US Treasury issues Hezbollah sanctions, labels group Iran-linked

WASHINGTON — The Treasury Department on Thursday imposed new sanctions on a network it says has been funneling cash to Hezbollah and redesignated the Lebanese militant group to underscore its ties to Iran's Revolutionary Guard.

The US government has classified Hezbollah as a foreign terrorist organization since 1997, and a Specially Designated Global Terrorist group since 2001. 

On Thursday, the Treasury amended its designation to underscore the group’s “service to the Iranian regime” under the command of Iran’s Quds Force, the expeditionary arm of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Speaking to reporters on condition of anonymity, a State Department official said the redesignation “specifies that Hezbollah is an Iranian proxy, not a stand-alone operation as implied by the previous designation. 

“It is not a Lebanese resistance movement,” the official said, describing the group’s military operations and financing networks as an extension of the Quds Force. 

It also designated 10 individuals accused of using couriers traveling on commercial flights between Lebanon, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and Iran “to move up to hundreds of millions of dollars between jurisdictions, providing an avenue outside the formal financial system for Hezbollah to obtain foreign currency and evade sanctions.” 

According to the Treasury, Turkish businessman Yunus Alper Yilmaz manages the network moving cash between Lebanon and other countries in the region and uses Turkey-based exchange houses as fronts for his business dealings. 

The latest sanctions come a day after President Donald Trump warned the United States was prepared to carry out “economic warfare and isolation on an unprecedented scale” against Iran and the countries that do business with it. Following Trump’s Truth Social threat, oil prices rose to their highest levels in a month on Thursday. 

This developing story has been updated since initial publication.