Free Republic

The trial of two Iranians and six others, who tried to smuggle 2.2 tons of cocaine to the island, exposed networks spanning the Middle East and Venezuela. JNS Staff. July 9, 2025 / JNS) An Irish court on July 4 sentenced two Iranian nationals in connection with a transnational drug trafficking operation involving more than 2.2 tons of cocaine, as authorities investigate suspected links to Hezbollah and the Iranian regime, Irish media reported. The men—Soheil Jelveh, 51, a former captain of the cargo vessel MV Matthew, and Saied Hassani, 39, a senior officer with significant maritime experience—received sentences of 17.5...

The Lebanese daily Al-Nahar on Jan. 3, 2026, quoted Lebanese Brig.-Gen. (ret.) Wehbe Katicha as saying that Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro provided Lebanese Hizbullah with 10,000 Venezuelan passports, some of which were used by officers of Syria's Assad regime to flee the country.

The FBI has added a former Venezuelan ambassador to Lebanon and Syria to their Terrorism “Seeking Information” list, after evidence indicated that Ghazi Nasr al Din was using his position to help fundraise for the Shiite terror group Hezbollah. Nasr al Din, a dual Venezuelan and Lebanese citizen, served both of his terms under socialist leader Hugo Chávez before his death and has also served at the head of the Shi’a Islamic Center in Caracas, Venezuela, according to the United States Department of Treasury. The Treasury designated Nasr al Din a “supporter” of Hezbollah in 2008, with Adam J. Szubin,...

For over two decades, Venezuela has served as a critical outpost for Hezbollah in the Western Hemisphere, with reports detailing the group's entrenchment on Margarita Island and ties to the former regimes of Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro. U.S. intelligence assessments and media investigations describe this presence as evolving from fundraising networks among the Lebanese diaspora in the 1980s to sophisticated operations involving training, smuggling, and financial schemes by the 2000s. Margarita Island, once a bustling tourist spot, has been highlighted as a primary hub, surpassing even the Tri-Border Area in Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay for Hezbollah's regional activities. Training...

Over the past year, Hezbollah has faced a growing existential crisis, intensified by the targeted assassinations of senior figures including Fuad Shukr, Ibrahim Aqil, Jawad Tawil, and particularly Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah and his successor, Hashem Safi al-Din. Once Iran’s most formidable proxy and a significant strategic actor in the Middle East, Hezbollah now contends with depleted leadership, military setbacks, and mounting international pressure. Does this signal genuine weakening within the Shiite terrorist organization? According to Lebanese sources, Hezbollah is undertaking drastic measures to ensure its survival, notably relocating the families of hundreds of senior commanders to Latin America. Lebanese journalist...

Donald Trump just sent Nicolas Maduro a Christmas message, of a sort. And that message is not many happy returns of the day. Earlier today, the US Navy boarded a tanker carrying Venezuelan oil in international waters. Unlike the first seizure, Marc Caputo reports for Axios, this ship had no specific sanctions applied to it [see update below]. This escalates the standoff over Maduro's illegal regime and the oil revenue he desperately needs to cling to power:The U.S. military early Saturday boarded a tanker that is not under U.S. sanctions as it shipped Venezuelan oil in hopes of escaping a...

21st Century SocialismThe attempt to destroy democracy in Latin America.  The Obama administration started out on the wrong foot in world affairs. It used techniques better suited for domestic political campaigns — popularity contests — in its foreign policy. In our own hemisphere, the result was confusion for our allies and our enemies alike. The overriding objective of U.S. policy — in Latin America and elsewhere — should be to advance U.S. national interests, not to curry favor with foreign leaders. If we can be liked while advancing our interests, so much the better. But when we try to befriend...

A Glimmer of Justice Amidst Enduring Shadows:Venezuela's Unlikely Strike Against Islamic Fascist Republic of Iran / Hezbollah's Legacy of Jewish BloodIn a stunning turn that defies the toxic alliance between Venezuela's Chavismo regime and the genocidal mullahs of the Islamo-Fascist Iranian Republic, President Nicolás Maduro's forces have apprehended Ali Hage Zaki Jalil—a Lebanese-Arab Hezbollah terrorist long-sought for his role in the barbaric 1994 bombing of Alas Chiricanas Flight 901 over Panama.[0][1] This monstrous act of Jew-hatred claimed 21 innocent lives, including 12 precious Jewish souls en route from Colón to Panama City, their dreams shattered by the same Iranian-backed terror...

VENEZUELAN tyrant Nicolas Maduro is not merely complicit in organised crime — he leads it. From generals to judges, the very top of Venezuela’s political and military elite are deeply embedded in a powerful, sprawling cocaine trafficking network, experts say. Cartel de los Soles, translated as Cartel of The Suns, isn’t a cartel in the traditional sense. It’s a web of Venezuelan military, intelligence and political elites accused of taxing, protecting and moving cocaine with state resources. With parts of Maduro’s government deeply enmeshed in the drug trade, the lines between state power and organised crime have been blurred. Dr...

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) — A former resident of Upper St. Clair, Pennsylvania, has been indicted after prosecutors said he tried to join the terrorist organization Hizballah and lied about it to the FBI. A federal grand jury indicted 24-year-old Jack Molloy, who was charged last month after he was arrested in Chicago on Dec. 6... According to court paperwork, Molloy was formerly enlisted as an active-duty soldier in the U.S. Army from about March 2019 to April 2019...

A Minnesota woman pleaded guilty today to one count of delivering national defense information to aid a foreign government. According to court documents, Mariam Taha Thompson, 63, formerly of Rochester, Minnesota, worked as a contract linguist at an overseas U.S. military facility where she was entrusted with a top secret government security clearance. ***** In December 2019, while Thompson was assigned to a special operations task force facility in Iraq, the United States launched a series of airstrikes in Iraq targeting Kata’ib Hizballah, an Iranian-backed foreign terrorist organization. These airstrikes culminated in a Jan. 3, 2020, strike that resulted in...

Toll from Tehran’s terrorism and proxy attacks are a serious factors in Trump’s decision on whether to support or even join the Israeli war effort. Three years after 19 Americans died in a bombing at a Saudi Arabian apartment complex, then-President Bill Clinton sent a cable that told Iran’s president a secret that the 42nd president wasn’t even willing to tell the American public: U.S. intelligence had ample evidence that Tehran was behind the deadly Khobar Towers terror attack. “Message to President Khatami from President Clinton: The United States Government has received credible evidence that members of the Iranian Revolutionary...

Radical Islam in Latin America By Chris Zambelis In the wake of the September 11 attacks, the possibility of al-Qaeda infiltrating Latin America became a priority for U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials. However, the most publicized incidents of radical Islamist activity in Latin America have not been linked to al-Qaeda but instead to the Lebanese Shi’ite Hezbollah, which is ideologically and politically close to Iran. These include the March 1992 bombing of the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires, Argentina and the July 1994 attack against the Argentine-Israeli Mutual Association (AIMA), also in the Argentine capital, allegedly in retaliation for...

On Friday, March 30, 2012, Hisham Y. Altalib visited the White House. According to visitor logs, Altalib was received by Joshua DuBois, the director of President Obama's Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. Four days later, White House officials welcomed a foreign delegation of the radical Sharia-enforcing Muslim Brotherhood from Egypt. The White House meeting with overseas Muslim Brotherhood leaders was reported in April by a few mainstream journalists and questioned loudly by conservative media. But the White House confab in March with U.S.-based Altalib -- which appears to be a prep session with the global Muslim Brotherhood's American...

Just two days after US President Barack Hussein Obama shared a controversial and landmark handshake with Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez at the Summit of the Americas, the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center has released a study analyzing the flowering alliance between the increasingly anti-Western Latin America and the virulently anti-Israel Iran. The study was conducted at the Israel Intelligence Heritage & Commemoration Center (IICC), a non-governmental organization dedicated to Israeli intelligence and terrorism issues. According to the study, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is using anti-Western Hugo Chavez as a springboard into several Latin American countries, such as Bolivia, Nicaragua, and...

<p>November 18, 2003 -- Two Iranian diplomats who arrived in New York recently to work at their country's U.N. mission are being investigated by the FBI after a transit cop caught them videotaping the subway in Queens, The Post has learned. The sharp-eyed officer spotted the suspicious pair entering the elevated station at Roosevelt Avenue and 52nd Street in Woodside at 1:30 a.m. Sunday and shooting tape in various directions as they waited for a Manhattan-bound No. 7 train.</p>

The Hezbollah Shura Council on Sunday chose Hashem Safieddine as Secretary General to replace Hassan Nasrallah, who was eliminated in an Israeli airstrike on Friday, Saudi news outlets Al Hadath and Al Arabiya reported. Safieddine currently serves as the head of Hezbollah's Executive Council. He is Nasrallah's cousin from his mother's side. His brother, Abdullah, is Hezbollah's envoy to Iran. In addition, Safieddine is one of six clerics currently serving on Hezbollah's Shura Council. His son, Said Ridah, is married to Zayneb Soleimani, the daughter of former Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani, who was eliminated in 2020. Hezbollah denied the...

A 37-year-old woman who previously worked as an FBI agent and a CIA analyst, pleaded guilty Tuesday to charges involving improper access of information, CBS News has learned. Sources say Nada Nadim Prouty, a Lebanese national and resident of Virginia, entered the United States on a student visa and earned citizenship through a sham marriage.

DETROIT - A former federal agent who pleaded guilty to faking a marriage to gain U.S. citizenship and improperly searching FBI databases was sentenced Tuesday to pay $975 in fines and other fees, but will serve no prison time. U.S. District Court Judge Avern Cohn said Nada Nadim Prouty, 38, "erred in judgment" 19 years ago when she lied to enter the U.S. in 1989 from her native Lebanon, but has provided "exemplary service to the country" as a federal agent. Cohn also signed an order revoking Prouty's citizenship, but Prouty's attorney Thomas Cranmer said after the hearing she will...

Fugitive La Shish restaurant chain owner Talal Chahine has been indicted on citizenship fraud. The Detroit Free Press and Detroit News report that Wednesday's federal grand jury indictment alleges Chahine gave references and lied to federal officials about the phony marriages of his future wife, Elfat El Aouar, her sister, Nada Nadim Prouty, and their roommate, Samar Khalil Spinelli. Each of the Lebanese-born women have pleaded guilty to faking the marriages to gain U.S. citizenship.