By Staff Writer
The Terrorist Financing and Targeting Center (TFTC) took significant actions against an Iran-backed terrorist group the Lebanese Hezbollah on Wednesday by designating the senior leadership.
According to a statement from the US Treasury Department, all seven member nations took this actions against the Shura Council, Hezbollah’s top decision-making body.
The statement read: “The US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) in partnership with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the co-chair of the Terrorist Financing Targeting Center (TFTC), and the other TFTC member states – the Kingdom of Bahrain, the State of Kuwait, the Sultanate of Oman, the State of Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) – designated members of Hezbollah’s Shura Council, the primary decision-making body of Hezbollah.”
The Shura Council is responsible for the terror group’s religious, military, and strategic matters, while also taking control over the group’s administrative authorities.
The OFAC and its Gulf partners designated Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah.
The OFAC and the TFTC nations also designated Naim Qasim, Muhammad Yazbak, Husayn Al- Khalil, and Ibrahim al-Amin al-Sayyid under Executive Order 13224, which targets terrorists and those who provide support to them.
The TFTC Member States have also designated individuals and entities affiliated with Hezbollah, including Talal Hamiyah, Ali Youssef Charara, Spectrum Group, Hasan Ebrahimi, Maher Trading, Hashem Safieddine, Adham Tabaja, Al-Inmaa Group, and Al-Inmaa Engineering and Contracting. All of those people/companies were previously designated by the US.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said: “The TFTC again demonstrated its great value to international security by disrupting Iran and Hezbollah’s destabilizing influence in the region. By targeting Hezbollah’s Shura Council, our nations collectively rejected the false distinction between a so-called ‘Political Wing’ and Hezbollah’s global terrorist plotting.”
He continued: “Under the dictates of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force (IRGC-QF), Secretary-General and head of the Shura Council Hassan Nasrallah is prolonging the human suffering in Syria, fueling the violence in Iraq and Yemen, putting the Lebanese state and the Lebanese people at risk, and destabilizing the entire region.”
The Treasury Department’s statement said:
“These designations follow President Trump’s decision last week to cease US participation in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, and to begin reimposing US nuclear-related sanctions on Iran. They are in furtherance of the goal of addressing the totality of Iran’s malign activities and regionally destabilizing behaviour, including that of Hezbollah.”
This is the second designation action by TFTC since the centre was announced in May 2017.
