Steven Emerson: With Rising Influence Hezbollah Stands Ready to Exploit Chaos in Lebanon/ستيفن إيمرسون: مع تصاعد نفوذه يقف حزب الله على أهبة الاستعداد لاستغلال الفوضى في لبنان/Fahim Al-Hamed: Why Does The World Keep Silent Over Hizbullah’s Drug Trafficking And Money Laundering Activities?فهيم الحامد/ميمري: لماذا يسكت العالم على أنشطة حزب الله في تهريب المخدرات وتبييض الأموال؟
Saudi Journalist, Fahim Al-Hamed, Why Does The World Keep Silent Over Hizbullah’s Drug Trafficking And Money Laundering Activities? MEMRI/July 19, 2021 الصحفي السعودي فهيم الحامد/ميمري: لماذا يسكت العالم على أنشطة حزب الله في تهريب المخدرات وتبييض الأموال؟
With Rising Influence, Hezbollah Stands Ready to Exploit Chaos in Lebanon Steven Emerson/Algemeiner/July 19/2021 ستيفن إيمرسون: مع تصاعد نفوذه يقف حزب الله على أهبة الاستعداد لاستغلال الفوضى في لبنان Lebanon is going through one of the gravest economic depressions in modern history. More than half of the country’s population now lives in poverty, and the country’s currency has plummeted by 90%. Fuel shortages have led to fights at gas stations and the shutdown of critical power stations.
The Middle Eastern state is now on the brink of a “social explosion.” This dire warning from caretaker Prime Minister Hassan Diab was issued on July 6 as he desperately called for international help to save “the Lebanese from death” and “prevent the demise” of his country.
Instead of taking some responsibility for Lebanon’s economic crisis, Hezbollah — the country’s most dominant political force — is looking to exploit the crisis and further expand its influence.
Israel has answered Diab’s call for help and formally offered humanitarian assistance to Lebanon through the United Nation’s peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon (UNIFIL). But Hezbollah is expected to block any form of Israeli assistance to Lebanon, further illustrating the terrorist organization’s obedience to Iran’s extremist Shia ideology, to the detriment of the Lebanese population.
As an Israeli, as a Jew, and as a human being, my heart aches seeing the images of people going hungry on the streets of Lebanon,” Israel’s Defense Minister Benny Gantz said earlier this month, adding that Israel is “ready to act and to encourage other countries to extend a helping hand to Lebanon so that it will once again flourish and emerge from its state of crisis.”
Instead of focusing on how to remedy his country’s woes, Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah deflected blame towards the United States during a July 6 event called “Palestine is Victorious,” and highlighted his group’s main goal of fighting Israel, the Jerusalem Post reported.
“When in the Axis of Resistance, we talk about the ‘liberation of Palestine,’ we are not talking about dreams or fantasies,” Nasrallah said, adding “we do not exaggerate our goals, and this is one of the most important elements of the resistance force.”
Nasrallah also dehumanized Jews and Israelis: “There are no people in the Israeli entity, they are all occupiers and settlers.”
As a terrorist organization that is heavily involved in Lebanon’s governance, Hezbollah reaps the benefits of receiving state-like legitimacy while lacking accountability to its people. This is the assessment of a new report published last month by Lina Khatib at the United Kingdom-based think tank Chatham House.
Hezbollah has gradually increased its power and influence over Lebanese institutions and society, taking advantage of various crises and vulnerabilities in the state system in recent years. Should the Lebanese state collapse, Hezbollah is in a strong position to assume even more control.
Other political parties similarly jockey for power, Khatib wrote, but Hezbollah is better at exercising control among its political partners.
Unlike other power brokers, Hezbollah has de facto control over key border crossings and critical infrastructure. On Saturday, Israeli security authorities announced that they foiled an effort to funnel 43 weapons and ammunition (worth roughly $820,000) through a Lebanese border crossing that Hezbollah controls into northern Israel.
Hezbollah also uses Beirut’s port to facilitate drug trafficking and arms shipments, including explosives material, without state oversight of its activities or storehouses.
Last August, a massive quantity of ammonium nitrate detonated in Beirut’s seaport, killing more than 200 people and injuring more than 6,000. Hezbollah has been accused of corruption and negligence following the blast, given that the group maintains significant control over Lebanon’s ports. A Lebanese government investigation into the blast has failed to bring any senior official to account, and is marred by a justice system plagued by corruption.
Beyond territorial and institutional control, Hezbollah has attained the unique right to keep its own arsenal of weapons and is enabled to “use force at its own discretion under the pretext of national security,” Khatib wrote.
In May 2008, for example, the Lebanese government attempted to disband Hezbollah’s independent telecommunications network. The terrorist organization responded with an armed takeover of Beirut, which lead to a government crisis and a new unity administration.
For the first time, Hezbollah and its partners were given formal veto power in government affairs. Since then, Hezbollah has regularly relied on force to suppress its political opponents, and increasingly pursued independent operations that serve its narrow interests. A prominent activist who was openly critical of Hezbollah, Lokman Slim, was assassinated recently in an attack widely seen as the terror group’s way of silencing its critics.
Hezbollah’s decade-long intervention in Syria’s civil war is another case in point. The terror group sent fighters to Syria largely at Iran’s behest, seeking to secure its regional arms supply route. The organization has consolidated an arsenal of more than 130,000 rockets and missiles that directly threaten Israeli national security. The IDF anticipates that Hezbollah could launch between 1,000-3,000 missiles daily for over a week in the first week of a future war between Israel and the terrorist group.
But intervening in Syria has invited jihadist attacks and higher refugee flows into Lebanon, further destabilizing an already fragile country. Instead of prioritizing Lebanese domestic concerns, Hezbollah expanded its external operations across the region, including in Iraq and Yemen.
Hezbollah similarly continues to strengthen its presence internationally, using regions in Latin America and Europe as a base for drug trafficking, arms smuggling, fundraising, recruitment, espionage, and terrorist operations.
Hezbollah does not have an incentive to formally seize control over the Lebanese state, despite having the capabilities to do so, Khatib’s Chatham House report concluded. Hezbollah prefers maintaining a calibrated level of indirect influence to avoid full accountability.
However, as Lebanon continues to descend towards potential state collapse, Hezbollah’s incentives could change. The group’s leadership could take even more power instead of standing by. Western governments therefore need to prepare seriously for a scenario whereby an Iran-backed terrorist organization consolidates further control over a country on Israel’s doorstep.
Steven Emerson is the director of the Investigative Project on Terrorism.
The opinions presented by Algemeiner bloggers are solely theirs and do not represent those of The Algemeiner, its publishers or editors. If you would like to share your views with a blog post on The Algemeiner, please be in touch through our Contact page.
Lebanon is going through one of the gravest economic depressions in modern history. More than half of the country’s population now lives in poverty, and the country’s currency has plummeted by 90%. Fuel shortages have led to fights at gas stations and the shutdown of critical power stations.
The Middle Eastern state is now on the brink of a “social explosion.” This dire warning from caretaker Prime Minister Hassan Diab was issued on July 6 as he desperately called for international help to save “the Lebanese from death” and “prevent the demise” of his country.
Saudi Journalist, Fahim Al-Hamed, Why Does The World Keep Silent Over Hizbullah’s Drug Trafficking And Money Laundering Activities? MEMRI/July 19, 2021 الصحفي السعودي فهيم الحامد/ميمري: لماذا يسكت العالم على أنشطة حزب الله في تهريب المخدرات وتبييض الأموال؟
Intro In a June 13, 2021 article, Fahim Al-Hamed, deputy editor of the Saudi state daily ‘Okaz, described the steps taken by Hizbullah to make up for the current decline in its funding. This decline stems from the financial collapse of Iran – the chief source of funding for this organization and other terrorist groups – due to the strict sanctions imposed on this country. According to Al-Hamed, Hizbullah has responded to the crisis by turning to its network of drug dealers, businessmen and bankers, who, deceiving the global oversight systems, transfer drug money from South America through Europe to Lebanon and Syria; moreover, the organization also manufactures and sells drugs in Lebanon and Syria themselves.
Stating that the entire world is knows exactly what Hizbullah is – a murderous terrorist organization which also engages in drug trafficking and money laundering, and which holds Lebanon hostage – Al-Hamed asks why the superpowers remain silent over the crimes of this organization.
It should be noted that, in April 2021, Saudi customs authorities at the port of Jeddah announced that they had intercepted a large shipment of drugs hidden inside pomegranates arriving from Lebanon. Many political elements in Lebanon, and in the Lebanese and Saudi press, held Hizbullah responsible for the smuggling attempt.[1] Since then the Saudi authorities have intercepted many other drug shipments, hidden inside oranges, medical equipment, and more.[2]
The following are excerpts from Al-Hamed’s article.[3]
“After its funding sources dried up, and the economy of Iran – the chief financier of the militias and agents of terror in the region – collapsed, Hizbullah started looking for other, unusual sources of funding to deal with the extreme financial crisis it was suffering, and therefore turned to [its activities of] drug trafficking, money laundering and the amassing of explosives in South America and Africa. But the question that arises in the face of this farce and this terrorist militia is the following. If everyone knows that [Hizbullah] is an organization that relies on violence, killing, bloodshed and terror, and if the entire world is convinced that it controls Lebanon, which has become a hostage of the organization’s mini-state – why do the powers remain so silent in the face of its terrorist crimes? And why the eager attempts to pamper the Ayatollah regime [in Iran] and remove the sanctions from it, given that it is the chief source of funding for Hizbullah?
“The actions of the militias loyal to the Qom regime [i.e., Iran] are diverse, and include drug trafficking, money laundering and the cultivating of terror and sectarian projects… As the Iranian aid receded, the militias turned to ensuring their sources of funding by smuggling and trading in drugs throughout the world. Hizbullah businessmen turned to the illegal gem trade, as well as to money laundering and drug trafficking… According to observers, the organization, deceiving the SWIFT and IBAN financial systems , transfers funds from South America, where its businessmen are active, to certain European countries that are lax in their oversight of funding sources, and eventually to Lebanese banks owned by businessmen loyal to the organization. This activity relies on [Shi’ite] businessmen in various countries who believe in [the ideology Iran’s] Rule of the Jurisprudent. The Columbian drug cartel and the Nigeria-Niger-Chad triangle have become the nexus of this activity, being an essential route through which the organization transfers its profits to banks in Europe and from there to Lebanon, for the Captagon[4] factories are located in Lebanon and Syria and that is where the drug trade takes place.
“The [British] Independent daily in Persian published an article on senior figures in Hizbullah and other Iran[-backed] militias who are involved in drug manufacture and trafficking in Syria. The network they formed, which manufactures drugs, launders the proceeds and uses them to purchase arms for the terrorist Hizbullah, started to emerge in the 1990s, when Imad Mughniyeh, head of the External Security Organization,[5] which is responsible for laundering drug money, worked to establish this route, in coordination with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps [IRGC], as a primary funding source, in addition to the funds provided to Hizbullah by the Ayatollah regime. The Iranian regime, which is under the sword of sanctions, has no choice but to rely on aid from Hizbullah, which grows drugs, smuggles them to neighboring countries, launders the drug money and transfers it to the IRGC, thus strengthening the terror culture which is rooted in drugs and money laundering.”
[1] See MEMRI Inquiry & Analysis Series No. 1573 – Saudi And Lebanese Accusations: Hizbullah Is Operating A Network For Smuggling Drugs To Saudi Arabia And The Region; It Has Turned Lebanon Into A Base For Exporting Drugs And Terrorism – April 28, 2021.
[2] Elnashra.com, June 15, 2021; Al-Jumhouriya (Lebanon), June 18, 2021, June 29, 2021; Al-Nahar (Lebanon), June 26, 2021; Alarabiya.net, June 30, 2021.
[3] ‘Okaz (Saudi Arabia), June 13, 2021.
[4] Captagon is a brand name for the amphetamine drug fenethylline hydrochloride.
[5] Hizbullah’s External Security Organization is responsible for planning, coordinating and carrying out terror attacks outside Lebanon, primarily against Israeli and American targets, and operates cells worldwide. In October 2017 the U.S. offered a reward of up to $7 million for information leading to the capture of its current head, Talal Hamiyah.
