The Iranian-backed terrorist group Hizballah enjoys an extensive network throughout Latin America, mainly consisting of contacts and operatives in various Lebanese diaspora communities. These it uses both to raise funds and to carry out attacks, such as the 1993 bombing of the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires and the murderous bombing of the AMIA Jewish center in the same city the next year. Emanuele Ottolenghi describes the organization’s activities in the region, and outlines how the U.S. can combat them:
Over time, [Hizballah has] bought political influence among local elites, built alliances with organized crime, and offered financial services to both. As a result, today Latin America is a key center for Hizballah’s increasingly sophisticated global financial network.
The Trump administration should disrupt Hizballah’s Latin American sources of revenue by targeting its operatives and their businesses with a sustained sanctions campaign; it should strengthen the Drug Enforcement Administration’ efforts to try Hizballah operatives involved in drug trafficking; and it should punish local elites who facilitate Hizballah’s continuing presence in the region. . . .
Next, the continuing business activities of individuals and entities sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury occur because local governments are either reluctant to implement these sanctions or actively cooperate with the terrorists. The administration should demand that they either comply or face consequences. These should include . . . designating banking sectors of countries that facilitate Hizballah’s terror-finance as zones of primary money-laundering concern, working within international forums like the Financial Action Task Force to have such countries blacklisted, denying implicated politicians visas to the U.S., and making them personae non gratae in Washington.
Read more on FDD: http://www.defenddemocracy.org/media-hit/emanuele-ottolenghi-how-to-handle-hezbollah-in-latin-america/