Now that Iran is poised to receive more than $50 billion from the lifting of sanctions, it will no doubt direct some of the money to Hizballah, which has suffered cutbacks in recent years even as it has expanded operations. Matthew Levitt testified to Congress last week about the likely results, which include replenishing Hizballah forces along the Israel-Lebanon border. And there’s much more:
Increased Iranian spending will . . . benefit Hizballah’s regional and international operations. The group is no longer limited to jockeying for political power in Lebanon and fighting Israel. With more money, it could step up its aid to Shiite militias in Iraq and Yemen in cooperation with Iran, sending small numbers of skilled trainers to bolster local forces and, in some cases, fight alongside them. . . . Hizballah is [already] busier than ever . . . in Syria, where it is engaged in expensive military operations and support activities.
Meanwhile, the group has expanded its regional activities further afield. . . . In April 2014, two Hizballah operatives were arrested in Thailand, one of whom admitted that the two were there to carry out a bomb attack targeting Israeli tourists. . . . More recently, Peruvian counterterrorism police arrested a Hizballah operative in Lima. . . . [His] targets included places associated with Israelis and Jews in Peru, including areas popular with Israeli backpackers, the Israeli embassy in Lima, and Jewish community institutions. . . .
While the Iran deal leaves much open to interpretation, one thing is certain: for Iran this deal is strictly transactional, not transformational. To the contrary, Iran is almost certain to increase its clandestine activities and support for proxies engaged in asymmetric warfare and reasonably deniable intelligence and terrorist operations. In other words, Hizballah is about to take a place of even greater prominence in the planning of Iran’s revolutionary elite.
Read more on Washington Institute for Near East Policy: http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/uploads/Documents/testimony/LevittTestimony20150917.pdf