In January, French counterterrorist commandos – Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure – raided a terrorist safe-house in Paris and nabbed six men, including two Lebanese and one Syrian. In doing so, the commandos disrupted a major Hezbollah plot to kill or kidnap international leaders in several European cities. A plan of this magnitude – to be carried out far beyond Lebanese borders – could never have been executed without the assistance of other Islamic fundamentalist groups and Jihadist sympathizers, not necessarily Hezbollah, operating in the region.

In a recent conversation with Human Events editor Jed Babbin, Gen. David Petraeus – commander of Multi-National Force—Iraq, who currently has his hands full fighting both Shiia insurgents and Al Qaeda in Iraq – said:

“We do, with a pretty high degree of confidence, we know that the Iranians continued to train militia extremists, the so-called ‘special groups’ that are supported by the Iranian Qods Force, that are literally funded, trained, equipped, and directed by the Qods Force with help from Lebanese Hezbollah. And you may recall, we captured the deputy commander of Lebanese Hezbollah Department 2800. We captured the head of the special groups. We’ve captured other very senior leaders in those organizations in recent weeks.”

Then there is the previously mentioned coordination between Al Qaeda and Hezbollah: Despite their differences, these two have been cooperating in varying degrees since at least the 1990’s. They were discovered to be working together again last month when a 35-man terrorist sleeper cell was discovered and shut down in Morocco. The members of the cell had received tactical training by Al Qaeda operating in Afghanistan and Pakistan. They had received weapons and explosives training by Hezbollah based in Lebanon. Hezbollah, financed by Iran, also helped fund the North African cell. The cell-members – businessmen, politicians, a police official, a journalist, and others – were planning to assassinate senior civilian and military leaders, as well as Jewish Moroccans.

Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, their sponsors and subsidiaries (to include their allies, apologists, and sympathizers) are increasingly working together throughout the Middle and Far East, in Africa, in Europe, and, yes, even the Americas to recruit foot soldiers, probe Western defenses, and attack us at any weak point in those defenses.

“Different groups will coalesce and align against conventional wisdom,” Dr. J. Peter Pham, a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, told me during a recent interview for Human Events. “What most analysts view as the Shiia-Sunni divide is papered over as militants and extremists will take money from anyone, and build alliances of convenience against their common enemy.”

The most disturbing particular in all of this is that almost no one – not the MSM, nor Barack or Hillary, nor anyone hoping to gain or retain a Congressional seat – is talking about the threat, except to downplay the danger, or say that the threat is nothing more than a handful of bad apples who have hijacked the “noble religion” of Islam.

Most Americans I’ve spoken too say either the threat is not as great as counterterrorism experts say it is – that the threat is based on the so-called “politics of fear” – or that the threat is too complex and unwieldy to begin to understand.

The threat of Jihadist terrorism is huge and growing. The Jihadist groups – no matter what side of the Islamic ideological divide they hail from – are increasingly working together. And for the sake of our own existence we had best try to sever the lines that connect the dots, as we crush the dots.