A top Justice Department official made it clear Thursday that combating Hezbollah is a top priority for the department, a move that puts pressure on the terrorist organization’s sponsor, Iran.
Principal Deputy Attorney General John Cronan, who leads the department’s team that investigates Hezbollah financing and narcoterrorism, laid out the government’s efforts and plans for dismantling and neutralizing the Iranian-backed terrorist group during a conference commemorating the victims of the Hezbollah bombing of a Jewish cultural center in Argentina 25 years ago.
The deadly bombing of the Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina Jewish cultural center on July 18, 1994 killed 85 people and injured hundreds more, making it the deadliest terrorist attack in Argentina’s history. Argentina designated Hezbollah as a foreign terrorist group to coincide with last week’s anniversary, something that the State Department did back in 1997.
“Destroying Hezbollah’s support networks and neutralizing the Hezbollah threat is a top priority for this Department of Justice and will continue to be,” Cronan said, though full details of the operations can’t be shared.
“Investigations may be covert, charges may be sealed, defendants may be cooperating, and Hezbollah supporters may be facing non-terrorism crimes as we work to build terrorism charges,” he said.
The department is both combating Hezbollah’s terrorist acts and drying up its funding.
Hezbollah is Iran’s top paramilitary force and is among the crown jewels of its foreign influence efforts, receiving hundreds of millions of dollars in funding from the Iranian regime. Hezbollah, though based in Lebanon, operates across the Middle East and has made inroads around the world as well on behalf of its Iranian benefactors.
Cronan’s comments from the come amid rising tensions with Iran and as the United States increases pressure on the ayatollahs. Iran seized and blew up allied ships and tankers in the Straits of Hormuz off the coast of Iran and shot down a U.S. drone over international waters in recent weeks.
The U.S., which pulled out of the controversial Iran nuclear deal in 2018, has been ratcheting up pressure on Iran ever since through increased sanctions and through designating Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist group earlier this year, and it brought down Iranian drones in recent days too.
And as the U.S. has tried to limit Iran’s global operations and has called for Iran to cease its funding of terrorist groups, the department made it clear that it will be playing a major role in neutralizing Iran’s Hezbollah proxies.
Then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions created Cronan’s team in early 2018 as a coordinated and aggressive response to the “ongoing, sophisticated, and global threat posed by Hezbollah to the United States.” Department prosecutors and investigators will pursuing both non-terrorism and terrorism charges whenever possible, working with a host of federal agencies, and seeking help from foreign allies as well, as they pursue people who provide help to Hezbollah, whether through financial support or the provision of manpower or weaponry, for example.
Samer El Debek and Ali Khourani, for example, were arrested in June 2017 on charges of providing material support to Hezbollah, for which Khourani was found guilty earlier this year. The two were trained by the terrorist organization and then released into the U.S. as sleeper operatives waiting for assignments. Kourani, a years-long Hezbollah operative, trained for possible attacks and conducted surveillance of locations in New York City, such as an FBI federal office building and an Army National Guard facility.
Cronan said that cutting off Hezbollah’s financial support is key, because “money is the lifeblood of any terrorist organization.” He pointed to the recent conviction of multi-billion commodities tycoon Kassim Tajideen, who was sanctioned by the Treasury Department for financing Hezbollah and who pleaded guilty in December to a money laundering scheme in evasion of U.S. sanctions on Iran, agreeing to forfeit $50 million to the U.S. government.
Treasury Department, he said, has wide efforts to dismantle Hezbollah’s financial networks, including sanctioning more than 50 Hezbollah-related people and entities since 2017. Among those dozens of now-sanctioned Hezbollah financiers were top Hezbollah figures with deep ties to Iran.
Cronan said the U.S. is working with its international allies to root out Hezbollah operatives and funders elsewhere in the world, an effort he put to the conference audience.
“How can we work even better with our partners across the globe? How can we strengthen the capabilities of those partners? How can we most powerfully combat the Hezbollah threat that we all face?”
