Breaking Hezbollah's Golden Rule

Hezbollah buys grassroots support in Lebanon where and when it can, but the group turns to intimidation and even murder when a vocal opponent can’t be bought. Hezbollah’s elite, highly-secretive Unit 121 is the group’s death squad, which carries out  assassinations of Lebanese politicians, military and law enforcement officers, and intellectuals who oppose the group’s illicit activities. This...

Two Hezbollah financiers based in Qatar secretly raised tens of millions of dollars for Hezbollah through banks and cash couriers. The operatives leveraged family connections and utilized a complex web of bank accounts and real estate projects across several Gulf countries to funnel large sums of money back to Lebanon. Hezbollah has a long history of carrying out attacks in the Gulf, but it also s...

In 2017, two Hezbollah operatives were arrested on the same day for conducting independent surveillance operations on U.S. targets across the country. A third was arrested in July 2019 for taking pictures of a number of high-profile U.S. landmarks and communicating this information back to Beirut through his Hezbollah handlers. These three cases received a lot of media attention. A fourth didn’t,...

40 years ago this week, Hezbollah blew up the barracks of U.S. Marine and French military peacekeepers in Beirut, killing about 300 people. The group continues to carry out attacks, but has developed the means to complement and support these real-life operations through online activities. Hezbollah was one of the first non-state actors to build up a digital presence to conduct cyber operation...

Diamonds are an excellent way to smuggle and launder money - they’re very liquid, can’t be sniffed out by dogs, don’t set off metal detectors, and are easy to conceal. Similarly,  illicit funds can be laundered and stored by investing in artwork. These luxury items link Hezbollah headquarters in Beirut to the blood diamond trade in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, art galleries in Côte d...

In 2008, Azerbaijani authorities thwarted a Hezbollah plot to target an Israeli Independence Day celebration and kidnap the Israeli ambassador in Baku. Two Hezbollah operatives were arrested, tried, and convicted, but the group was not deterred by this setback. By 2011, Hezbollah and Iran had formulated “a jumble of overlapping plots” that officials discovered to be part of a coordinated campaign...

An innocent looking hit-and-run accident in downtown Bangkok in 1994 uncovered a sophisticated Hezbollah network in Thailand, an attempt to target the Israeli embassy there, and a decomposing body hidden in a vat full of chemical explosives. Two decades later, a new string of Hezbollah and Iranian-directed plots in Thailand cropped up, this time involving operatives hiding explosives in bags marke...

Earlier this month, the U.S. Treasury Department designated Hezbollah operative Amer Mohamed Akil Rada for coordinating the activities of various commercial enterprises for Hezbollah, including charcoal exports from Colombia to Lebanon. Rada previously helped case targets for Hezbollah around South America and was a member of the Hezbollah operational squad that carried out the 1994 bombing of the...

Preview Season 2 of Breaking Hezbollah's Golden Rule, a podcast series devoted to shining a bright light on the global terrorist and criminal activities that Lebanese Hezbollah would much prefer to keep quiet. Coming soon to your favorite podcatcher. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Preview Season 2 of Breaking Hezbollah's Golden Rule, a podcast series devoted to shining a bright light on the global terrorist and criminal activities that Lebanese Hezbollah would much prefer to keep quiet. Coming soon to your favorite podcatcher. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hezbollah’s deep penetration of the Lebanese financial system threatens the legitimacy and stability of the state it claims to protect. After all, when the group engages in money laundering and narcotics trafficking around the world, where does the dirty money go? Back home to Lebanon. And critics beware—vocal opposition to Hezbollah’s activities can be fatal. Even for a former prime minister. Gue...

On June 1, 2017, U.S. authorities arrested two Hezbollah sleeper agents. The operatives had created targeting packages with ready-to go-plans for possible attacks, in the event Iranian or Hezbollah leaders deemed them necessary. They traveled on their American passports when Hezbollah sent them on missions in Asia and South America. Where were their targets? Who was their handler? And what we...

European authorities weren’t looking for Hezbollah when they investigated a massive money laundering network operating across at least seven EU countries. But when they reached out to their close partners at the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, the DEA came back with startling information: the gang included high-ranking Hezbollah operatives and sent its profits back to Lebanon to fund Hezboll...

In July 2012, police arrested a well-trained Hezbollah operative named Hossam Yaacoub in Cyprus. Less than two weeks later, a Hezbollah suicide bomb killed 5 Israelis on a tourist bus in Burgas, Bulgaria. But the group wasn’t done in Cyprus. Another operative was stockpiling explosives—and waiting to act. Guests:  Magnus Norell , senior policy advisor at The European Foundation for Democracy&...

In Charlotte, North Carolina, a gang of Hezbollah criminals smuggled cigarettes across state lines to raise funds. But on Thursday nights, they gathered and watched Hezbollah martyrdom videos. When the FBI began to surveil the group, agents saw the men conducting firearms training and feared they could “go operational” at any time. The ensuing investigation, dubbed Operation Smokescreen, exposed t...

South America’s Tri-Border Area has been described as “the United Nations of crime.” Along the porous borders of Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil, counterfeiters scheme, narco-traffickers move product and launder funds, and criminals sell fake or stolen goods on the open market. Since the 1980s, the area has also been a hotbed of Hezbollah criminal and terrorist activities. Nobody seemed to notice—...

In December 1983, six blasts shook Kuwait’s capital city. Two prominent Hezbollah operatives oversaw the attack. Soon, bombs were going off in Paris, Copenhagen, and Saudi Arabia, while other members of the group hijacked TWA Flight 847 and murdered U.S. Navy diver Robert Stethem. What did Hezbollah want? And why was a Lebanese-based militant group conducting attacks in Europe and the Gulf? Guests...

On his first day with the State Department, Special Agent Fred Burton found a suicide bomber’s ear in a file on his desk. The bomber had targeted the U.S. embassy in Beirut on behalf of a shadowy new group called Hezbollah. Soon, the group was carrying out even bigger attacks and kidnapping journalists and innocent civilians for ransom. Reporting on these events, a CIA report from the ti...

Preview Breaking Hezbollah's Golden Rule, a podcast series devoted to shining a bright light on the global terrorist and criminal activities that the Lebanese organization would rather remain in the shadows. Coming soon to your favorite podcatcher. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.