The U.S. Treasury on Tuesday charged Hezbollah with operating like an international drug cartel, alleging that the Iran-backed terrorist organization uses the money that it traffics through the U.S. to fund violence and undermine American interests. The Treasury Department also invoked the Patriot Act to blacklist two Lebanese money-exchange houses for collectively moving hundreds of millions of dollars in drug proceeds and used cars through the U.S. and Africa.

Illicit finance experts have blasted Hezbollah for turning Lebanon into a “veritable money laundering machine”:

Moreover, cracking down on Hezbollah’s illicit finances is one of the only things that can save the Lebanese banking system and economy from unraveling further. The predominant risk to the Lebanese banking system and the Lebanese economy today is born from Hezbollah’s domineering illicit activities and their infiltration into the entire Lebanese financial system and economy (real estate is infiltrated at least as much as banking). If the cost of survival for Lebanese banking is punishing Hezbollah, then the Lebanese need to turn on Hezbollah (and curtail Iran’s access in the process).

That the group is willing to endanger Lebanon’s entire financial system in order to promote its campaigns has been used by analysts to ridicule the suggestion that Hezbollah is an indigenous Lebanese group promoting Lebanese interests, rather than an Iranian proxy willing to sacrifice Lebanese stability and prosperity at Tehran’s behest.

[Photo: Ladybugbkt / Flickr]