US targets alleged Hezbollah financing network with new sanctions

The United States has announced new sanctions targeting an alleged Hezbollah financing network, while emphasising the Lebanese group’s close operational ties to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

The Treasury Department said in a statement that Hezbollah’s legal designation as a terrorist organisation has been amended to specify that the group operates in “service to the Iranian regime under the command of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps,” particularly the elite Quds Force.

Washington designated Hezbollah as a “foreign terrorist organisation” in 1997 and updated its designation in 2001 to classify the group as a “specially designated global terrorist.”

The new redesignation “specifies that Hezbollah is an Iranian proxy, not a stand-alone operation as implied by the previous designation,” a State Department official said. “This underscores that Hezbollah operates with little to no regard for Lebanese sovereignty, the Lebanese people, or the Lebanese state.”

“This action builds on years of US designations that have repeatedly documented the operational, financial, and logistical integration between Hizballah and the IRGC-QF,” the official said, describing Hezbollah as “an extension” of the IRGC’s Quds Force.

“It is not a Lebanese resistance movement,” as Hezbollah describes itself, the official added.

The latest sanctions target 10 individuals who are allegedly part of a network involved in transferring cash to Hezbollah, which has previously been subjected to numerous US sanctions, according to the Treasury Department.

“The network utilises couriers travelling on commercial airline flights between Lebanon, Turkey, the UAE, and Iran to move up to hundreds of millions of dollars between jurisdictions, providing an avenue outside the formal financial system for Hezbollah to obtain foreign currency and evade sanctions,” the Treasury statement said.

The US measures therefore target not only the individuals allegedly involved in the network but also what Washington describes as an informal financial channel used by Hezbollah to move large sums of money across borders while circumventing international sanctions.

By Tamilla Hasanova