April 30, 2026 | The National Interest
To Squeeze Hezbollah, Look to West Africa
With Iran blockaded and weakened, Hezbollah may be increasingly dependent on its West African financial schemes.
April 30, 2026 | The National Interest
To Squeeze Hezbollah, Look to West Africa
With Iran blockaded and weakened, Hezbollah may be increasingly dependent on its West African financial schemes.
Excerpt
Iran’s economy is buckling. Under a US blockade, the Islamic Republic faces its most severe economic distress in years. For Hezbollah, which has long benefited from Iran’s expansive largesse, this begets a serious question: how to replace its financial patron. The terror group’s best option outside the Middle East is its West Africa network.
The United States is now in a global economic war with Iran and its proxies. It should use every economic tool at its disposal—diplomacy, technical assistance, and financial regulation—to squeeze Hezbollah and Iran.
Hezbollah has spent decades cultivating financial networks among the Lebanese diaspora in Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Senegal. These are not peripheral operations. US authorities have identified Côte d’Ivoire’s roughly 100,000-strong Lebanese community as the primary conduit for Hezbollah money transfers in Africa. The mechanisms are well-documented: trade-based money laundering through used car exports, diamond smuggling, real estate, construction, organized crime, and drug smuggling. The money flows from Africa to Lebanon.
The Trump administration has rightly prioritized maximum pressure on Iran and its proxies. But that pressure campaign has a gap. The US government is not paying sufficient attention to West Africa—even as it may be increasingly important for Iran and Hezbollah. At the same time, there is an opportunity for the United States. West African countries want deeper relations with America on trade, security, and governance. The United States should use this appetite in West Africa for more engagement—along with talks with Lebanon—to shut down these networks now.
Daniel Swift is a senior research analyst for economics, finance, and trade for the Center on Economic and Financial Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He is a retired US diplomat and was most recently the Acting Coordinator for Prosper Africa—a presidential-level national security initiative to increase two-way trade and investment between the US and Africa.