ISIS may have bought nuclear material from smugglers

Concerns about terrorism against the U.S. grew this week on revelations that the FBI and international authorities have tracked yet failed to completely undermine several attempted sales by smugglers of radioactive material.

In the most recent case, in February the agencies discovered a smuggler with large amounts of radioactive cesium was seeking a buyer from the Islamic State, according to an Associated Press investigation.

In the February case as in earlier cases, the authorities were able to identify and arrest suspects involved in early stages of negotiations between smugglers and buyers, but top-level operatives were able to evade capture, and the agencies do not know if smugglers may have been able to conclude the nuclear deals.

A 2011 case also shows the potential for nuclear material falling into terrorist’s hands. In that case, authorities taped conversations between a middleman for a smuggler and a buyer from the Sudan. The sale was to involve weapons-grade uranium and blueprints for making a dirty bomb.

The taped conversations reveal that the smuggler was intent on selling to an Islamic buyer “because they will bomb the Americans.” In this case, as in the others, the middleman was captured but the top operative evaded arrest.

The situation is more challenging than ever, given the recent tensions between Russia and the U.S. Without Russian cooperation, it is more difficult to track that country’s large stores of radioactive materials, much of which is believed to have reached the black market.