Impact of Hezbollah’s Latin American empire on its military operations in Mideast

By Ali Atef Hassan

The suspicious activities of Iran and its various arms, including drug trafficking in Latin America, have been taken for granted worldwide.  Drug trafficking has become a core financing resource for militant groups.

Here we will tackle what has been called as an “empire” for drug trafficking founded by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and the impact of such activities on conflicts in the Middle East.

For an example, we will highlight Lebanese Hezbollah, one the global arms of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, by revealing its drug trafficking business in Latin America.

Hezbollah’s financing

It is well known that Iran is one of Hezbollah’s financing resources as the organization’s leader once said the Hezbollah’s doctrine is based on the principle of Iran’s clerical rule, and Iran has given Hezbollah financial assistance since 1982.

Hezbollah gets between $800 million and $1 billion annually from Iran, according to international estimates. Other funding resources include donations by Hezbollah’s loyalists from Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America.
Donations by Hezbollah’s members in Lebanon are another resource. It’s noteworthy that Hezbollah’s budget has changed significantly since 2011 and the involvement in the Syrian conflict. It has got an open budget financed by Iran.

However, sanctions imposed by the Western countries on Iran may undermine Iran’s providing militant groups with adequate funding. Therefore, Iran would need other resources to provide these groups with funding.

Drug trafficking emerges as a funding resource for Hezbollah, which is affiliated with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Hezbollah’s empire in Latin America

We do not exaggerate when we say Hezbollah has become an empire for drug trafficking in Latin America. It has spread in the Spanish/Portuguese continent, dealing in drugs and gaining lots of money for financing its operations.

A US campaign called ‘Project Cassandra’ has revealed that Hezbollah gets $1 billion from drug trafficking, mainly in Latin America, annually. The ‘Project Cassandra’ was launched by the Drug Enforcement Administration, but was halted during the nuclear deal talks between Iran and Western countries, including the US.

“The closer we got, the more these activities went away. It was assiduously drained,” said David Asher, who helped establish and oversee ‘Project Cassandra’.

Drug trafficking in Central and South America has become a mainstream business for Hezbollah. That’s why Iran has been worried Hezbollah’s drug trafficking business would be exposed.

Another official of ‘Cassandra Project’ said a network for drug trafficking and money-laundering was also involved in buying American cars and shipping them to Islamist groups. The US reports said Hezbollah’s drug traffickers, who traded in cocaine, also dealt in smuggling chemical weapons to Middle Eastern countries, including Syria.

Hezbollah has more than 100 sleeper cells in the Tri-border Area (TBA) of Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay, where drug trafficking is estimated at $12 billion.

The US Treasury Department has also exposed activities of Hezbollah’s loyalists in the TBA. A Brazilian magazine published CIA documents in 2011 warning of growing extremism which associated with this kind of trade.

Moreover, the Mexican and Canadian intelligence agencies exposed members of Hezbollah and Iranian individuals involved in drug trafficking in the US some Latin American countries in 2016.

In addition to drug trafficking, Hezbollah carries out money-laundering operations in this region, disguised in other businesses such as clothes and others. In 2016, Ali Shamasy of a Lebanese origin, living in the TBA, was arrested on charges of smuggling 39 kg of drugs to Turkey.

The investigations revealed that Shamasy is a member of Hezbollah, which was planning to smuggle 100 kg of drugs into the US monthly.

Shamasy had connections with a drug gang in Colombia, which is Hezbollah’s hub of drug trafficking in Latin America. The US authorities said after the election of Donald Trump that a special task force would be formed to investigate into Hezbollah’s drug trafficking.

Hezbollah took advantage of a number of factors for expansion in Latin America as follows:

• Prosperous manufacturing of drugs in Latin America and cheap prices. For instance, cocaine is cheaply produced in Colombia and is sold at expensive prices abroad.
• Growing demand for Latin American drugs which are of high quality.
• Social conditions of the US society in the past century such as the Vietnam War, in which 50,000 American soldiers and 4 million Vietnamese people were killed. That has impacted the American youth as many young people had recourse to drugs.
• Leftist movements deal in drugs. Some leftist movements in South America trade in drugs to finance its operations against the regimes there. Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) has planted and traded in drugs since the 1980s.
• Political ties with the US. This is a very important factor as most of the governments in South America are leftist and are at odds with the US. The US is not on good terms with Cuba and Venezuela. Iran has boosted its ties with South American countries, especially Venezuela. Iran has upgraded diplomatic ties with these countries to a degree that has worried the US.

Large numbers of Lebanese and Syrians in Latin America. There are around 14 million Lebanese migrants living in South America. Although many of them do not speak Arabic, they have strong ties with their homeland, Lebanon. The Lebanese migrants take part in the political life in Central and South America.

Salvador Nasralla stood for President in the Honduran general election. Other politicians of Lebanese origin include Brazilian President Michel Temer, Julio César Turbay, president of Colombia between 1978 and 1982, Carlos Menem, former president of Argentina, Abdalá Bucaram, president of Ecuador between 1996 and 1997.

Arabs began migration to South America in the 19^th century. The number of migrants significantly rose between 1975 and 1990 during the Lebanese civil war.

The number of Lebanese migrants in Brazil alone was estimated at 2 million people 50 years ago. It reached 6 million in the new millennium. Some of them moved to Argentina, Ecuador and Venezuela.

Iran and Hezbollah recruited some of them and formed some ‘terrorist cells’ in South America. Iran has worked on establishing Shiite mosques in Brazil and spread the Shiite sect there.

Hezbollah’s trade and its sustained effectiveness

Throughout an overview of Hezbollah’s financing resources, we conclude that it gets half of its budget from drug trafficking and money-laundering, basically in South America. Hezbollah gets $1 billion from Iran and another $1 billion from these dirty operations.

Hezbollah can continue its military operations not only in Lebanon, but also in other Middle Eastern countries like Syria and Yemen.

Therefore, reining in Hezbollah’s dirty business via ‘Cassandra Project’ which has been revived recently, would weaken Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps financially and materially.

That would eradicate the funding resources of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and Lebanon’s Hezbollah. Consequently, all of the Iran-backed armed militias in the Middle East would be weakened.  Logistically, Hezbollah will be negatively impacted.

As for the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, it will slash spending on armed militias in the region due to the economic turmoil and internal disapproval of its policies. That would boost stability and security in the Middle East.

We should also keep in mind the recent uprisings in Iran which were primarily driven by economic reasons. The Iranian regime approved a nuclear deal with the Western countries on the back of economic sanctions.

The commercial reining in of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and Hezbollah would consequently undermine Iran’s influence in the Middle East.