Lebanon’s Hezbollah militia is running out of money, researchers told VOA, as a weekly Israeli offensive against the Iran-backed group cuts off three of its main sources of cash.
U.S.-based and Lebanon-based researchers and U.S. Treasury Department reports identify Hezbollah’s main source of liquidity as Al-Qard al-Hasan, or AQAH, a quasi-bank-operated Lebanese institution from the designated terrorist group through the United States government banking license. Researchers say the group’s other sources of liquidity include failed but licensed Lebanese commercial banks and the arrival of cash-carrying planes at Beirut airport.
The Israeli military stepped up its attacks on Hezbollah leaders and facilities last month, after 11 months of limiting its responses to daily militia attacks in northern Israel in support of Hamas. The Palestinian terror group, also backed by Iran, invaded southern Israel from Gaza last October, prompting a strong Israeli response. Hezbollah founded AQAH in 1982 as a charitable institution that provided interest-free loans to needy, mostly Shiite Lebanese, according to the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center (ITIC), a non-governmental research group composed of community veterans. of Israeli intelligence.
ITIC claims that AQAH has become a major institution with branches in Dahiyeh, Hezbollah’s stronghold south of Beirut, and other Hezbollah-dominated areas of Lebanon.
