'Hizbullah could hit US harder than al-Qaida'

Here's an excerpt from the Jerusalem Post:

Hizbullah has a greater capability of staging a mass casualty terrorist attack in the US than al-Qaida does, and military action against Iran might trigger exactly that, according to a top counter-terrorism official with the New York police.

"Hizbullah at the strategic level, with its state sponsors, more or less decided not to attack the United States interests directly in the continental United States at all," Deputy Commissioner for Counterterrorism Richard Falkenrath of the New York Police Department told the Washington Institute for Near East Affairs this week. "But our assessment is, if they ever change their minds, they have the capacity to inflict terrible damage on the United States, and I worry about that a lot. We haven't seen it yet, but I don't like to be in a position where our defense lies in the strategic decision of a terrorist organization."

Falkenrath added that he had seen various intelligence assessments on what would cause Hizbullah to change that strategic decision and that "direct US military operations against the Hizbullah leadership are regarded as one," as well as attacks against its state sponsor, Iran.

He suggested that the Lebanese terrorist group has focused its violent acts abroad because "they would have too much heat on them if they did attack the United States, and they can accomplish most of their interests without it."

Another terrorism expert, Daniel Byman of the Brookings Institution's Saban Center, said Hizbullah had so far calculated that it wouldn't be worth the blowback from the United States when its main agenda focuses on Israel.

"From their point of view, the United States is a place you raise money and can use for propaganda," he explained....

Read the rest here.