BICOM

The US State Department announced yesterday that it had designated Jawad Nasrallah as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist.

Jawad Nasrallah is the son of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and the State Department said his designation was a result of known terrorist plots and attempts to carry out suicide bombings and shootings in the West Bank in 2016. The State Department also designated the Al-Mujahidin Brigades (AMB), a military organisation with close links to Hezbollah, that has been operating in the Gaza strip since 2005.

The Specially Designated Global Terrorist order “imposes sanctions on foreign persons who have committed, or pose a significant risk of committing, acts of terrorism that threaten the security of US nationals or the national security, foreign policy, or economy of the US”. The designation denies access to the US financial system and assists US law enforcement action.

The announcement was part of the State Department’s mandatory five-year review of Hezbollah. The review concluded that Hezbollah should remain on the list of designated Foreign Terrorist Organisations. The State Department also said that Hezbollah is one organisation and rejected any distinction between Hezbollah’s military and political wing.

The US Counterterrorism coordinator, Nathan Sales told the Washington Institute yesterday that “Iran is the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism,” which provides “Hezbollah with $700 million a year” and “$100 million to various Palestinian terrorist groups”. He said: “Hezbollah’s ambitions and global reach rival those of al-Qaida and ISIS. In recent years, Hezbollah operatives have been caught preparing attacks as far afield as Azerbaijan, Bolivia, Cyprus, Egypt, Peru, and Thailand.”

Sales provided further detail on Iran’s global activity saying: “An Iranian operative was arrested for planning assassinations in Denmark. This summer, authorities in Germany, Belgium, and France collaborated to thwart a plot to bomb a political rally near Paris. They arrested several Iranian operatives – including an Iranian spy operating under diplomatic cover in Austria. Ordinarily, the arrest of a purported diplomat for planning a terrorist attack would be unprecedented. For Iran, it’s business as usual. Earlier this year, the Treasury sanctioned a number of Hezbollah front companies and facilitators in West Africa. These included fishing, car rentals, food processing, even pig farming in Liberia.”