The Unlikelihood of a Terrorist Attack in the United States from Mexico <http://www.stratfor.com/analysis/20111011-unlikelihood-terrorist-attack-united-states-mexico>
October 12, 2011 | 1208 GMT Summary Charges announced by the U.S. Department of Justice on Oct. 11 allege that a man with connections to elements of the Iranian government planned to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States. Though threats are always present, it is very unlikely that a terrorist attack on U.S. soil will be successfully staged from Mexico. With the resources at hand, the U.S. response against such terrorist networks would be monumental, and cooperation with such terrorists would go against the interests of both the Mexican government and cartels. Analysis Related Links * Mexico Security Memo: Defining Cross-Border Violence <http://www.stratfor.com/analysis/20111005-mexico-security-memo-defining-cross-border-violence> * New Mexican President, Same Cartel War? <http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20110614-new-mexican-president-same-cartel-war> * The Strategic Challenges of the U.S.-Mexico Relationship <http://www.stratfor.com/geopolitical_diary/20110706-103028> Recommended External Link * The complaint detailing the charges against Arbabsiar <http://jnslp.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/amended-complaint.pdf> STRATFOR is not responsible for the content of other Web sites. An alleged plot <http://www.stratfor.com/analysis/20111011-irans-alleged-plot-against-saudi-ambassador-united-states> to kill Saudi Ambassador to the United States Adel al-Jubeir in Washington using assassins from Mexico was described in an indictment announced Oct. 11. The plot raises a number of serious questions about Mexico’s utility as a staging point for terrorist operations against the United States. The porous nature of the U.S.-Mexico border and the potential for security breaches is always a high-interest issue in the United States and a perennial concern for U.S. security agencies. The allegation that accused terrorist and U.S.-Iranian dual citizen Manssor Arbabsiar attempted to hire an individual whom he believed to have connections to a Mexican drug cartel raises additional concerns that Mexican cartels could use their considerable linkages to the United States <http://www.stratfor.com/analysis/20111011-quick-take-alleged-iranian-assassination-plot-us-soil> to help international terrorist organizations. Upon careful examination, the threat is much smaller than it might initially seem – in part because of close U.S.-Mexican cooperation and primarily because the threat of U.S. retaliation on any organization that participates in terrorist activities is extremely high. The complaint detailing the Oct. 11 charges says Arbabsiar approached an individual already on the payroll of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) who he thought had links to a “large, sophisticated, and violent drug-trafficking cartel.” Anonymous sources later told ABC News that the cartel in question was Los Zetas, who control much of the narcotics trade along Mexico’s eastern coast <http://www.stratfor.com/analysis/20110808-mexico-security-memo-striking-los-zetas-northeast> . Arbabsiar has been accused of asking the informant if he had experience with C-4 explosives, and the two discussed sending a total of four people to stage an attack on the ambassador. According to the complaint, Arbabsiar deemed civilian casualties acceptable as collateral damage. The DEA informant was offered and accepted (but never received in full) $1.5 million as a fee for the assassination. The informant did, however, receive a $100,000 down payment on the operation. On Sept. 28, Arbabsiar flew to Mexico, was denied entry, and while en route to an unspecified destination was arrested in New York City by U.S. authorities Sept. 29. In the Oct. 11 announcement of the arrest, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said the role Mexico played in the operation to arrest Arbabsiar was significant, but he declined to comment further. The successful interception of the alleged plot, the cooperation with Mexico and the lack of involvement of any real drug cartels still leaves open the question: What if the source had been a real cartel member and the plot had actually gone through? Though there are always reasons for concern, there are a number of factors that make Mexico a particularly difficult route of penetration into the United States, particularly for groups known to have conflicts with the United States. First, the United States has extremely active intelligence capabilities in Mexico. With the Defense Intelligence Agency, DEA, CIA, FBI and other agencies deeply embedded in Mexico, it is a heavily monitored environment – as evidenced by this case. And while the United States may be focused primarily on the drug cartels and cooperation with the Mexican government, Iranians raise red flags everywhere they go. As a general rule, the United States reacts strongly to any Iranian presence in Latin America and tends to actively engage host countries to ramp up cooperation and monitoring of Iranian companies and personnel in the region. The same heightened attention is paid to organizations with histories of terrorist activity, like Hezbollah. Second, as friendly as Mexico is as an intelligence environment for the United States, it is equally unfriendly to U.S. enemies. The Mexican government has every reason to be hostile to a foreign entity hoping to launch an attack on the United States from Mexican soil. The reasons the United States would want to prevent such an attack are obvious, but Mexico is also inherently vulnerable both territorially and economically to any shifts by its northern neighbor. Should Mexico become a serious transit point for terrorist operatives seeking to attack the United States, the country would be subject to rapid U.S. intervention. This brings us to the potential wild card in the equation: the cartels. Infamous for being especially violent and unscrupulous, Los Zetas are known to be active throughout the region in attacking rival cartels and Mexican security forces, human smuggling and drug trafficking. On its face, it might seem that the Zetas – or their competitor cartel, the Sinaloa Federation – could have the capacity to cooperate with trans-border terrorist campaigns. If nothing else, one might imagine, they could do it for the money. Looking more closely, however, any such plan would be exceedingly ill-conceived. Despite participating in a wide array of illegal and often violent activities, the Zetas and all other cartels in Mexico are ultimately business organizations with long-term strategic goals. These are not organizations that are looking to make easy money or become involved in anyone else’s violent political statements. Mexican drug cartels are already facing challenges – struggling with one another and with the Mexican government for control over transportation routes that will allow them to transit cocaine from South America to the United States. Any foray into international terrorism would be bad for business <http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20110817-buffer-between-mexican-cartels-and-us-government> . The United States and Mexico would focus every available asset on dismantling any organization that engaged in international terrorism. With deep links into Mexico and close physical proximity, the United States alone could dismantle a single network fairly rapidly. With cooperation from the Mexican government, it could do it even faster. But the risks do not end there. If an individual or smaller group of individuals even loosely associated with a cartel attempted to cooperate with international terrorist groups, they would be risking not only the wrath of the U.S. and Mexican governments, but also the wrath of the cartels. Any group of individuals risking the safety of the cartel transportation networks would quickly be hunted down and turned over to the authorities by the cartels themselves in order to avoid inviting the fury of the U.S. or Mexican government on the cartel as a whole. It is a consistent pattern with Mexican drug gangs that perpetrators of high-profile, politically costly attacks are rapidly turned over to Mexican authorities by their own compatriots. This is not to say that it would be impossible to hire Mexican criminals to attack U.S. targets. But any plan to use Mexican drug cartels to carry out attacks against the United States would threaten the very existence of the cartel. And with the United States, Mexico and the cartels all united against the possibility, any attempt to do so would be extremely unlikely to succeed. 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