US hits Hezbollah with more sanctions, says Iran controls it

The United States announced new sanctions Thursday against an alleged Hezbollah financing network, while highlighting the Lebanese armed group’s close ties to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.

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

The change comes as the US facilitates direct negotiations between Israel and Lebanon, which remain technically at war. Hezbollah rejects these talks.

Washington designated Hezbollah as a “foreign terrorist organization” in 1997, and in 2001 updated its label to a “specially designated global terrorist” group.

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.”

Hezbollah drew Lebanon into the broader Middle East war in March with rocket fire at Israel in support of its backer Iran.

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, calling Hezbollah “an extension” of the latter.

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

The new sanctions target 10 people who are allegedly part of a network that transfers cash to Hezbollah, which has already been punished with US sanctions many times, the Treasury statement said.

“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 statement said.