UK Edition
Among the world’s most brutal and ruthless terrorist organizations, Hezbollah stands out for its deep pockets and extraordinary global reach. Backed by Iran, the group has built one of the most powerful non-state military forces in human history, using it to perpetuate a reign of terror around the world that has killed and maimed tens of thousands of innocent men, women, and children over the course of the three decades spanning from Buenos Aires to Beirut to Bulgaria.
An international network of shell corporations, criminal enterprises, and phantom charities fund these global terrorist activities to the tune of more than $1 billion a year. For years, Hezbollah has gained freedom to operate this network in Europe and elsewhere by separating itself – on paper – into “political” and “military” wings. The military wing carries out the murder and violence. The political wing funds and supports this work.
However, the two wings are symbiotic – one can’t exist without the other. Hezbollah's own deputy secretary-general Naim Qassem said in 2012, “We don't have a military wing and a political one…every element of Hezbollah, from commanders to members...are in the service of the resistance.”
The United States, the Netherlands, Canada, Japan and many other Western Democracies have come to see this artificial distinction for the sham that it is, legally designating Hezbollah’s military and political wings as terrorist organizations. In 2016, the Arab League did the same.
It is high time for the United Kingdom to follow suit. For decades, the UK has designated the military wing of Hezbollah as a terrorist organization, while classifying the organization’s political wing as a legitimate, legal body that can operate freely, raise funds, and recruit members for its activities.
Today, Parliament is debating whether Hezbollah’s political wing should be designated as a terrorist group. This represents an important opportunity to shut down a vital pillar of support for Hezbollah’s terrorist and criminal activities, which threaten innocents in Europe and around the world.
Acting as Iran’s proxy, Hezbollah has systematically butchered Syrians in the country’s civil war, blown up a US Marine barracks killing more than 300 US and French servicemen in Lebanon, murdered hundreds of women and children in Jewish community centers in Argentina, and plotted a string of assassinations targeting policymakers and diplomats in incidents spanning from Washington, DC to New Delhi to Bangkok.
Hezbollah uses crime in Europe to pay for this terrorism. Just this month, a French prosecutor indicted 15 Hezbollah operatives on charges of drug dealing, money-laundering and conspiracy, which were carried out in cooperation with international drug and money-laundering criminal networks. Other Hezbollah cells have previously been arrested for running drug smuggling networks in The Netherlands and Germany.
All of these activities are carried out in full cooperation with Hezbollah’s patron, Iran, which has continued to aggressively pursue espionage in Europe on both sides of the channel. Over the past few weeks, German authorities have ordered raids on the offices and homes of up to a dozen alleged Iranian agents. If Iran is prepared to carry out intense espionage against Germany, the country leading the European charge to protect the nuclear deal, then every other European country should be very worried. Britain certainly should.
Today's debate in Parliament about defining Hezbollah as a terror group is just one step – but an important one – that will empower the country’s security services to counter the Iranian threat on the European continent and across the Channel.
Winston Churchill famously likened "An appeaser to one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last". Hezbollah, the world's richest terrorist organization, is that crocodile and it has been preying on the UK and Europe uninterrupted for far too long. By declaring the political wing of Hezbollah a terrorist organisation, Parliament will enable law enforcement agencies to act upon intelligence relating to all organs of the organization, not matter what guise they put on any particular day.
Ron Prosor is Israel's former ambassador to the UN and the UK
Hezbollah is a clearly a terror organisation. Parliament should treat it as one