On May 31, two senior U.S. officials detailed Iran’s growing role in extremist activities worldwide. Tehran was directly or indirectly involved in the planning of attacks in Europe, Southeast Asia and Africa in 2012, said the officials. The following are excerpts from the background briefing.
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL ONE: Yesterday we released at the State Department the annual Country Reports on Terrorism for 2012. And one of the most noteworthy conclusions when we put that report together was a marked resurgence of terrorist activity by Iran and Hezbollah. The tempo of operational activity was something we haven’t seen since the 1990s, with attacks plotted in Europe, Southeast Asia, and Africa in 2012 alone.
We believe this is an alarming trend. It’s borne out by the facts and it merits closer inspection as we evaluate the landscape of terrorist activity globally. Add to this, of course, is the deepening commitment both Iran and Hezbollah have made to fight and kill on behalf of the Assad regime in Syria. That involvement, of course, is hardening the conflict and threatening to spread the violence across the region.
We believe this is an alarming trend. It’s borne out by the facts and it merits closer inspection as we evaluate the landscape of terrorist activity globally. Add to this, of course, is the deepening commitment both Iran and Hezbollah have made to fight and kill on behalf of the Assad regime in Syria. That involvement, of course, is hardening the conflict and threatening to spread the violence across the region.
Hezbollah and the Iranian leadership share a similar world view and strategic vision and are seeking to exploit the current unrest in the region to their advantage. This approach has increased sectarian tensions and conflict and serves further as a destabilizing force during a time of great change throughout the region.
But there’s also an encouraging trend at work and one I think that’s received relatively little attention in our view, and that’s the increasingly firm response among governments around the world to these actions. We’re seeing prosecutions of Hezbollah operatives in multiple jurisdictions around the world, ongoing investigations, and discussions about proscribing the group as a terrorist organization.
But there’s also an encouraging trend at work and one I think that’s received relatively little attention in our view, and that’s the increasingly firm response among governments around the world to these actions. We’re seeing prosecutions of Hezbollah operatives in multiple jurisdictions around the world, ongoing investigations, and discussions about proscribing the group as a terrorist organization.
Now just to recap a couple of the notable incidents in 2012 that we also covered in our report, in February of this year the Bulgarian Government publicly implicated Hezbollah in a July 2012 bombing in Burgas that killed five Israelis and one Bulgarian citizen and injured 32 others. In March of this year, a court in Cyprus found a Hezbollah operative guilty of charges stemming from surveillance activities carried out in 2012 against Israeli tourists. Thailand is currently prosecuting a Hezbollah member for his role in helping plan a possible terrorist attack in that country. We understand that trial will begin in mid-June. The Qods Force is suspected of directing terrorist attacks in Georgia, India, Thailand, and Kenya in 2012.
You will also recall that the Qods Force was implicated in a 2011 plot to assassinate the Saudi Ambassador to the United States in Washington. Manssor Arbabsiar was sentenced yesterday to 25 years in prison for his involvement in that plot. We see no signs of this activity abating in 2013. In fact, our assessment is that Hezbollah and Iran will both continue to maintain a heightened level of terrorist activity and operations in the near future.
Now turning to Syria, Hezbollah has long been involved in the conflict and, of course, is making no – no longer making any effort to disguise or downplay the extent of its commitment to kill or die on behalf of the Assad regime. A large number of Hezbollah fighters are now operating in Syria, even though the Lebanese Government has sought to disassociate Lebanon from the Syrian crisis in the best interest of the Lebanese people. The group is openly undermining that policy and working closely with Iran to provide a range of support to the Assad regime, including fighters, weaponry, and training a large pro-regime militia.
We judge that Iran and Hezbollah have enlisted Alawite, Iraqi, Shia militant and terrorist groups to participate in counter-opposition operations in Syria. All of this support is helping the regime brutally crack down on the opposition, kill civilians, and is contributing to regional instability, notably in Lebanon. And unfortunately, it’s clear that both Hezbollah and Iran’s involvement in Syria is only deepening as they take whatever steps are necessary to ensure that their close ally survives.
Countering these activities continues to be a priority for the U.S. Government, but we’re also seeing other governments begin to take their own actions in response to Hezbollah’s global presence and operational activity. Governments are beginning to see Hezbollah for what it is, and there is a shift underway that we detect in the way that other governments are viewing the organization.
I mentioned the prosecution a minute ago of Hezbollah operatives in Cyprus and the Bulgarian Government’s finding Hezbollah responsibility for the Burgas attack. These attacks – these activities, of course, led to the most serious discussion we’ve seen within the EU to designate Hezbollah as a terrorist organization. Crucially, France and Germany have called for Hezbollah’s military wing to be added to the EU’s terrorism list, and we’re watching that discussion very, very closely.
Recently Bahrain designated Hezbollah as a terrorist organization and is proposing that the GCC take up similar action across the GCC against Hezbollah. The Arab League Chief Nabil Elaraby recently weighed in on Hezbollah, urging it to stop fighting alongside the Assad regime, urging Hezbollah to reconsider its stance and not get involved in the killing in Syria and stressing that only – the only way to protect Lebanon is to protect Lebanon’s internal unity. That was issued in an Arab League statement, and I think that reflection of Arab League view is certainly a turnaround in the way Hezbollah is being viewed across the Arab world.
Of course, Hezbollah’s actions have been condemned by numerous Lebanese political figures for placing Lebanon at risk and placing the country’s interest and those of – and placing Hezbollah’s interest and those of Iran and Assad above those of the Lebanese people. President Sulayman recently urged Hezbollah to withdraw from Syria.
Looking again at the global picture, in Southeast Asia, in mid-June, the Thai Government will begin its prosecution of a Hezbollah operative who was detained in January 2012 and who led police to a warehouse located outside of the city – outside of Bangkok, where police found several thousand kilograms of explosives and bomb-making material. We’ve also seen countries beginning to crack down on Iran’s terrorist activities with Nigeria and Kenya arresting and prosecuting Iranian operatives who were in their countries engaged in various illicit activities.
I think I’ll stop there, but it does give you a sense of the global scope of activity we’re seeing on both of these – both the – both Iran and Hezbollah’s part, and as was emphasized in our report released yesterday. Thank you.
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL TWO: As a result of all of these activities, and actually a lot of other activities, in our efforts to combat its financial support and its financial activities, we’ve adopted over the last couple of years a new approach. Traditionally, over the years, what we’ve focused on is trying to go after the terrorist financing as terrorist financing activities of Hezbollah, and we certainly continue to do that. But what I think you’ve seen over the past several years is expanding the aperture of those efforts in two ways. The first is taking a comprehensive approach to targeting all of Hezbollah’s illicit activities, and secondly, to focus more than ever before on Hezbollah’s financial activities within Lebanon and trying to make even the Lebanese financial system a hostile environment for Hezbollah to be operating in, so again, a comprehensive approach, an approach that focuses not just on the periphery, but challenging Hezbollah’s ability to conduct financial activities through the Lebanese financial system.
We’ve done that a number of ways. First of all, as I said, in the traditional way of focusing on Hezbollah as a terrorist organization, we’ve implemented a number of financial sanctions with respect to Hezbollah targeting their ties with the Iran Qods Force and just their general conduct within Lebanon. And I could be happy to go into some of those designations, if people are interested.
Secondly, we focused on Hezbollah’s activities within Syria and its alliance with the Assad regime and the violence that it’s waging upon the Syrian people and tried to highlight that through our financial and economic sanctions.
And then finally, and what I think is the most innovative aspect of our strategy, is focusing on Hezbollah’s illicit financial activities, to include its links with narcotics trafficking. We’ve taken a number of actions in which Hezbollah has been implicated under our drug kingpin sanctions program, and using Section 311 of the Patriot Act to target financial institutions within Lebanon that have been involved in these narcotics money-laundering activities and that have had links to Hezbollah. These include actions we’ve taken against the Lebanese Canadian Bank, and just within the past couple of months, against two exchange houses within Lebanon – the Rmeiti Exchange and the Halawi Exchange.
We’ve combined this with intense engagement with the Lebanese Government to try to ensure that all Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Rules and regulations and international standards are being applied throughout the Lebanese financial system to ensure the Lebanese financial system is clean and safe and integrated into the international financial system appropriately. But we’ve also made clear that if Lebanon is unable to apply Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing laws and regulations and international standards in an appropriate fashion, then it puts its access to the international financial system at risk.
QUESTION: Two questions: One, is there any estimate of the – obviously Iran is making a large effort to supply Assad with arms, Qods Force personnel, advisors, and the like. Is there an estimate of what, in terms of resources, how much Iran is spending on this, how many billions, for example, per year? And two, there was a recent episode that’s come to light through Israeli and Nigerian officials, where they claim to have nabbed a Hezbollah cell in Nigeria that was planning attacks on Western targets and Israeli targets. Do you have any information on that?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL ONE: We are watching very closely those reports coming out of Nigeria. We don’t have anything further than what is – has been announced, both by the Nigerian and the Israeli Governments. But it, again, is reflective of this global scope of operational activity that we’ve been encountering over these last 18, 24 months, and it’s something that we’re very concerned about. Africa, across the continent, has been an area that Hezbollah in particular has been active. Of course, they’ve used Africa for fundraising and traditionally, but they’ve been operationally active in a number of African countries, as have the Iranians, as we saw in the case in Kenya recently.
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL TWO: With respect to Hezbollah financing, Iran has always been and remains the primary financial supporter of Hezbollah, and Hezbollah survives on the resources that it derives from its Iranian support. That’s not to say that it doesn’t derive funds from other places…But Iran still is vital to all of that. This is one of the reasons, as I said before, why we focus so heavily on ensuring that the Lebanese financial system is not a conducive environment for Hezbollah financial activities.
QUESTION: Homeland Security in November was talking about the links of Hezbollah with drug traffic organizations in Mexico. Are you not concerned about that at all?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL ONE: We are quite concerned about Hezbollah and its global reach. We don’t have evidence of an operational network – Hezbollah across South America, but it’s something that we watch for very, very, very closely. We know that Hezbollah as an organization does benefit from fundraising activity or commercial activity that ultimately benefits the organization back in Lebanon. But as for an operational link to activities in South America, Central America, or Mexico, we don’t have that.
QUESTION: I was wondering if you have any estimate on the number of fighters that Hezbollah has in Syria right now. And I know you said you expect more terrorism in the next year from Hezbollah, but given their involvement in Syria, how will this shape you think Hezbollah’s military calculation going into war with Israel or other conventional things they’ve done in the last few years?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL ONE: I don’t think we have an estimate on the number of fighters. I mean there are, of course, a lot of people trying to look at this question. I think it’s fair to say, however, that the organization has made an all-in commitment to defend and support the Assad regime and is throwing whatever resources are required at that, and of course as reports indicate is suffering the consequences as well in terms of fighters being killed in Syria as well. But we don’t have an estimate of the numbers.
With regard to what these trends indicate for what we can expect for the future and what this means for Hezbollah’s – the potential for destabilizing activity with regard to Israel, I mean I think that’s something that the organization has made a part of its identity. It is a destabilizing force within the region. It certainly is so within Lebanon and its actions in Syria and its declarations to essentially define the Syrian conflict as a sectarian conflict, which of course is sparking an intensified fight within the country of a sectarian nature. These are further indications that the organization itself plays a destabilizing role within Lebanon and then more broadly in the region if we needed further evidence of that.
QUESTION: Two questions: Firstly, do you see any connection between what’s happening in Syria and the sort of surge of sectarian violence in Iraq, number one? And number two, you said we don’t have any evidence of operational networks in Central or South America or Mexico. Did you have evidence of operational networks in Thailand, Bulgaria, Cyprus, prior to the commission of these attacks last year? Were you surprised that they had this ability to launch these attacks in these places?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL ONE: When we released the report, we noted that the increase in activity is something we haven’t seen since the 1990s. And the 1990s was a period, of course, where Hezbollah also was operationally active, committing attacks in multiple parts of the world, to include Europe. So the fact that Hezbollah had operational networks historically in Europe is not new to us, is not surprising. And in fact, we were already in the spring of 2012 having numerous conversations with European governments about the danger that Hezbollah was posing, and that was on the basis of information we were aware of that indicated an increased operational tempo in Europe. And those conversations coincided then with the events that played out in the summer to include the attack in Bulgaria. So we were not surprised that – when – ultimately when we started to see the evidence play out and then in the course of the court case in Cyprus.
QUESTION: Iran announced a couple of days ago that it is extending a $4 billion line of credit to Syria. They’re saying that it’s for economic purposes, for reconstruction, and development of business and things like that. Do you think something like this, given the situation on the ground in Syria, is plausible? Is it even possible, considering that Iran is heavily under sanctions, financial sanctions, and Syria to some extent as well?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL TWO: It’s an important issue to point out that while the Iranian economy is going down the tubes as a result of its own mismanagement of its economy and as a result of comprehensive international sanctions, and while the Iranian people are suffering as a result of that, that Iran still manages to find resources to send to terrorist organizations like Hezbollah and to support the Assad regime’s violence against its own people in Syria.
The fact of the matter is, is that Iran and organizations like Hezbollah are acting irresponsibly in this regard and we have a whole wide array of sanctions that we are prepared to deploy when we see financial institutions or other types of institutions around the world that are engaged in sanction-able activity. And we’ve demonstrated that we’re prepared to use that, and we implement financial sanctions all the time with respect to entities that are involved in financial activities with Iran.
Iran is often big on promises. If we see financial activity that is sanction-able – and that’s an awful lot of different types of financial activity with Iran – we will certainly exercise our tools and ensure that the financial institutions involved are isolated from the international financial system.