U.S. Treasury Levels New Sanctions Against Individuals, Businesses Supporting Hezbollah

(New York, N.Y.) — Last Friday, the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) announced that it had sanctioned three individuals and 10 companies that raised funds to help financially support Hezbollah. Earlier that week, OFAC had placed additional similar sanctions on three other Hezbollah-linked individuals and their travel companies. In applying both sets of sanctions, the Treasury Department noted the Iran-backed Hezbollah’s destabilizing influence on Lebanon at the expense of the Lebanese people.

The sanctions come at a time when an increasing number of countries have sought to apply increasing pressure on Hezbollah. In Europe, countries once hesitant to fully ban Hezbollah, like the United Kingdom or Germany, have recently banned the group in its entirety. Saudi Arabia designated Hezbollah’s financial arm Al-Qard al-Hassan Association (AQAH) in October 2021, an important step in slowly universalizing the criminalization of Hezbollah in its entirety and ending the artificial distinction between Hezbollah’s political and military activities. Elsewhere, countries facing Hezbollah’s threat most acutely including Israel, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, and United Arab Emirates have taken steps to actively counter the group. 

To read United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI)’s resource Global Designations of Hezbollah As A Terror Organization, please click here. 

To explore UANI’s Eye on Hezbollah project, please click here. 

###