“Weapons and money are flowing across the border from Syria into Lebanon,” says Al Sayed Mohammad Ali El Husseini, a former Hezbollah deputy commander-turned-outspoken critic of the organization. “The money comes in U.S. dollars.”
According to Husseini, there are two “specially designated military aircraft” that operate in-and-out of the Damascus airport. “Those airplanes are for the IRGC, and they are never inspected,” he says. “The sole purpose for those planes is to fly between Iran and Syria. They bring both weapons and money: The money is in very large bags similar to what you might ship potatoes in. The money never comes in suitcases because the suitcases could not carry enough.”
The weapons and money, he adds, are then loaded onto trucks and transported over a military route that has existed since the time of Lebanon’s Syrian occupation.
When I ask Husseini if the money is also entering through the airports in Lebanon or banks like Saderat Iran, he says, “No longer.”
It’s not only the Iranian money, but the untraceable revenue generated from the worldwide Shiia Diaspora – not all Shiia, but those friendly to Hezbollah and eager to fund what they deem to be the “resistance” against Hezbollah’s natural enemy, Israel – as well as the drug-growing and processing industry, primarily hashish, in the Bekaa Valley.
Tom Harb, secretary general of Lebanon’s pro-democracy World Council of the Cedars Revolution, says one of the major reasons Hezbollah has not been disbanded (all “militias” in Lebanon are to be disbanded under UN Security Council Resolutions 1559 and 1701) is the money. “The influence of the Iranian money is simply too powerful,” Harb says. “And that influence is reflected in an increasingly strong pro-Hezbollah lobby not only Lebanon, but in Europe and other parts of the world. This is enabling Hezbollah to become the Taliban of Lebanon.”
Phares agrees, and as he so succinctly stated earlier this month: “There is no native force in Lebanon that can match this tidal wave nor even one tenth of it.”
W. Thomas Smith, Jr
W. Thomas Smith Jr. is a former U.S. Marine rifle-squad leader and counterterrorism instructor. He is the author of six books, and he has covered war and conflict in the Balkans, on the West Bank, in Iraq, and Lebanon. Visit him online at
http://www.uswriter.com.
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