Hezbollah is running out of money in the face of Israeli bombing

WASHINGTON—

Lebanon’s Hezbollah militia is running out of money, researchers tell VOA, as a weeks-long Israeli offensive against the Iran-backed group shuts down three of its main sources of funding.

U.S. and Lebanon-based researchers and U.S. Treasury Department reports identify Hezbollah’s primary source of funds as Al-Qard al-Hasan, or AQAH, a Lebanese quasi-banking institution operated by the U.S.-designated terror group without a state banking license. The researchers say the group’s other sources of funds include Lebanon’s insolvent but licensed commercial banks and the arrival of cash-laden planes at Beirut airport.

The Israeli military stepped up its attacks on Hezbollah leaders and entities last month after an 11-month limited response to the militia’s daily attacks on northern Israel in support of Hamas. The Palestinian terror group, which is also backed by Iran, invaded southern Israel from Gaza last October, sparking a strong Israeli response.

According to Israel’s Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center (ITIC), a non-governmental research group made up of veterans of Israel’s intelligence services, Hezbollah founded AQAH in 1982 as a nonprofit institution that provides interest-free loans to needy Lebanese, primarily Shiite co-religionists.

According to ITIC, AQAH has now become a major institution with branches in Dahiyeh, Hezbollah’s stronghold in southern Beirut, and other Hezbollah-dominated parts of Lebanon.

The US Treasury Department imposed sanctions on AQAH in 2007. An announcement of further sanctions against AQAH employees in 2021 said the institution had amassed around half a billion dollars.

According to MTV Lebanon, one of the country’s leading television channels, AQAH was hit hard by Israel’s first airstrikes on Hezbollah targets in Dahiyeh in late September.

In an Arabic-language report on September 30, MTV Lebanon said Israeli airstrikes had targeted Hezbollah’s “money storage centers, including a large portion of AQAH’s vaults,” sending the group into what it called a “financial crisis.”

Hilal Khashan, a political science professor at the American University of Beirut, said in a telephone interview on Wednesday that Israel had “destroyed” most of AQAH’s branches in the airstrikes. “Hezbollah is facing a very serious financial problem. They are unable to pay ordinary members who have fled their homes and need to feed their families,” Khashan said.

The Finance Ministry’s 2021 announcement of sanctions against six AQAH employees said they used personal accounts at licensed Lebanese banks to transfer more than $500 million to and from AQAH over the past decade. It said the activities gave AQAH access to the international financial system through employees’ personal accounts at Lebanese banks.

David Asher, a former U.S. Defense and State Department official who has targeted Hezbollah’s global drug trafficking and money laundering networks, said in a separate interview on Wednesday that the group is in “big trouble” because it is also the Lose access to the Lebanese banking system.

“I hear from Lebanese bankers, including Hezbollah financiers, that Lebanon’s richest bankers who can afford to fly have fled to Europe and the Gulf for fear they will be next targeted by Israel because “They’re helping Hezbollah,” said Asher, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Hudson Institute. Asher said he is in contact with Lebanon-based sources that the U.S. has recruited over the years to provide information about Hezbollah.

“These Lebanese bankers, most of them billionaires, see that the wind is blowing against Hezbollah, so they will not allow it to withdraw millions of dollars from their banks, which are still flush with cash even though they are bankrupt on paper are,” said Asher. “They know that if they do, Israel will probably eliminate them too.”

Another source of Hezbollah’s funding that has dried up, according to Asher and Khashan, is cash shipments on planes flying into Beirut airport, particularly from Iran, the group’s main backer.

Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari told reporters on September 27 that Israeli warplanes had begun patrolling the airspace of Beirut airport and that they would not allow enemy aircraft carrying weapons to land on a civilian facility. He did not mention the issue of transporting cash aboard planes that Israel considers hostile flights.

The next day, the Lebanese Ministry of Transport told Lebanese and Western media that it had ordered an Iranian aircraft en route to Beirut to leave Lebanese airspace. The ministry attributed the move to an Israeli warning to the air traffic control tower in Beirut that Israel would use force if the plane landed there.

“I have heard from my Israeli colleagues that Iranians are currently afraid to send money to Lebanon because Israel is threatening to target flights to Beirut. “The Israelis are warning that they will target flights full of money, not just weapons,” Asher said.

Khashan said Iran organized regular flights from Tehran to Beirut to smuggle cash to Hezbollah without going through the Lebanese government’s customs department. “In the weeks since Israel escalated its attacks on the southern suburbs of Beirut, the Lebanese government has asserted greater control over the airport and now there is no flow of money to Hezbollah,” Khashan said.

Lebanon’s Public Works and Transport Minister Ali Hamieh told Agence France-Presse on Tuesday that Beirut airport “is governed by Lebanese laws and under the control of various relevant departments and security agencies.” Hamieh added that any aircraft transporting weapons must be approved by the Lebanese army and licensed by his ministry.

Saudi television channel Al Arabiya quoted a Lebanese army source in a report on Thursday as saying the army and other security agencies had “moved” to gain control of the airport by starting inspections of cargo shipments to ensure security that their content corresponds to the information provided.

Khashan said Hezbollah’s lack of funds is unlikely to stop its thousands of militants from fighting Israeli forces any time soon.

“The continuation of the fight depends more on the availability of food and ammunition,” he said. “If your fight is motivated by religious fervor, you have more fundamental problems than the availability of cash.”