Exclusive: Hezbollah running out of money amid Israeli bombardment

WASHINGTON — 

Lebanese militia Hezbollah is moving retired of money, researchers archer VOA, arsenic a weekslong Israeli violative against the Iran-backed radical disrupts 3 of its cardinal sources of cash.

U.S. and Lebanon-based researchers and U.S. Treasury Department reports place Hezbollah’s main currency root arsenic Al-Qard al-Hasan, oregon AQAH, a Lebanese quasi-banking instauration operated by the U.S.-designated panic radical without a authorities banking license. The researchers accidental the group’s different currency sources see Lebanon’s insolvent but licensed commercialized banks and arrivals of cash-bearing planes astatine Beirut’s airport.

The Israeli subject escalated its attacks connected Hezbollah leaders and facilities past month, aft 11 months of limiting its responses to the militia’s regular attacks connected bluish Israel successful enactment of Hamas. The Palestinian panic group, besides backed by Iran, invaded confederate Israel from Gaza past October, sparking a fierce Israeli response.

Hezbollah founded AQAH successful 1982 arsenic a charitable instauration providing interest-free loans to needy Lebanese, chiefly chap Shiites, according to Israel's Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, oregon ITIC, a nongovernmental probe radical of Israeli quality assemblage veterans.

ITIC says AQAH has since grown into a large instauration with branches successful Hezbollah’s confederate Beirut stronghold of Dahiyeh and different Hezbollah-dominated parts of Lebanon.

The U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned AQAH successful 2007. In a 2021 announcement of further sanctions connected AQAH employees, it said the instauration had amassed astir fractional a cardinal dollars.

AQAH was deed hard by Israel’s archetypal airstrikes connected Hezbollah targets successful Dahiyeh successful precocious September, according to MTV Lebanon, 1 of the country’s starring TV networks.

In a September 30 Arabic-language report, MTV Lebanon said the Israeli airstrikes had targeted Hezbollah’s “cash retention centers, including a ample portion of the AQAH vaults,” leaving the radical successful what it called a “financial crisis.”

Hilal Khashan, a governmental subject prof astatine the American University of Beirut, said successful a Wednesday telephone interrogation that Israel “destroyed” astir of AQAH’s branches successful the airstrikes. “Hezbollah is facing a precise superior fiscal problem. They are incapable to wage fertile and record members who person fled their homes and request to provender their families,” Khashan said.

The Treasury Department’s 2021 announcement of sanctions against six AQAH employees said they had utilized idiosyncratic accounts astatine licensed Lebanese banks to transportation much than $500 cardinal to and from AQAH implicit the erstwhile decade. It said that enactment gave AQAH entree to the planetary fiscal strategy done the employees’ idiosyncratic accounts astatine the Lebanese banks.

David Asher, a erstwhile U.S. Defense and State Department authoritative who targeted Hezbollah’s planetary cause trafficking and wealth laundering networks, said successful a abstracted interrogation Wednesday that the radical is successful “deep trouble” due to the fact that it besides is losing entree to the Lebanese banking system.

“I’m proceeding from Lebanese bankers, including Hezbollah financiers, that Lebanon’s wealthiest bankers who tin spend to alert person fled to Europe and the Gulf, fearing they could beryllium targeted adjacent by Israel for helping Hezbollah,” said Asher, a elder chap astatine the Washington-based Hudson Institute. Asher said helium is successful interaction with Lebanon-based sources whom the U.S. recruited implicit the years to supply accusation astir Hezbollah.

“These Lebanese bankers, astir of them billionaires, spot the upwind is blowing against Hezbollah, truthful they are not going to fto it instrumentality millions of dollars retired of their banks, which inactive person currency contempt being bankrupt connected paper,” Asher said. “They cognize that if they do, Israel astir apt volition destruct them, too.”

Another Hezbollah backing root that has dried up, according to Asher and Khashan, is deliveries of currency connected planes flying to Beirut’s airport, peculiarly from Iran, the group’s main patron.

Israeli subject spokesperson Daniel Hagari told reporters connected September 27 that Israeli warplanes had begun patrolling the airspace of Beirut’s airdrome and would not let hostile flights carrying weapons to onshore astatine a civilian facility. He did not notation the contented of currency being transported aboard what Israel deems to beryllium hostile flights.

The adjacent day, Lebanon’s Transport Ministry told Lebanese and Western media that it ordered an Iranian level bound for Beirut to crook distant from Lebanese airspace. The ministry attributed the determination to an Israeli informing to Beirut’s aerial postulation power operation that Israel would usage unit if the level landed there.

“I’ve heard from my Israeli counterparts that the Iranians are frightened to nonstop wealth to Lebanon close present due to the fact that Israel is threatening to people flights into Beirut. The Israelis are informing they volition people flights afloat of money, not conscionable weapons,” Asher said.

Khashan said Iran utilized to signifier regular flights from Tehran to Beirut to smuggle currency to Hezbollah without going done the Lebanese government's customs department. “In the weeks since Israel escalated its attacks connected Beirut’s confederate suburbs, the Lebanese authorities has asserted much power implicit the airport, and present determination is nary currency travel to Hezbollah,” Khashan said.

Lebanese Minister of Public Works and Transport Ali Hamieh told Agence France-Presse connected Tuesday that the Beirut airdrome “is taxable to Lebanese laws and to the scrutiny of assorted applicable departments and information agencies.” Hamieh added that immoderate level carrying weapons indispensable beryllium approved by the Lebanese service and beryllium licensed by his ministry.

Saudi TV web Al Arabiya successful a Thursday study cited a Lebanese service root saying the service and different information agencies person been “scrambling” to asseverate power implicit the airdrome by starting inspections of cargo shipments to guarantee their contents are arsenic declared.

Khashan said Hezbollah’s deficiency of currency is improbable to halt its thousands of operatives from warring Israeli forces anytime soon.

“Keeping up the combat depends much connected the availability of nutrient and ammunition,” helium said. “When your combat is motivated by spiritual zeal, you person much cardinal issues to interest astir than the availability of cash.”