Hezbollah (86 page)

But it is the group’s destabilizing activities in Syria since the country’s uprising began in 2011 that have, as a journalist in Lebanon put it, “torn away the party’s mask of virtue.”
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Within weeks of the uprising, Nasrallah himself called on all Syrians to stand by the regime.
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As reports emerged in May 2011 that the Qods Force was helping the Syrian regime crack down on antigovernment demonstrators, Hezbollah denied playing “any military role in Arab countries.”
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But by the following month, Syrian protesters were heard chanting not only for Assad’s downfall but also against Iran and Hezbollah. Video footage showed protesters burning posters of Nasrallah.
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According to a senior Syrian defense official who defected from the regime, Syrian security services were unable to handle the uprising on their own. “They didn’t have decent snipers or equipment,” he explained. “They needed qualified snipers from Hezbollah and Iran.”
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Over time, Hezbollah increasingly struggled to conceal its on-the-ground support of the Assad regime. In August 2012, the US Treasury Department blacklisted Hezbollah, already on the department’s terrorism list, this time for providing support to the Assad regime. Since the beginning of the rebellion, Treasury explained, Hezbollah had been providing “training, advice and extensive logistical support to the Government of Syria’s increasingly ruthless efforts” against the opposition.
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Most funerals for those killed in the fighting were quiet affairs, as Hezbollah tried to keep a lid on the extent of its activities in Syria, but news began to leak. In August 2012, Hezbollah parliamentarians reportedly attended the funeral of military commander Musa Ali Shehimi, who “died while performing his jihadi duty.”
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A few weeks later another Hezbollah military commander, Ali Hussein Nassif, was killed in Syria, along with two bodyguards, also “while performing his jihadi duties,” according to a Hezbollah newspaper.
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Hezbollah’s “resistance” rhetoric notwithstanding, US officials informed the UN Security Council in October 2012, “the truth is plain to see: Nasrallah’s fighters are now part of Assad’s killing machine.”
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Two months later, a UN report confirmed Hezbollah members were in Syria fighting on behalf of the Assad government.
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Amid increasing concern that the struggle in Syria would engulf the region in conflict, Hezbollah set up training camps near Syrian chemical weapons depots in November 2012. According to one senior US official, “The fear these weapons could fall into the wrong hands is our greatest concern.”
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For a group that has always portrayed itself as the vanguard standing up for the dispossessed in the face of injustice and that has always tried to downplay its sectarian and pro-Iranian identities, supporting a brutal Alawite regime against the predominantly Sunni Syrian opposition risked shattering a long-cultivated image. In the end, the strategic necessity of preventing the collapse of the Assad regime—which, if replaced by a regime representing the country’s Sunni majority would, at the least, be far less friendly to Hezbollah and possibly oppose it outright—took precedence over the need to maintain the party’s image.

Meanwhile, the rebellion in Syria has exacerbated Hezbollah’s anxiety over the instability plaguing Iran ever since the Green Movement uprising in 2009. Flush with revenues from skyrocketing oil prices, Iran reportedly ramped up its funding to defray Hezbollah’s soaring costs as it attempted to rebuild following its 2006 war with Israel.
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The funds went toward fulfilling Hezbollah’s unprecedented needs in areas such as restocking weapons supplies, investing in reconstruction, and buying favor within both the various sectarian communities and Lebanese towns and villages that suffered damage during the war. The 2009 elections provided another repository for funds, with Hezbollah increasingly desperate for support in order to compete with its Sunni political rivals, who were funded by Saudi Arabia. According to one report, as the election neared, Iran allegedly pledged as much as $600 million to Hezbollah for its political campaign.
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In recent years, Israeli sources estimated, Iran had provided Hezbollah some $1 billion in direct military aid.
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With this influx of Iranian money, Hezbollah hired more people and invested in more programs, assuming the inflated support would persist. Yet, just as Hezbollah accustomed itself to a larger budget, Iran became a much less reliable donor. By mid-January 2009, oil prices had fallen to about $36 per barrel and remained under $60 until May, drastically reducing Iran’s oil profits.
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International sanctions against Iran’s nuclear program, meanwhile, became harsher. Such factors combined with
crippling subsidies for basic commodities and soaring inflation to severely hamper Iran’s economic growth. Then, as the economy crashed, Tehran’s ruling clerics blatantly stole the country’s June 2009 elections, spurring months of protests by the Green Movement.

The economic pressures on Iran, according to Israeli intelligence, forced the regime to temporarily slash its annual budget for Hezbollah by up to 40 percent in early 2009.
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As a result, Hezbollah was compelled to enact austerity measures, reducing salaries and paid staff and placing several building projects on hold. Hezbollah operatives feared for their jobs, and Hezbollah beneficiaries feared for their handouts. The ensuing cutbacks caused tension within the organization as certain programs and activities were prioritized over others.
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Suddenly constrained after years of abundant Iranian funding, Hezbollah turned to its preexisting criminal enterprises to boost its assets. The income earned through these illicit enterprises is viewed by the organization as critical for providing social services to an expanding swath of the Lebanese electorate, paying the families of its fighters, and investing in its growing arsenal of rockets and other advanced weapons. In diversifying its economic portfolio, Hezbollah also doubled down on its most lucrative criminal enterprises: drug trafficking and money laundering.

Taken together, all these activities—engaging in a worldwide terror campaign, threatening stability both at home in Lebanon and next door in Syria, and expanding its involvement in criminal activities—make Hezbollah increasingly vulnerable to the kind of serious, concerted international effort to counter its activities that it has successfully avoided to date. Many governments have shied away from taking action against Hezbollah on the pretext that the group is a duly elected political party and a key provider of social welfare services in Lebanon. But as the party muddies the waters between its more legitimate, public activities and its inherently illicit, clandestine pursuits, it invites ever-greater scrutiny.

Hezbollah should be judged by the totality of its actions. It cannot be forgiven its criminal, terrorist, or militant pursuits simply because at the same time it also engages in political or humanitarian ones. Hezbollah’s leaders often insist the group does not maintain support networks around the world, let alone carry out attacks abroad. “We have not carried out operations anywhere in the world,” Hezbollah secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah insisted in 2003.
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But as the schemes and plots documented here demonstrate, Hezbollah can and has mobilized operatives for everything from criminal enterprises to terrorist attacks well beyond Lebanon’s borders.

While Hezbollah is composed of multiple committees and branches, it operates as a singular entity. Hezbollah, the US intelligence community has determined, is “a multifaceted, disciplined organization that combines political, social, paramilitary, and terrorist elements” in which decisions “to resort to arms or terrorist tactics [are] carefully calibrated.”
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Hezbollah’s Naim Qassem concurs: “We don’t have a military wing and a political one; we don’t have Hezbollah on one hand and the resistance party on the other…. Every element of Hezbollah, from commanders
to members as well as our various capabilities, [is] in the service of the resistance and we have nothing but the resistance as a priority,” Qassem insisted in October 2012.
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In light of its history of violence and extremism, its rapid expansion into organized criminal activities from narcotics trafficking to money laundering and more, its violent activities at home in Lebanon and next door in Syria, and above all else its continued and ongoing use of international terrorism, it is high time the international community conducted a thorough and considered discussion of the full range of Hezbollah’s “resistance” activities, and what to do about them. With this book, I hope to kick-start that discussion.

1.
“Israelis Killed in Bulgaria Bus Terror Attack, Minister Says,”
CNN
, July 18, 2012.

2.
Gordon Fairclough, “Bulgaria Releases New Image of Suspect,”
Wall Street Journal
, August 1, 2012; “Struggle to Identify Bulgaria Bus Suicide Bomber,”
BBC
, July 20, 2012.

3.
Europol, The Hague, Netherlands, “Europol Supports Investigation into Terrorist Attack at Burgas Airport, Bulgaria,” press release, February 5, 2013.

4.
Stewart Bell, “A Family Affair: Canadian Suspected in Bulgaria Bus Bombing Was Related to Terrorist Who Died Planting Explosives,”
National Post
(Canada), February 12, 2013.

5.
Ibid.; Republic of Bulgaria, Ministry of the Interior, Statement of Minister Tsvetan Tsvetanov, press release, February 5, 2013.

6.
Sebastian Rotella, “Before Deadly Bulgaria Bombing, Tracks of a Resurgent Iran-Hezbollah Threat,”
ProPublica
and
Foreign Policy
, July 30, 2012.

7.
Tom Kelly, “Was Bulgaria Bomber British?”
Daily Mail
(London), July 27, 2012.

8.
Nicholas Kulish and Eric Schmitt, “Hezbollah Is Blamed for Attack on Israeli Tourists in Bulgaria,”
New York Times
, July 19, 2012.

9.
“Interview with Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak,”
CNN
(The Situation Room), July 30, 2012.

10.
Rotella, “Before Deadly Bulgaria Bombing.”

11.
Nicholas Kulish and Jodi Rudoren, “Plots Are Tied to Shadow War of Israel and Iran,”
New York Times
, August 8, 2012.

12.
Author interview with Israeli officials, Tel Aviv, September 13, 2012.

13.
Yaakov Katz, “Bulgaria Foils Terror Attack against Israelis,”
Jerusalem Post
, January 8, 2012.

14.
Rotella, “Before Deadly Bulgaria Bombing.”

15.
Barak Ravid, “Man Detained in Cyprus Was Planning Attack on Israeli Targets for Hezbollah,”
Haaretz
(Tel Aviv), July 14, 2012; US Department of State, Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism,
Country Reports on Terrorism 2009
, August 2010, p. 105.

16.
Cyprus Police, Hossam Taleb Yaakoub Deposition, Criminal Record Number 5/860/12, July 7, 2012; Joby Warrick, “Elaborate Surveillance Operation Raises Concerns
about Broader Hezbollah Attacks,”
Washington Post
, February 26, 2013; Nicholas Kulish, “Hezbollah Courier Was Told to Track Israeli Flights,”
New York Times
, February 21, 2013.

17.
“Report of the Commission for Internal Security and Public Peace Regarding the Production and Distribution of Unauthorized Synthetic Drugs and the Problems Associated with the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVR),” Commission for Internal Security and Public Peace, February 2008.

18.
Yaakov Katz, “Analysis: Connecting the Dots from Bulgaria to Syria,”
Jerusalem Post
, July 18, 2012.

19.
Matthew Levitt, “Did Hezbollah Do It?”
Daily Beast
, July 18, 2012.

20.
Tony Badran, “Hezbollah Is Being Elusive on Waliyat al-Faqih,”
NOWLebanon
, June 24, 2009.

21.
Dennis Ross and David Makovsky,
Myths, Illusions, & Peace: Finding a New Direction for America in the Middle East
(New York, NY: Viking Press, 2009), 256.

22.
US Department of Defense,
Unclassified Report on Military Power of Iran
, “CDA—Military Power of Iran,” April 2010.

23.
“Ministers Warned of Terrorism Threat from Iran,”
Guardian
(London), June 29, 2006.

24.
US National Intelligence Council, “The Terrorist Threat to the US Homeland” (National Intelligence Estimate), July 2007.

25.
James Risen, “Before Bin Laden, One of World’s Most Feared Men,”
New York Times
, February 14, 2008.

26.
Author interview with Israeli intelligence official, Tel Aviv, June 3, 2008.

27.
US Congress, Senate Committee on Armed Services,
Worldwide Threats to the National Security of the United States: Hearing before the Committee on Armed Services
, 112th Cong., 2d sess., February 16, 2012, Statements of James Clapper and Lt. Gen Ronald Burgess.

28.
US Congress, Senate, Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, Statement of Matthew G. Olsen,
Homeland Threats and Agency Responses
.

29.
Norton,
Hezbollah: A Short History
, ch. 5.

30.
Nora Boustany, “Hezbollah and Its Allies Celebrate Win in Regional Vote,”
Washington Post
, June 7, 2005.

31.
“Lebanese Government Collapses after Hezbollah Ministers Resign,”
Fox News
, January 12, 2011.

32.
Author interview with Australian intelligence officials, Canberra, May 25, 2009; author interview with British intelligence officials, London, April 15, 2010.

33.
Australian Government, Attorney General’s Department, “Hizballah External Security Organisation,” May 16, 2009.