If we are attacked with WMD we will not respond with nukes: Federal authorities monitoring Hizbullah cells in several U.S. cities

GERTZ:

The United States has increased its domestic monitoring of Hizbullah.

Officials acknowledged that Hizbullah was using the United States to raise money for operations in both Lebanon and other parts of the world. They said Hizbullah helped set up fronts through American citizens in several parts of the United States, including Florida, Michigan and New York.

"There are members of Hizbullah in the U.S. who are capable of being activated to carry out terrorist attacks," Steven Emerson, executive director of the Investigative Project on Terrorism and a consultant to the U.S. law enforcement community, said. "However, these agents have refrained from attacking the homeland. In the case of hostilities breaking out with Iran, all bets are off, however."

Federal authorities have identified Hizbullah-aligned cells in several cities in the United States. In February 2010, four Florida men were charged in a plot to relay millions of dollars to Hizbullah through a shopping center in Paraguay. The suspects were said to have been working with Mohammed Yusef Abdullah, identified as Hizbullah's main liasion in South America.

These guys have obviously been reading Vince Flynn

Other Hizbullah cells were identified in Detroit, Philadelphia and New York City. In November 2009, four men, including a Brooklyn resident, Mussa Ali Hamdan, were charged with conspiracy to export 1,200 guns to Syria as well as sell forged passports and counterfeit currency to raise money for Hizbullah. All four have been deemed fugitives.

"This is the proverbial tip of the iceberg." Emerson said in an interview with the U.S. television network Fox News.

Officials said Hizbullah has been working with Iran in operations in the United States. They said Hizbullah and Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps were sharing agents and fronts in an effort to acquire funds and technology.

"It poses a continuous danger to New York City," New York City Deputy Police Commissioner David Cohen said.

A leading U.S. analyst on Middle East insurgency groups, Walid Phares, said Hizbullah maintains a range of cells in the United States. Phares, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, asserted that the U.S. intelligence and law enforcement community has underestimated Hizbullah's capabilities to attack numerous targets simultaneously.

"You have those Hizbullah supporters who would rise to strike against limited targets, tactical targets but then you have those units that are part of the central force of Hizbullah which have been inserted inside the United States -- probably inside major cities of America," Phares said. "So that when instructions will come they want to wreak havoc inside this country."

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