Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger -- The US State Department determination to suspend and soften economic sanctions on Iran’s Ayatollahs has added – since February 2021 - some $175bn to the Ayatollahs’ national income. 

This added-income has bolstered the Ayatollahs’ anti-US global terrorism and drug trafficking, while the US persists in its feeble responses to the frequent assaults on US installations in the Persian Gulf, Syria and Jordan by the Ayatollahs and their proxies in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen. 

These rogue activities by the Ayatollahs have undermined the safety of the main trade route (the Red Sea) between Europe and the Far East, while causing a severe economic setback to the pro-US Egypt, and threatening the survival of all pro-US Arab regimes.

At the same time:

*Mexico’s expanding alignment with anti-US, pro-Iran Latin American governments - such as Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, Colombia, Bolivia, Ecuador, Brazil and Chile – attests to the erosion of the US strategic posture in its own hemisphere, as well as the dramatic inroads made by Iran’s Ayatollahs – in collaboration with their Hezbollah proxy - into the soft underbelly of “The great American Satan.”

*Mexico has followed in the footsteps of the tri border area of Argentina-Paraguay-Brazil, becoming an arena for Iran and Hezbollah drug trafficking and terror-financing money laundering. For example, Iran’s Ayatollahs and Hezbollah have trained Mexican drug cartels in the areas of car bombs and improvised explosive devices, supplying them equipment for the construction of underground tunnels, as well as  predator unmanned aerial vehicles..

*The collusion with Mexican drug cartels has provided Iran’s Ayatollahs and Hezbollah a potent staging ground to severely undermine US homeland security, while establishing a multitude of dormant terror cells in the US.

*The Ayatollahs’ and Hezbollah’s deep involvement in Latin American terrorism and drug trafficking was initiated in the early 1980s, shortly after toppling the Shah of Iran with the ardent support of the US State Department.

*The Ayatollahs’ and Hezbollah’s penetration of Mexico and the US has been bolstered by their deep entrenchment in Ciudad del Este, Paraguay, the capital of the Argentina-Paraguay-Brazil tri border area and the global epicenter of narco-terrorism, in general, and cocaine trafficking, in particular.

*According to an October 25, 2023 House Homeland Security Committee testimony by Nathan Sales, a former US Coordinator for Counterterrorism: “The United States and Israel have common enemies. For the Islamic Republic, Israel may be the Little Satan, but America is the Great Satan, and the Iranian terror proxies that want to slaughter Israelis want to slaughter Americans as well.... The Islamic Republic manifestly bears responsibility for the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack....

“The Islamic Republic of Iran is the world’s worst state sponsor of terrorism. Acting through the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and numerous terrorist proxies, the regime has murdered countless innocent civilians, taken hostages remorselessly, and shed blood on an industrial scale. The threat it poses is not confined to the Middle East but extends across the entire world—including the United States....

“the Islamic Republic is actively plotting to assassinate a number of former senior US officials here on American soil. Last year, the Justice Department announced charges against an IRGC member believed to be the ringleader of a plot to murder John Bolton, the former national security advisor. The would-be assassin reportedly also was targeting former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. These former officials and others like them now live under constant, twenty-four-hour government protection because of the Iranian threat to their lives....

“In the attempted assassination of John Bolton, Tehran planned to use a Mexican national with ties to drug cartels. It likewise attempted to use a Mexican drug cartel in the 2011 plot against the Saudi ambassador to the United States. There is a significant risk that Iran-backed terrorists might take advantage of these vulnerabilities again in the future. 

The US Customs and Border Protection field office in San Diego recently warned that [Iran-sponsored] Hamas and Hezbollah and other terrorists ‘may attempt travel to or from the area of hostilities in the Middle East via circuitous transit across the Southwest border....’

“The Iranian regime targets Americans abroad as well as at home. The IRGC was responsible for killing 603 American soldiers in Iraq.... That is one-sixth of all U.S. fatalities during the war in Iraq. In Afghanistan, the Islamic Republic reportedly paid Taliban fighters a one-thousand-dollar bounty for every American soldier they killed....  

“Hezbollah, the Lebanese terrorist group was responsible for the 1983 attacks on the US embassy and Marine Corps barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, which killed sixty-three and 305, respectively. Today, Hezbollah is the Islamic Republic’s proxy of choice for terrorist attacks on Israelis and Jews around the world.... In the past several years, the group has been caught planning attacks or stockpiling explosives in Western Europe, Latin America, the Gulf, Southeast Asia, and elsewhere.... 

Between 1997 and 2020, 128 suspected Hezbollah members were arrested in the United States. In recent years the FBI arrested three suspected Hezbollah operatives who were conducting surveillance on the Panama Canal and casing potential targets in New York City, including the Statue of Liberty, Empire State Building, Times Square, and Rockefeller Center....  

“The US should resume robust sanctions enforcement to deny Iran resources to fund terrorism around the globe. The Iranian regime is richer today than it has been in years.... The bigger problem, in my view, is the fact that the regime has been able to dramatically increase its energy exports, and thus dramatically improve its economic strength.  

As a result of crippling sanctions, by the end of the previous Administration, Iran’s economy was hobbled, its coffers were drained, and its ability to project power abroad was reduced. Tehran is in a substantially stronger position today. By 2021, the regime’s accessible foreign currency reserves were down to four to six billion dollars—roughly the same as Haiti.... 

Energy analysts assess that, since 2020, Iran’s oil exports have increased by a factor of four or five [from 500,000 barrels per day to 2-3 million barrels), with the lion’s share of sales going to China....

“Sanctions deny terrorists the money they need to plan and carry out attacks. For years, Hezbollah could count on its patrons in Tehran to provide it with upwards of seven hundred million dollars annually, and Hamas and other Palestinian terrorists received one hundred million dollars a year....”