The U.S. Treasury department on Thursday designated four top members of Hezbollah, noting that they had conducted operations for the Iran-backed organization across the Middle East and North Africa. The department further noted that, inasmuch as those operations had been both global and related to terror, they were difficult to square with claims – made by Hezbollah and by some Western foreign policy analysts – that the group was an indigenous Lebanese terror organization:
The designations belie Hezbollah’s claim to be a domestic “resistance” organization, the department said in a statement… David S. Cohen, undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, said Hezbollah “remains a significant global terrorist threat.” The designation means U.S. citizens are prohibited from conducting any transactions with the individuals and that any of the men’s assets within U.S. jurisdiction are frozen.
The U.S. and its allies have increasingly sought financial means to pressure the organization.
Last June Treasury designated four Lebanese nationals for conducting Hezbollah-linked operations in western Africa, describing a funding and recruitment network that the Iran-backed group had developed in the area.
Around the same time, members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) unanimously decided to impose sweeping sanctions against Hezbollah and Lebanon. Experts were explicit at the time that, if the GCC countries decided to get physical with Lebanon, they “could suffocate the country.”
Hezbollah’s willingness to endanger Lebanon’s economic and financial stability in pursuit of its global terror campaigns, often if not exclusively to promote Iranian interests, has been used by analysts to ridicule the suggestion that Hezbollah promotes Lebanese interests:
The proposition that targeting Hezbollah would negatively impact Lebanon presupposes that the group currently contributes to stability. Such a view requires quite the suspension of disbelief. In reality, Hezbollah has thoroughly subverted the country and its citizens in virtually every aspect. Left unmolested, Hezbollah not only undermines Lebanon’s security, institutions, and political system, but is also on track to compromise its foreign relations, ruin its financial system, and destroy whatever remains of its social cohesion.
[Photo: LALLA – ALI / Flickr]