It is time for Europe to cease minimizing the threat from Hezbollah and to hold the group legally responsible for its actions. Europe should designate all of Hezbollah as a terrorist organization. The French justice system should ensure that as the Operation Cedar trial unfolds, Hezbollah’s illicit activities, which continue unabated in Europe, are exposed, punished, and constrained.
Congress and the administration maintain a somewhat rare bipartisan consensus on punishing Iran and its proxies directly. The overwhelming support in the House and Senate for the Hizballah International Financing Prevention Amendments Act, which the president signed in October, illustrates that both parties unanimously approved more pressure on Hezbollah. This legislation requires the administration to sanction Hezbollah’s fundraising and recruitment networks, as well as the instrumentalities of foreign states moving funds to the group. Entities and individuals in Iraq and Lebanon can be expected to attract increased attention.
Current U.S. policy is based on the notion that strengthening Lebanese “state institutions” is the way to counter Hezbollah. But when Hezbollah controls these institutions, Washington should not look the other way.
Taken together, these efforts will pressure Hezbollah’s global operations. It is all part of a full-court press orchestrated by the administration and Congress to dry up Hezbollah’s illicit finance networks, prosecute its operatives, and the broader effort to deny Hezbollah’s patron Iran from funding its global terror activity.
Over the past fifteen years, Hezbollah’s involvement in transnational organized crime has evolved into a multi-billion dollar global enterprise endorsed and coordinated by the group’s top leaders. Hezbollah’s production and sale of counterfeit medicines such as Captagon — a powerful amphetamine — is well documented. So are its growing involvement in cocaine trafficking, and its extensive and enduring ties with drug cartels.