The United States on Thursday imposed new sanctions on an alleged financing network linked to Hezbollah, while highlighting the Lebanese armed group’s close ties to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.
The US Treasury Department said it had amended Hezbollah’s legal designation as a terrorist organisation to state 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, reports AFP.
The change comes as Washington facilitates direct negotiations between Israel and Lebanon, which technically remain at war. Hezbollah has rejected the talks.
The US designated Hezbollah as a “foreign terrorist organisation” in 1997 and updated its designation in 2001 to “specially designated global terrorist”.
A State Department official said the new redesignation “specifies that Hezbollah is an Iranian proxy, not a stand-alone operation as implied by the previous designation”.
“This underscores that Hezbollah operates with little to no regard for Lebanese sovereignty, the Lebanese people, or the Lebanese state.”
Hezbollah brought Lebanon into the broader Middle East war in March by firing rockets at Israel in support of Iran, its main backer.
Israel responded with a heavy air campaign and ground invasion that Lebanese authorities say have killed more than 4,300 people.
“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 State Department official said, describing Hezbollah as “an extension” of the latter.
“It is not a Lebanese resistance movement,” as Hezbollah describes itself, the official said.
The latest sanctions target 10 people allegedly involved in a network that transfers cash to Hezbollah, which has already faced numerous US sanctions, according to the Treasury Department.
“The network utilizes 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.
