Iran nuke dealObama administration ended program targeting Hezbollah drug smuggling to secure nuke deal with Iran
The Obama administration obstructed a campaign by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to monitor and prosecute Iranian-backed terrorist group Hezbollah, in order to solidify the 2015 nuclear accord with the Islamic Republic, according to a news report. The campaign, called Project Cassandra, launched in 2008, was aimed at disrupting Hezbollah’s weapons and drug trafficking practices, which included smuggling cocaine into the United States. Over the years, the Lebanese-based terror organization had morphed from a Middle East-focused military and political group into an international crime syndicate.
The Obama administration obstructed a campaign by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to monitor and prosecute Iranian-backed terrorist group Hezbollah, in order to solidify the 2015 nuclear accord with the Islamic Republic, Politico reported on Sunday.
The campaign, called Project Cassandra, launched in 2008, was aimed at disrupting Hezbollah’s weapons and drug trafficking practices, which included smuggling cocaine into the United States. Over the years, the Lebanese-based terror organization had morphed from a Middle East-focused military and political group into an international crime syndicate.
But the DEA’s efforts to undermine the group’s illicit activities and to file criminal charges against high-profile Hezbollah operatives failed, after the U.S. Department of State, Department of Justice and Department of Treasury refused to cooperate.
“This was a policy decision, it was a systematic decision,” said David Asher, an analyst for the U.S. Department of Defense specializing in illicit finance, who helped set up and run Project Cassandra. “They serially ripped apart this entire effort that was very well supported and resourced, and it was done from the top down.”
He continued: “The closer we got to the [Iran deal], the more these activities went away,” Asher said. “So much of the capability, whether it was special operations, whether it was law enforcement, whether it was [Treasury] designations — even the capacity, the personnel assigned to this mission — it was assiduously drained, almost to the last drop, by the end of the Obama administration.”
His agents had discovered “an entire Quds force network” in the United States, laundering money, moving drugs and illegally smuggling Bell helicopters, night-vision goggles and other items for the regime in Tehran. Despite the task force having amassed “excellent evidence and testifying witnesses,” their attempt to disrupt the elite Iranian unit were severely obstructed.
Asher added that Obama officials also undermined DEA’s efforts to apprehend top Hezbollah operatives, including those tasked with murdering American soldiers and government employees. One of them was Ali Fayad, a senior weapons supplier to Syrian regime President Bashar Assad who reports directly to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
