Terror Group Hezbollah Has Been Active in America for Decades
29 August 2017The National Interest
In early June, a Bronx man named Ali Kourani was arrested and charged with
casing John F. Kennedy airport in New York City for a potential Hezbollah
attack. Around this same time, Samer El Debek of Dearborn, Michigan, was
arrested and charged with traveling to Panama to conduct surveillance against
Israeli targets and the Panama Canal. And in February, a third man, Fadi
Yassine, was arrested and charged with arranging to send weapons to a
Hezbollah member in Lebanon.
Americans reacted to the arrests with shock, since many were completely
unaware that Hezbollah members were operating on U.S. soil.
But Kourani’s arrest should not have come as a surprise—Hezbollah has been
active inside the United States for decades, engaging in a range of activities
that include fundraising and money laundering. But the arrest at JFK of
Kourani, who admitted to being a member of Hezbollah’s external operations
wing, suggests something far more sinister.
Hezbollah-run charities such as the Mahdi Scouts, the Shia schools and the
Martyrs Foundation are entities that supply charitable funds to the families
of Hezbollah fighters and are an extension of Hezbollah into the community.
The Martyrs Foundation operates in different countries under different
auspices, and in the United States its satellite was called the Goodwill
Charitable Organization, based in Dearborn and responsible for funneling
contributions from members and supporters directly to Hezbollah leaders in
Lebanon.
Hezbollah also operates a vast fraud network, which over time has included
operatives in at least ten states, including Michigan, California, Florida,
Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Missouri, New York, North Carolina and West
Virginia. It has also established businesses in the United States, including a
perfume distribution company, that have served as front organizations that
helped to launder money for the Shia terror group.
Another scheme involved purchasing used cars in the United States and
reselling them in Africa, part of a global money laundering network that also
involved the Lebanese Canadian Bank and the mingling of funds Hezbollah
garnered from cocaine trafficking.
Considering all of Hezbollah’s counterfeiting, smuggling and trafficking
operations, among the most lucrative scams the group executed was a cigarette
smuggling ring based in Charlotte, North Carolina. Cartons of cigarettes
purchased in North Carolina for $14 could be sold in Michigan for twice as
much. The group is believed to have earned tens of thousands of dollars by
transporting and selling untaxed cigarettes throughout the United States.
Hezbollah has also been involved in cyber-related activities in the United
States. During the July 2006 war with Israel, Israeli hackers interrupted
service on Hezbollah websites. Hezbollah hackers responded by hijacking
communication portals of companies, cable providers and web-hosting servers in
south Texas; suburban Virginia; Brooklyn, New York; and New Jersey.
But Hezbollah members have not operated unmolested within the United States.
Operation Smokescreen was an FBI intelligence investigation (overseen by the
Bureau’s International Terrorism Operations Section) conducted in the
mid-1990s that involved running sources and tapping phone lines. For the most
part, the operation was a success, and resulted in criminal charges for
twenty-six individuals accused of contraband cigarette trafficking, money
laundering, racketeering, wire fraud, conspiracy, visa and marriage fraud, and
material support to a terrorist group. Over 500 bank and credit card accounts
were investigated as part of the financial analysis of the network.
Another undercover dragnet, Operation Bathwater, was conducted to disrupt
Hezbollah activities based in Michigan and grew out of information developed
in early 1999 by U.S. Secret Service agents working with the Detroit Joint
Terrorism Task Force. Focused on the financial element of Hezbollah’s criminal
enterprise in the United States, Bathwater uncovered what was then the largest
credit card fraud scheme in U.S. history. It was run out of Toledo, Ohio, by a
Dearborn resident named Ali Nasrallah.
According to a report by the Congressional Research Service, the United States
has used official terrorist designations and listings to impose financial and
immigration sanctions on Hezbollah and its supporters. The United States has
blocked assets under its jurisdiction, prohibited American citizens from
providing the group with financial or material support or engaging in
financial transactions with Hezbollah and affiliated parties, and has
prohibited entry into the United States and authorization of deportation for
Hezbollah associated individuals.
In addition to designating certain organizations as terrorist groups,
individual members of those groups can be isolated for targeting. In June
2004, the U.S. Treasury Department called Assad Ahmad Barakat, Hezbollah’s
treasurer in South America, a key terrorist financier and someone “who has
used every financial crime in the book, including his businesses, to generate
funding” for Hezbollah.
The United States and its allies should continue to combat the financing of
terrorism by working through the Treasury Department and collaborating with
private-sector entities to identify and then take action against the funding
of terrorist groups on U.S. soil, especially those groups acting as a proxy
for Iran. As an organization, Hezbollah has suffered serious casualties in
Syria but also feels emboldened by its battlefield successes and may seek to
flex its muscles globally.
If nothing else, the recent arrests of Hezbollah members within the United
States should serve as a stark reminder that should tensions continue to grow
with Iran in the Middle East, Tehran retains the ability to strike out at U.S.
interests around the globe through its proxy force, Hezbollah.
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