Obama’s Folly

Former President Barack Obama (Jerusalem Post)

Politico alleged that his administration had blocked a major investigation into Hezbollah’s global drug trafficking activities so that Iran would sign the 2015 deal to curb its nuclear activities. 

The Politico piece details the efforts of the US Drug Enforcement Administration, which launched Project Cassandra in 2008. The group tracked Hezbollah’s global criminal-syndicate operation, backed by Iran, including drug and weapons trafficking worth $1 billion annually.

But while DEA gathered evidence, including of Iran-backed activities in Latin America and the US, Politico charged that the Justice Department and other US authorities refused to file charges against major players.

This included, according to Politico, “Hezbollah’s high-profile envoy to Iran, a Lebanese bank that allegedly laundered billions in alleged drug profits, and a central player in a US-based cell of the Iranian paramilitary Quds force.”

Among those against whom no US action was taken, was Ali Fayad, a suspected Hezbollah operative held from 2014 to 2015 by the Czech Republic. 

“The administration also rejected repeated efforts by Project Cassandra members to charge Hezbollah’s military wing as an ongoing criminal enterprise under a federal Mafia-style racketeering statute, task force members say,” according to the Politico article. 

It further charged that the administration blocked other initiatives to give the Cassandra Project legal tools to halt Hezbollah’s activities.

Even as far back as 2007, the article claimed, planes flew from Caracas to Syria and then on to Tehran with drugs and cash, returning with arms and agents…

(The administration) serially ripped apart this entire effort that was very well supported and resourced, and it was done from the top down.