program. But what could possibly be Iran’s return on investment? Nicaragua is dirt poor; its main export is bananas.

Former FBI Special Agent Jim Conway, who managed the bureau’s counter terrorism programs in Mexico after 9/11, is now a counterterrorism consultant in Houston. He knows Iran and Hezbollah like the back of his hand. Here’s what he told me the other day:

What interest and what could Nicaragua’s poverty stricken government offer Iran and Hezbollah other than “access” and a base of operations in close proximity to the U.S.? We know that Iran has built a massive diplomatic mission in Managua, which provides a huge blanket of “diplomatic cover” to Iran and its embassy personnel. What are all those Iranian “diplomats” doing in Nicaragua? Studying the banana industry?

In an office overlooking his small newsroom, the editor of the right-of-center La Prensa newspaper, Eduardo Enriquez, told me how he reads the Iranian move to Managua:

Only the most naïve believe there’ll be any economic development. The Iranians see this as a nice point to come and bother the Americans. The only thing we can offer them is a safe place where they can move Revolutionary Guard around. There is nothing else here for the Iranians.

The American authorities haven’t been particularly helpful to me, which struck me as more than odd, since Americans have quite often heaped public disdain on the Iran-Venezuela alliance. The American embassy openly supported Mr. Ortega’s opponents during the 2006 election campaign. A year later, though, embassy officials turned down all of my interview requests. With just one lone Texas reporter asking about the Iranians in Nicaragua, maybe they don’t feel enough pressure to give up any answers.

Given the ink expended about Iran in South America, the mullahs’ furthest reach north continues to go oddly — and conspicuously — unexamined.
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From January 2006:


from the January 26, 2006 edition
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0126/p01s01-woam.html

Why Mexico helps US fight terror: Its new border checkpoints snagged seven Iraqis trying to sneak into the US last year.
By Faye Bowers | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

TUCSON, ARIZ. - A top priority of the United States government is to prevent a determined terrorist from crossing the US- Mexico border. It is also becoming a primary mission for Mexico - and the first place it's focusing on is the 375-mile, desolate stretch of land that abuts Arizona.

In addition to sharing intelligence and cooperating on investigations with its US counterparts in Arizona, Mexico last year set up three checkpoints along known human-smuggling routes on its side of the border and plans to add two more.

Between August, when the checkpoints became operational, and December, Mexican officials stopped 1,277 non-Mexicans (OTMs, for "other than Mexicans") from crossing into Arizona, according to a Mexican government report obtained by the Monitor. The report shows that most of the OTMs came from Central and South America, but seven are listed as Iraqis.

FBI officials decline to say if they know what became of the Iraqis detained in Mexico. The seven - believed to have been apprehended simultaneously at one checkpoint - could be members of a single family or unrelated individuals simply trying to find a better life in the US. But they also could have been trying to illegally cross the southern border for nefarious purposes.

That's where the additional checkpoints could prove crucial.

The Mexican government has "an immense interest in making sure terrorists don't cross from Mexico into the US," says Ben Peres of the FBI office in Tucson, the bureau's liaison here with Mexico on cross-border issues. "If something were to harm the US, it would harm them, too."

Government officials and terror experts have long fretted about the porous border between the US and Mexico. With the onset of the Iraq war in 2003, they worried that teams of Iraqis might cross the border to set off terror attacks inside the US, and they say they know that people tied to Al Qaeda have entered the US through Mexico using false identities. One they cite is Mahmoud Youssef Kourani, who paid to be smuggled across the US-Mexico border in 2001 and later was convicted and imprisoned for providing material support to Hizbullah, which is on the US list of terror groups.

Last March, US officials intercepted a letter purportedly written by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Al Qaeda leader in Iraq, who suggested to his acolytes that it would be easy to infiltrate the US through the southern border.
For its part, the US government is apprehending record numbers of illegal immigrants on the Arizona side of the border. In 2005, Border Patrol officials nabbed 577,418 illegals. Of those, 14,323 were non-Mexicans - up from 9,974 in 2004. Most OTMs came from Central and South America. But 407 came from elsewhere, some from nations designated as "countries of interest," meaning those that are known to harbor terrorists. (Note from tlc: That's just the ones that were caught.)

US Customs and Border Patrol officials say the number of OTMs from "countries of interest" is small. But they don't divulge these because of "national security and law-enforcement sensitivity issues," says Michael Gramley, Border Patrol spokesman in Yuma, Ariz.

"Borders inherently are dangerous places where the state has the least amount of control and supervision," says Adrian Pantoja, a political scientist at Arizona State University in Tempe. Measures that have been put into place to secure the border so far, he says, are largely symbolic.

"If the US wanted to seal the border with Mexico it could. Look at the demilitarized zone between South Korea and North Korea," Dr. Pantoja says. "The dilemma is really between political will and economic necessity. How do you protect the nation's security while ensuring its economic well-being?"

Still, cooperation between Mexico and the US is steadily improving on the issue of illegal entry of OTMs, FBI officials say. Although they cannot discuss the Iraqis' case specifically, the officials explain how the current system works.
OTMs detained on the Mexican side of the border are screened by Mexican officials for possible criminal or potential terror activities. If evidence of wrongdoing surfaces, Mexican intelligence officials, in turn, share that information with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

ICE officials then pass that information to the Joint Terrorism Task Force, in a weekly meeting. In Tucson, the JTTF is made up of an FBI official, who leads the effort, and representatives from Border Patrol, ICE, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Arizona state police, and two county sheriff's departments.

"It would be our job to corroborate that information and act appropriately, or debunk it," says the FBI's director of the JTTF in Tucson.

FBI agents in Tucson describe a successful operation in which they have worked with their Mexican counterparts to stop a cross-border people-smuggling ring, one with potential terrorism risks. A joint sting operation led to the arrest last May of Iranian-born Zeayadali Malhamdary, a legal permanent resident of the US. Mr. Malhamdary is now in Arizona awaiting trial on charges of smuggling illegal immigrants into the US. Officials say he smuggled in about 60 Iranians via Mexico - and provided high-quality fraudulent documents for entry into the US. The FBI says it is tracking down the 60 Iranians.