Think Hamas is just a Gaza problem? Think again. For decades, Washington’s bloated analytical class and the State Department’s Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs have churned out repetitive monographs on Hezbollah’s commercial empires and Iranian cultural centers in Latin America. Officials pat themselves on the back for tracking old threats while remaining utterly blind to Hamas.

This bureaucratic inertia represents a fatal strategic error. The Iranian-funded Sunni terrorist organization has quietly established a functional secondary front right in America’s backyard — moving cash, radicalizing university campuses, and probing for sanctuary. By ignoring this expanding footprint, Washington leaves a massive, dangerous rear area completely unchallenged. Hamas undeniably lacks the global logistics of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps or the international narcotics empire that Hezbollah enjoys. However, terrorist operatives do not need to reinvent the wheel. Hamas piggybacks on the same porous geography, lawless criminal corridors, and ideological openings that its patrons in Tehran already paved.