Washington imposes sanctions against Hezbollah for laundering Iranian funds

The Trump administration has announced new sanctions targeting financial figures linked to Hezbollah for allegedly using both licensed and unlicensed currency exchange offices to launder money originating from Iran.

The US Treasury Department revealed the new measures on November 6, noting that Iran’s IRGC-Quds Force has transferred more than $1 billion to Lebanon’s Hezbollah since January, Caliber.Az reports.

Most of these funds, the department reported, were funnelled through currency exchange companies.

The Treasury stated that Hezbollah utilizes these resources to support its militant factions, rebuild its terrorist infrastructure, and resist the Lebanese government’s attempts to assert full sovereign control across the country.

“Lebanon has an opportunity to be free, prosperous, and secure—but that can only happen if Hezbollah is fully disarmed and cut off from Iran’s funding and control,” Undersecretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence John Hurley said in a statement.

The sanctions align with Washington’s broader strategy toward Hezbollah, following its agreement with the Lebanese government earlier this summer to work toward the group’s disarmament. 

In August, under significant US pressure and amid concerns about escalating Israeli strikes, the Lebanese government instructed the army to develop a plan to disarm Hezbollah by year’s end. Officials in Beirut said the initiative was part of implementing the US-brokered ceasefire agreement of November 2024, which ended more than a year of hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel.

However, in recent weeks, the army’s failure to move forward with disarmament prompted US Ambassador Tom Barrack—who serves as Washington’s envoy for Syria and ambassador to Türkiye, while managing some diplomatic efforts with Beirut—to describe Lebanon as “a failed state,” adding that forcibly disarming the group “would not be possible.”

By Nazrin Sadigova