Trump administration imposes new sanctions on Hezbollah

The Trump administration on Thursday imposed new sanctions on Hezbollah and redesignated the group as an Iranian proxy.

The US Treasury Department imposed sanctions on 10 individuals alleged to be “part of a network responsible for transferring cash” to Hezbollah.

“The network utilizes couriers travelling on commercial airline flights between Lebanon, Turkiye, the UAE, and Iran to move up to hundreds of millions of dollars between jurisdictions, providing an avenue outside the formal financial system for Hizballah to obtain foreign currency and evade sanctions,” Treasury said in a statement.

The redesignation, meanwhile, is meant to show that Hezbollah is acting on behalf of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force (IRGC-QF) and that it is “not a stand-alone operation,” a State Department official said. Both Hezbollah and the IRGC-QF have long been categorized as specially designated global terrorists.

“This determination formally recognizes that Hizballah’s military operations, external security activities, and major financing networks function as an extension of the IRGC-QF, Iran’s primary instrument for conducting terrorism beyond its borders. It is not a Lebanese resistance movement,” the official said.

Hezbollah is both a political party and an armed group in Lebanon. The redesignation comes as the administration worked to broker peace talks between Israel and Lebanon.

- CNN