The Biden administration announced new sanctions on Wednesday targeting an oil smuggling network that has generated hundreds of millions of dollars for the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah.
Bradley Smith, acting under secretary of the treasury for terrorism and financial intelligence, stated that Hezbollah used that money to fund its “war machine” against Israel.
“Hezbollah continues to launch rockets into Israel and fuel regional instability, choosing to prioritize funding violence over taking care of the people it claims to care about, including the tens of thousands displaced in southern Lebanon,” Smith said.
The Treasury Department imposed the new sanctions on a Hezbollah financier, two Lebanese businessmen, five companies and two vessels involved in smuggling oil and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG).
Treasury noted that the network “facilitated dozens of LPG shipments to the government of Syria and channeled the profits to Hezbollah.”
Hezbollah has previously worked closely with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to smuggle Iranian oil and petroleum derivatives to the Assad regime in Syria, a close ally of the Islamic Republic, and then used the profits to support its terrorism operations.
Since Oct. 7, Hezbollah has fired thousands of rockets into Israel, displacing some 60,000 Israelis from their homes in Israel’s northern communities.
