There’s No Education in The Second Kick of a Mule

The Ayatollah Narco-Jihad on the US in Latin America

Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettiner | “Second Thought: a US-Israel Initiative” | May 10, 2026

*According to the West Point Center for Combatting Terrorism: “Iran and its proxies have spent years investing in a ‘homeland option’ in the US. In just the past five years, US authorities have disrupted at least 17 Iranian plots in the homeland…. In its 2025 Threat Assessment, the Director of National Intelligence assessed that Iran “will continue to directly threaten US persons globally and remains committed to its decade-long effort to develop surrogate networks inside the US…. The Department of Homeland Security’s 2025 Threat Assessment [and the FBI] concurred, reporting ‘we expect Iran to remain the primary sponsor of terrorism and continue its efforts to advance plots against individuals – including current and former US officials – in the US.’ Such plots have been on the rise in recent years…. In early 2024…, a network of [Iranian] individuals targeted Iranian dissidents and opposition activists [in the US] for assassination at the direction of the Iranian regime…. According to the FBI, Hezbollah has maintained a presence in the US since at least 1987.”

*Notwithstanding the 47-year-record of repeated US negotiation with the Ayatollah regime; irrespective of the hundreds of billions of dollars showered upon the Ayatollah regime; and in defiance of the 47-year-economic sanctions imposed by the US; the Ayatollah regime has systematically adhered to its 1,400-year-old apocalyptic and megalomaniacal anti-US ideology.

*Moreover, the Ayatollah regime has leveraged the US diplomatic/negotiation approach to stall for time, facilitate recovery, restore and upgrade anti-US terror, drug trafficking, ballistic and nuclear capabilities, while adhering to the fanatical mission of toppling all “apostate” Sunni regimes, and bringing the “infidel” West to submission.

According to Mark Twain, “There’s No Education in The Second Kick of a Mule!”

*Soon after the February 1979 toppling the Shah of Iran, and the November 1979 seizing the US Embassy in Tehran and holding 50 Americans hostage for 444 days, the Ayatollah regime – in tight collaboration with Hezbollah terrorists – launched a Narco-Jihad in Latin America, the US’ soft underbelly, against “The Great American Satan.” The aim has been to erode the US strategic posture in its own backyard.  In addition, the Ayatollah regime and Hezbollah collaborated in global anti-US terrorism, such as car-bombing the US embassies in Beirut, Kenya and Tanzania, the Marines barracks in Beirut, and the attempted murder of past and present top US officials.

*The Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has used the mega-billions of-dollars of annual revenues from drug trafficking and money laundering for training and arming anti-US entities in Latin America and the Middle East. In fact, IranAir planes have been intensely involved in the transportation of drugs, drug traffickers and terrorists.

*Since 1980, the Ayatollah regime and Hezbollah have cultivated alliances with anti-US governments along the “cocaine corridor” from the tip of South America to the US-Mexico border.

*Cocaine shipments have been made from Latin America to the US, and some from Latin America to West Africa and on to Europe and the Middle East, involving larger-than-ever Hezbollah used-car money-laundering operations, funding global Iran-controlled global terrorism infrastructure, including on US soil.

*It has been suggested that the Ayatollah regime and Hezbollah operate like the Gambino crime family on steroids. Furthermore, the Ayatollah regime and Hezbollah have expanded their presence in Mexico, supplying Mexican drug cartels with equipment to construct underground tunnels into California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas, training drug cartel assassins, and bolstering the Ayatollah-controlled network of sleeper cells in the US, which keeps scouting potential targets.

*The lawless and uncontrollable tri-border areas of Argentina-Brazil-Paraguay and Chile-Bolivia-Peru have been documented as the central operational and financial hub of Iranian and Hezbollah terrorism in Latin America. They have leveraged the well-established Lebanese-Shiite diaspora in the region, especially in Paraguay’s Ciudad del Este, into a paradise for drug traffickers, money launderers, organized crime and anti-US Islamic terrorists.

*Iran’s Ayatollah and Hezbollah have established an elaborate regional and global infrastructure of terrorism, drug trafficking, money laundering, counterfeiting, fundraising, training, conversion to Islam, recruitment and media centers, as well as testing ballistic technologies, and benefitting from Latin American natural resources, such as uranium (e.g., Venezuela and Guyana) . They forged strategic alliances with the “Pink Tide” anti-US regimes (e.g., Venezuela, Cuba, Colombia, Nicaragua and Bolivia), breaking their international isolation, and collaborating with drug cartels and terror organizations.

*The Ayatollah regime is aware that Colombia, Peru and Bolivia are the three leading cocaine producers in the world.  Peru sits on uranium reserves and Bolivia is also endowed with lithium – a key strategic mineral for nuclear applications.

*The Canada-based IranWire adds that “In recent years, the Tri Border Area of Argentina-Paraguay-Brazil has become the epicenter of world cocaine trafficking and narco-terrorism… with logistical support from Colombian, Mexican and Venezuelan cartels…. Hezbollah earns about $2bn annually through illegal drug trafficking in the Tri Border Area…. Hezbollah maintains links with some of the most violent cartels in Latin America, including Mexico’s Los Zetas, Columbia’s FARC [and Oficina de Envigado] and Brazil’s PCC… helping them to obtain weapons and access to international smuggling networks outside Latin America….”

*According to the October 25, 2023 House Homeland Security Committee testimony by Nathan Sales, a former US Coordinator for Counterterrorism: “The Islamic Republic of Iran is the world’s worst state sponsor of terrorism…. This 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 US…. The Islamic Republic is actively plotting to assassinate a number of former senior US officials here on American soil…. These former officials now live under constant, twenty-four-hour government protection because of the Iranian threat to their lives…. 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….”

The bottom line

*Reality has demonstrated that the Iranian leopard will not change spots; only tactics.

*US policy on Iran should be based on the Ayatollahs’ objective track record, not on a subjective and speculative track record.

*Reality has established that Iran’s Ayatollahs are driven by a fanatical, religious, megalomaniacal vision, and not by despair, “Money Talks,” or eagerness to be accepted internationally.  Therefore, they are more concerned with “guns” than “butter,” and are not amenable to credible negotiation, peaceful coexistence, human rights and democracy.

*Reality has determined that waving the military option and a genuine DNA regime change has been self-destructive, transforming the Ayatollah regime from a second/third class geo-strategic power to a major global power to be reckoned with, bolstering its anti-US global operation in the US’ own backyard, the US’ soft underbelly, as well as on US soil.

*Reality has documented that There’s No Education in The Second Kick of a Mule!

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