Americans still debate Iran through an outdated lens. We speak of war as something that starts with bombs, troop deployments, or congressional declarations. Yet Iran has waged asymmetric war against the United States and the West since 1979 — through terrorism, proxy forces, illicit finance, ideological movements, cyber operations, criminal partnerships, and gray-zone tactics deliberately kept below the threshold of conventional conflict.
The real danger is not merely Iran’s capabilities. It is our refusal to recognize the nature of the fight.
Many Americans view conflict with Iran as something happening “over there” — in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, the Red Sea, or the Strait of Hormuz. In reality, Iran’s infrastructure has embedded itself much closer to home: across Latin America, inside cartel corridors, through illicit financial networks, migration pipelines, and the operational seams inside the United States itself.
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This did not happen by accident. It was built deliberately over decades via proxies, criminal convergence, ideological networks, covert finance, and tradecraft designed to obscure attribution. In fact, just two days after I testified before Congress warning about the convergence between cartel infrastructure, Iranian-backed proxies, and gray-zone warfare, the Department of Justice unsealed charges against an Iraqi national tied to exactly the kind of hybrid threat architecture I described
Prosecutors charged Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood Al-Saadi, a senior commander in Kata’ib Hizballah (KH)—an Iranian-backed Iraqi militia tied to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) — with directing attacks on Jewish, Israeli, and American targets across Europe and North America, including a plot against a Manhattan synagogue.
The most revealing aspect of the case was not simply the attacks themselves. It was the operational model behind them.
Al-Saadi allegedly sought to coordinate through Mexican cartel-linked smuggling networks and criminal facilitators across the Western Hemisphere. The attacks were branded under a new front group, Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamiya (HAYI), designed to appear independent while advancing KH, Hezbollah, and IRGC goals.
This layered structure provides operational security, plausible deniability, and strategic distance from the violence itself — hallmarks of Iranian tradecraft. Iran has refined this operational model for decades. In 1983, Iranian cleric and intelligence operative Mohsen Rabbani arrived in Argentina under commercial and religious cover tied to halal meat certification. He became imam of a Buenos Aires mosque while serving as Iran’s cultural attaché. Using mosques, cultural centers, charities, front companies, and diaspora networks, he helped build Iranian and Hezbollah infrastructure across Latin America. The Tri-Border Area (Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay) became a hub for Hezbollah financiers, smugglers, traffickers, and money launderers operating alongside criminal networks. This ecosystem enabled the 1992 Israeli Embassy bombing in Buenos Aires and the 1994 AMIA bombing that killed 85 people. Argentine prosecutor Alberto Nisman’s investigation found Iran directed the attacks while Hezbollah executed them through layered proxies — mirroring today’s tactics.
These are not isolated terrorism cases. They reflect a resilient asymmetric architecture built to operate below the threshold that would trigger conventional war. Iran does not see threats as separate silos — Houthis in the Red Sea, militias in Iraq and Syria, Hezbollah in Latin America, or cartels at the U.S. border. Tehran views them as interconnected fronts in a multi-domain campaign that exploits globalization’s infrastructure: smuggling routes, corruption networks, illicit finance, and governance gaps.
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Hezbollah networks have long intersected with Latin American narcotics trafficking, sanctions evasion, and money laundering. DEA investigations, such as Project Cassandra, documented these ties. Recent U.S. Treasury and State Department sanctions targeted Iranian shadow banking systems, front companies, shipping networks, and a “shadow fleet” used to move illicit oil and finance proxies. These financial and logistical tools sustain the broader apparatus of proxy warfare and criminal convergence.
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The same operational logic applies elsewhere. Houthis disrupt Red Sea shipping with Iranian backing and deniability. Iran pressures energy markets via the Strait of Hormuz through harassment and proxies. In the Western Hemisphere, Iranian influence overlaps with Venezuela’s Cartel de los Soles, transnational drug pipelines, and anti-Western networks involving Russia and China.
Not every cartel operative works for Tehran, but hostile actors routinely exploit the same permissive corridors.
This creates a growing mismatch: adversaries wage persistent, sub-threshold irregular warfare through networks, erosion, and exploitation of open societies, while America still thinks in binaries of “war” versus “peace,” “foreign” versus “domestic,” or “terrorism” versus “crime.”
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The southern border is no longer just an immigration or law-enforcement issue. It has become a strategic access point into the U.S. homeland, where transnational networks exploit gaps in ways resembling irregular warfare environments. Inside the country, this expands beyond crime into homeland defense and critical infrastructure concerns.
The Al-Saadi case is not simply another terrorism investigation. It is a warning. Iran’s war against the West did not begin with any single operation, and it will not remain overseas simply because Americans refuse to recognize it. Proxy networks, criminal pipelines, migration corridors, maritime logistics, covert finance, and propaganda ecosystems continue adapting to extend reach while maintaining deniability.
Americans must reframe the debate. The threat is hybrid, networked, and already operating inside the strategic seams of the West.
Recognizing the conflict for what it is — a long-running asymmetric campaign already converging on the homeland — is the first step toward effective defense.
