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Editor’s Note: Many thanks to reader M. for sending in this share!🌹
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U.S. intelligence officials have stated that there is an increasing risk of an attack on Americans in the Middle East and even at home in the United States by Lebanese Hezbollah militants, according to a report from Politico, citing four unnamed officials familiar with the intelligence.
The report revealed that the officials have warned that the risk of terror attacks against the continental U.S. has increased since Hamas’s October 7 terrorist attack against Israel and the subsequent counter-offensive by the Israel Defense Forces. Hezbollah, the terrorist allies of Hamas in neighboring Lebanon, have been increasing their role in the conflict, launching a series of low-level attacks against northern Israel.
An anonymous U.S. official told Politico, “Hezbollah could draw on the capability they have … to put people [in] places to do something. It is something to be worried about.” Hezbollah, which, like Hamas, is backed by Iran, is most likely to attack American military assets and personnel in the area, officials said. They added that diplomatic personnel overseas may also be at risk, but the chance of an attack on the U.S. itself is also increasing.
One former official, Andrew Tabler, who served as special envoy for Syria engagement at the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs in the Trump administration, said, “The Lebanon front is ready to kick off. And these Iranian militia are pounding the U.S. in eastern Syria and Iraq. It’s interesting that this is all going on in the background and people are focusing on the Gaza theater, but the war is actually much larger than that.”
The assessment appears to cross the partisan divide as well with Politico reporting that Christy Abizaid, the Biden administration’s director of the National Counterterrorism Center, explaining to a congressional hearing in October, “Iran, Hezbollah and their linked proxies are trying to calibrate their activity, avoiding actions that would open up a concerted second front with the United States or Israel while still exacting costs in the midst of the current conflict. This is a very fine line to walk, and in the present regional context, their actions carry the potential for miscalculation.”
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Newsmax’s Daniel Cohen reporting from Israel noted from the report that “Hezbollah has more capability and an international network of operatives in comparison to say ISIS or Al Qaeda.”
Rose Rambles... 