Days after the Trump administration withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal, Washington ramped up sanctions against Hezbollah as part of its offensive against Tehran and its proxies. Yet U.S. policy toward the Lebanese militant group continues to be incoherent. By flexing its muscles against Hezbollah while supporting Lebanese state institutions that it has heavily penetrated or fully controls, the White House ends up undermining its own pursuit of the group’s illicit sources of finance.

This contradiction at the heart of U.S. policy is now playing out in Paraguay, where the Lebanese Embassy is attempting to block the extradition of alleged Hezbollah financier Nader Mohamad Farhat. While Hezbollah’s arsenal and fighters are concentrated in Lebanon and Syria, Latin America is an indispensable theatre of operations for the criminal networks that generate much of Hezbollah’s revenue.

Paraguay hosts a significant and growing money-laundering operation connected to Hezbollah in the Triple Frontier, where Paraguay intersects with Argentina and Brazil. Increasingly, Hezbollah’s local operatives are involved in the local boom of cocaine trafficking — and there is evidence that Hezbollah is sending senior officials to the Triple Frontier to coordinate these activities.

Read the full article in the Foundation for Defence of Democracies.