Michael Lipin
Lebanese militia Hezbollah is running out of money, researchers tell VOA, as a weekslong Israeli offensive against the Iran-backed group disrupts three of its key sources of cash.
U.S. and Lebanon-based researchers and U.S. Treasury Department reports identify Hezbollah’s main cash source as Al-Qard al-Hasan, or AQAH, a Lebanese quasi-banking institution operated by the U.S.-designated terror group without a government banking license. The researchers say the group’s other cash sources include Lebanon’s insolvent but licensed commercial banks and arrivals of cash-bearing planes at Beirut’s airport.
The Israeli military escalated its attacks on Hezbollah leaders and facilities last month, after 11 months of limiting its responses to the militia’s daily attacks on northern Israel in support of Hamas. The Palestinian terror group, also backed by Iran, invaded southern Israel from Gaza last October, sparking a fierce Israeli response.
Hezbollah founded AQAH in 1982 as a charitable institution providing interest-free loans to needy Lebanese, primarily fellow Shiites, according to Israel’s Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, or ITIC, a nongovernmental research group of Israeli intelligence community veterans.
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