NEW YORK: The Islamic State (ISIS) claims it has plans to buy a nuclear weapon from Pakistan and smuggle it into the U.S., using drug and human smuggling routes already in use by Mexican and South American drug cartels.
In ISIS’s online magazine Dabiq, in an article entitled, “The Perfect Storm,” apparently written and narrated by British captive photojournalist John Cantlie, ISIS says that using “billions of dollars” it has banked, the group could purchase a nuclear device from corrupt Pakistani officials and send it on its way to explode in the U.S., the Daily Mail reports.
The bomb could be smuggled overland through Libya into Nigeria along already active drug smuggling routes into Europe, using the ISIS-allied terrorist group Boko Haram.
After that, the bomb would be transported by boat to Central America and then through Mexico, Breitbart News reports.
From there, Cantlie said, “It’s just a quick hop through a smuggling tunnel and hey, presto, they’re mingling with another 12 million ‘illegal’ aliens in America with a nuclear bomb in the trunk of their car.”
With eerie prescience, Gen. John Kelly, at the time commander of the U.S. Southern Command, testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee in March, warned that ISIS could utilize Latin American drug smuggling networks to move personnel and weapons into the U.S., Breitbart News reported.
“I am deeply concerned that smuggling networks are a vulnerability that terrorists could seek to exploit,” Breitbart News reports Kelly said.
“While there is not yet any indication that the criminal networks involved in human and drug trafficking are interested in supporting the efforts of terrorist groups, these networks could unwittingly, or even wittingly, facilitate the movement of terrorist operatives or weapons of mass destruction toward our borders, potentially undetected and almost completely unrestricted.”
“Perhaps such a scenario is far-fetched but it’s the sum of all fears for western intelligence agencies and it’s infinitely more possible today than it was just one year ago,” Cantlie wrote, the Daily Mail reported. He noted that even if a nuclear weapon were not available, ISIS could use those routes to smuggle tons of conventional explosives into America.
“The Islamic State make no secret of the fact they have every intention of attacking America on its home soil and they’re not going to mince about with two mujahidin taking down a dozen casualties if it originates from the caliphate. ‘They’ll be looking to do something big, something that would make any past operation look like a squirrel shoot, and the more groups that pledge allegiance, the more possible it becomes to pull off something truly epic.”
Anthony Glees, director of the Center for Security and Intelligence Studies at the University of Buckingham, said it would be “suicidal” for both Pakistan and ISIS to sell or obtain a nuclear weapon, leading to “immediate military intervention.”
He added, “ISIS is swaggering and posturing. It is taunting both us in the West but also other Middle Eastern states and embarrassing Pakistan at the same time,” the Daily Mail reported.
