Hillary Clinton, while advocating for U.S.-led strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities in transcripts of paid speeches made behind closed doors, acknowledged Iran’s ability to terrorize the United States through Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) operatives and other proxies in Latin and North America.
She admitted that even without the nuclear program, the presence of Iran, the IRGC, and its proxies, which include the Shiite narco-terrorist group Hezbollah, would still pose a threat to the United States.
President Obama himself and some military officials acknowledged some of the billions of dollars Iran has received as part of the nuclear deal would be used to fund terrorism.
U.S. Southern Command, which is charged with U.S. military activity in Latin America and the Caribbean, warned Congress earlier this year that Hezbollah in the Western Hemisphere now has the infrastructure to carry out terrorist attacks.
Over the weekend, Wikileaks released the transcripts of three off-the-record speeches to the global investment banking company Goldman Sachs made in 2013 and for which she was paid $675,000.
Clinton expressed a willingness to bomb the Iranian facilities as an “option” to prevent the Shiite powerhouse from developing a nuclear weapon in a June 4, 2013 speech to Goldman Sachs and elaborated further about the threat Iran, the IRGC, and its proxies pose to the United States in a separate speech on October 24, 2013.
She warned that there would be “consequences” carried out through the IRGC and Iran’s other proxies if the United States took military action against Iran. Although she did not specifically mention Hezbollah by name, it is the most active Iranian terror proxy across the world, including the Western Hemisphere.
In June 2013, she said that to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon, “You up the pain that they have to endure by not in any way occupying or invading them but by bombing their facilities. I mean, that is the option. It is not as, we like to say these days, boots on the ground.”
She added:
When people just pontificate that, you know, we have no choice. We have to bomb the facilities. They act as though there would be no consequences either predicted or unpredicted. Of course there would be, and you already are dealing with a regime that is the principal funder and supplier of terrorism in the world today…
If we had a map up behind us you would be able to see Iranian sponsored terrorism directly delivered by Iranians themselves, mostly through the Revolutionary Guard Corps, the operatives…or other proxies from to Latin America to Southeast Asia.
In October 2014, Clinton elaborated on the threat Iran’s presence in the Western Hemisphere poses to the United States.
She reiterated:
So it’s a wicked problem, as we like to say, because Iran is not only troubling because of its nuclear program, although that’s the foremost threat, it’s the primary conductor and exporter of terrorism.
I mean, if you had a big map here behind us, literally from North America to Southeast Asia, there are so many thoughts, so many bombs, so many arrests that are all traced back to the Iranian revolutionary guard, and their constant efforts to sell (inaudible)….So even if a miracle were to happen and we came up with a verifiable nuclear deal, there would still be problems that Iran is projecting and causing around the world that had real consequences for our friends and ourselves.
Clinton’s predictions have come to pass. Despite the July 2015 nuclear agreement between Obama administration-led world powers and Iran, the U.S. State Department and the U.S. military have acknowledged that Iran, the IRGC, and Hezbollah continue to pose a threat in the Western Hemisphere.
Earlier this year, SOUTHCOM, which is in charge of American military activities in Latin America and the Caribbean, warned about Hezbollah in its area of operation:
Lebanese Hezbollah also maintains an infrastructure with the capability to conduct or support terrorist attacks. As with every aspect of our counterterrorism efforts, the U.S. Government remains vigilant against these threats, working closely with our partners to protect the southern approaches to the United States.
Experts have warned that Hezbollah and the IRGC are operating in Mexico. When Clinton was President Barack Obama’s Secretary of State, an Iranian man linked to the IRGC was sentenced to 25 years in connection to a plot to hire a Mexican cartel member to kill the ambassador of Iran’s regional rival Saudi Arabia with explosives while the diplomat was in Washington, D.C.
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