Ed Royce: “I thank the gentlelady for yielding. I would like to begin by thanking Jeff Duncan and his staff, as well, for their…”

“I thank the gentlelady for yielding. I would like to begin by thanking Jeff Duncan and his staff, as well, for their good work on this legislation. But I would remind the Members, in terms of Iranian activity in this hemisphere, we think what first comes to mind is the attack in the 1990s in Argentina. But more recently, Hezbollah has penetrated our borders. One example I would give to you is Mahmoud Kourani, trained by Iranian intelligence. He paid a bribe in order to get to Mexico from Beirut. Once in Mexico, he paid a second bribe, this time to a cartel group, in order to have himself inserted into a special compartment in the back of a car. The reason Mahmoud Kourani is important is because it was his brother who was in charge of security in Israel during the Hezbollah war. I was there at the time. I saw those missiles that were ordered launched by Hezbollah into the town of Haifa. Haifa was under attack. There were some 600 casualties in that hospital that were a direct result of those Iranian and Syrian missiles that were being fired on the hospital-- frankly, one of the targets--but fired on that town, fired on the residential sections of that city. So the brother was caught coming into the United States. Actually, he was caught near Detroit. He's now serving time. There were some 50 other Hezbollah operatives who were also discovered here.…”