Expect a CAIR press release accusing Congressman King of stoking “Islamophobia.”
(Daily Mail) — Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah may have hundreds of operatives based in the United States, and Hezbollah — not al-Qaida — poses the greatest terrorist threat to Americans, the Republican chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, Peter King, said today.
Since September 11 2001, America’s counter-terror officials have focused on al-Qaida and home-grown radicalised American extremists, said the New York representative at a hearing of his committee. But, now, the terrorist threat to the United States is shifting.
‘As Iran moves closer to nuclear weapons and there is increasing concern over war between Iran and Israel, we must also focus on Iran’s secret operatives and their number one terrorist proxy force, Hezbollah, which we know is in America. That’s right, we know Hezbollah operatives are here.
‘The question is whether these Hezbollah operatives have the capacity to carry out attacks on the homeland and how quickly they can become fully operational,’ King said.
Opening the hearing, King said, ‘we have a duty to prepare for the worst’, and referred to the 20 Hezbollah-related prosecutions that have taken place in the United States since 9/11.
He also referred to a murder plot allegedly directed by the Iranian government to kill the Saudi ambassador to the U.S. last year as a further warning sign of the potential threat that the country poses to Americans.
King warned that there were hundreds — at a minimum — of Hezbollah operatives in the United States, including 84 Iranian diplomats at the United Nations and in Washington who, ‘it must be presumed, are intelligence officers.’