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Episode 83: From ideology to narcotics, Hezbollah's business model, with Matt Levitt
00:48:37
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- [00:05]
A
Hi, everybody. Welcome to a new episode of Ask Aviv Anything. It's going to be a pretty exciting episode. I've been looking forward to it for a while. It connects a lot of the dots of the things that we've been reading about in the news, from Venezuela to Lebanon to Iran. Dr. Matthew Levitt is here with me. Dr. Levitt is the Fromer Wechsler Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. That's in Washington, D.C. where he directs the Institute's Reinhard Program on counterterrorism and intelligence. Dr. Levitt served served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Intelligence and Analysis at the US Department of the Treasury. He teaches at Georgetown University and at Pepperdine University School of Public Policy. It's an impressive resume, but the key point here is that he is one of the go to experts for our podcast, but also for other smaller institutions like the US Congress, for things like Hezbollah, the global reach of the organization called Hezbollah. He he is one of the analysts who have been tracking it, both professionally as a policy person in government and as a scholar and researcher of the organization. And Hezbollah is a fascinating organization in some ways. It is broken by the war with Israel and struggling to make a comeback and facing a lot of anger and a lot of determination in Lebanon, more than we've seen in the past, at least, to really prevent it from retaking control of Lebanon in the way that it has been able to, to control large parts of Lebanese politics and the Lebanese state in the past. At the same time, it has now begun to adapt to that reality and to rebuild. And we're going to be asking about that and how all of that works. Hezbollah has a surprisingly strong and important presence in Latin America, in Africa. It is, of course, very much Iranian. It is an Iranian proxy that takes money from Iran, orders from Iran. And so it links a lot of the dots of what happens in Venezuela, that failed state that has essentially become a kind of narco terrorist hub. Matthew Levitt is also the host of the podcast Breaking Hezbollah's Golden Rule, which I recommend. It's about to release its third season if you want to take a deep dive into this shadowy world of global terror. It's fascinating and it's a little bit frightening. That's the place to do it. Before we start, just for one minute, I want to tell you we have a sponsor and to invite you to join our Patreon. This episode was sponsored by Professor Robert Hockett, a Rhodes scholar professor of law and finance at a little university called Cornell, who wishes to support this podcast and this community, which in his words, quote, demonstrates every day that literal truth and justice in the Middle east can be pursued and can be articulated both thoughtfully and civilly without humoring or coddling, but instead gently rebuffing both Dark age bloodlust and present day blood libel. Professor Hockett, it is an honor to have you as a sponsor. Thank you for helping us keep the lights on and do what we do. I would also like to invite all of you to join our Patreon community. If you're interested in asking the questions that guide the topics we choose to talk about, that's the place to do it. There's a lively discussion forum where people bring thoughts and resources that we all share and read and learn a lot from. And you get to join our monthly live streams where I answer your questions live. We have a great time and you can join us at patreon.com askhaviv anything. The link is in the show notes. Matt, how are you?
- [03:33]
B
What passes for good. The world's a complicated place. That's why you and I are here. But I'm really thrilled to be on your podcast. I'm a big fan and thanks for having me.
- [03:43]
A
Thank you. It's wonderful to have you. Let's start with just understanding. You know, your podcast is called Hezbollah's Golden Rule. Understanding Hezbollah's Golden Rule. What is Hezbollah's golden rule? And then we'll, we'll dive into the events of the day.
- [03:55]
B
Yeah. So it's called Breaking Hezbollah's Golden Rule. And the reason is this. There was a Hezbollah operative who was ultimately arrested and convicted here in US Court is now serving a very long jail term, Ali Kharani. And at one point, the FBI asked him. At one point he asked his handler, a much more senior Hezbollah operative, hey, weren't you involved in the Cyprus plot and in the Bulgaria Burgess Bulgaria bombing? And his handler said to him, no, no, no. In the Islamic jihad Organization Unit 910, Hezbollah's terrorist wing, our golden rule is the less you know, the better. So in our podcast, we're trying to break Hezbollah's golden rule and put out as much information out there about the side of Hezbollah that they don't want you to know about. Hezbollah wants you to know about their political activities and their social welfare activities and their medical clinics, etc. And they go to great lengths to make that public. They have Al Manar television and radio and online, but there's a whole lot of activity, terrorist activity, international criminal activity. Their. Their militia, the Islamic Resistance, Al Muqabamal Islamiya, they don't want you to know the details about. And so in my podcast I interview the former or current FBI agents, intelligence officials, prosecutors, people who were actually involved in different cases to kind of get out. What were they doing in, I don't know, Azerbaijan? What were they doing in the tri border area of South America or in Venezuela? What were they doing in Canada or in Cyprus? Just to give you a sense of some of the episodes we've done, when.
- [05:34]
A
We say the word Hezbollah, I have my associations, people around the world will have others maybe, but. But you generally think about terror organization, you generally think about massive rocket fire in Israeli cities and towns and you think of this enormous Shia militia in south Lebanon, you think terrorism, you think geopolitics, you think Iranian proxy, you don't think one of the world's largest drug smuggling operations of heroin, of opium, of liquid hashish grown in the Beqa Valley in Lebanon, smuggled through Africa. You don't think of the South American connection of Hezbollah as this just surprising hub. How could Hezbollah possibly be a drug dealing organization? It is a righteous, pious Muslim organization. There is, I learned this from you, a fatwa of impurity in the 1980s. Can you tell us about that?
- [06:25]
B
It comes down to this. Back in the day, Hezbollah was involved in lower level drug production and running in the Beka Valley. But the big money came later when Lebanese diaspora communities which were mostly perfectly law abiding and involved people from different parts of the sectarian communities in Lebanon, but included among them Shia. And within those Shia communities there were some who were Hezbollah members or Hezbollah supporters or people who were intimidated and threatened by those Hezbollah operatives and supporters into doing things for Hezbollah or provid Hezbollah either there being intimidated there in South America, Mafia style shakedowns, put this collection box by your cash register and maybe your windows don't get broken and your knees don't get broken. And sometimes by their cousins or their grandparents or their aunts and uncles back in Lebanon being approached and saying, you know, your nephew was probably making a lot of money out in Brazil or Venezuela or Argentina, wherever it was, Africa, you should really be contributing more within those communities. There were some people who got into the narcotics trade and that developed over time. US government, the Drug Enforcement Administration basically stumbled on this when they were looking into, you know, pure drug cases and as a, as a corollary to that, realized they'll probably get better entry into some of these cases by not only following the drugs, but more so following the money and following the money laundering and when they started to do that, they kept stumbling over Hezbollah cases, starting with the guy who went by the nickname the Kunya Taliban, though he was not Taliban, he was Hezbollah. And he basically told an undercover agent, look, you know, I'm close to some people in Lebanon. They're called Hezbollah. I can move things. I can get places. I don't have to go through customs. And things blossomed from there. One of the most notorious of these narcotics traffickers was a guy named Ayman Juma, who was Sunni, not Shia, but was willing to work with Hezbollah because they could open doors. I could open doors at banks.
- [08:31]
A
Where and when are these gentlemen operating? What kind of. How early does this begin? The understanding in the west that this is happening?
- [08:39]
B
This really. We really begin to start understanding this in the. In the early 2000s, late 1990s, early 2000s. Now, we knew beforehand for a long time that there was a Hezbollah support network, even some Hezbollah operatives, in all kinds of places in South America. That goes back to even, you know, the very beginning of Hezbollah when it. In 1982. And when we see waves of immigration from Lebanon having nothing to do with Hezbollah, having everything to do. The early parts of these communities trying to flee, forced conscription in the Ottoman army, and then droughts. And so you get these Lebanese diaspora communities in places like South America and Africa in the 1980s, in the context of the civil war, these diaspora communities kind of supported their sectarian militias, including what became what was first Amal, then Islamic Amal, and ultimately Hezbollah. And we see this primarily flocking around free trade zones. The tri border area, where Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay meet, is a free trade zone. Macau, Colombia, on the border with Venezuela, is a free trade zone. Iquique, Chile, Margarita Island, Venezuela, et cetera, because there's a tremendous opportunity to do illicit business. There's. And then over time, when Hezbollah has faced financial crises, like 2009, when Iran faced the Green Revolution and a precipitous drop in the price of oil, and the first round of biting sanctions. Well, not the first round, but another round of biting sanctions. Reportedly, Iran had to cut back Hezbollah's budget by as much as 40% for a short period of time. That was a shock to the system, which was still, was then and still is today, getting the overwhelming majority of its money from Iran. But that's when they really realized in 2009, they need to diversify their portfolio. And they doubled and tripled down on illicit crime in general. And the big money is in laundering the proceeds of narcotics. And today, given everything that's happened in terms of the Israeli attack on Hezbollah. After a year of Hezbollah rockets on Israel following October 7, Iran after the 12 day war, the protests that are going on now, the financial and environmental crises, all of these things have created a situation for Hezbol where they need to double and triple down on those outside criminal networks yet again.
- [11:06]
A
Let's, let's lay the foundations here. What was the fatwa of impurity that was already back in the 1980s? That's an Iranian fatwa. And then we'll walk through more recent history.
- [11:16]
B
So there's some debate about this, but FBI and others are convinced that there was in fact a fatwa that basically said that, yes, we're a religious organization, but it's okay to get involved in narcotics trade targeting our enemies because it will raise money for the cause and it will also be a way to strike at our enemies. And so you won't find Hezbollah trafficking drugs within, within Lebanon. You won't find them trying to sell it at home, but you will find them being very involved in the movement and the laundering of the proceeds of drugs from South America to North America to Europe. There was a huge joint US European, seven different European countries operation called Operation Cedar, which arrested a bunch of Hezbollah operatives in Paris and elsewhere. DEA undercover agents sat down with some of these guys. Some of those clips have, have been made public where they come out and they say, yeah, like, absolutely, you know, we're, we're doing this, we're doing this together with Hezbollah. Hezbollah gets a cut, most of them. When you're a money launderer, most of the money goes back to the person you're laundering the money for, this cartel or that cartel. But there's a lot of money to be made in the money laundering business, and you get your cut.
- [12:29]
A
So when you say it's a way to strike at their enemies, you mean the drugs, you mean sending the drugs into America, Canada, the West, and the harm the drugs themselves do to society is what's, is the justification? One of the justifications, the overall justification.
- [12:47]
B
Is more, you know, this is income for the cause. The cause justifies all kinds of things. Think about it just more basically, this is a group that murders people and they're a religious organization. How is that okay? You can murder people for the cause here, too. And to deal with the other kind of ethical, even religious problems that some might have with being involved in narcotics trafficking, there was the additional thing of, look, it's also, we're only doing it when the drugs are going into the societies of our Enemies.
- [13:22]
A
Can you walk us through the development of that? So we have, as you said, the beginnings of it. I remember being an Israeli soldier on the northern border, and it was common knowledge that through the village of Rajal, which is a village that straddles the Israeli Lebanese border, half the villages in Lebanon, half in Israel, and the village itself is this kind of bubble where people can just walk through the streets of the village. And so the village itself became a kind of trafficking point for drugs into Lebanon. I don't know if Hezbollah was involved, but nothing happened in south Lebanon in those years. The Hezbollah didn't at least know about tax, you know, somehow used to its advantage. And so this is that Hezbollah is involved in a drug trade is very common knowledge among Israelis. And it. And it increases. How does this develop after, let's say, 2006, after the great. That war? Walk us through that and bring us to, I guess, October 7th.
- [14:11]
B
So first, just on the northern border in Rajar, Hezbollah was involved in all of that. And in fact, not only have they trafficked drugs into Israel, they've used some of those same couriers to move explosives into Israel. And in several cases, the Shin Bet has arrested people who didn't realize they were carrying explosives. They thought they were just carrying drugs. For plots that were then disrupted, there's multiple uses once they've developed these criminal enterprises. 6. The end of the 2006 war. Hezbollah needs to reconstruct. It got about a 50 million supplemental payment from Iran. I was at the US Treasury Department at the time. The US government gave more money to Lebanon than for military purposes and reconstruction, both than the rest of the world combined. Every country, every international organization, but the government was corrupt by the time they went down to the south and said, hey, we're willing to repair your broken windows for a third of the cost, people laughed at them and said, hezbollah was here two weeks ago. They did it for free, you idiot. And so Hezbollah needed a lot of money to reconstruct, to pay for widows and orphans and families of fighters who were killed or injured, et cetera. And so they really started moving out and looking for other ways to supplement the money they were getting from Iran. This is when we first start seeing real kind of growth into the criminal enterprise. Not only drugs, all kinds of other things as well. And that then expands, as I mentioned in 2009, when their budget gets cut for a period of time from Iran because of things that were happening there in Iran. And at this point, Hezbollah understands that it needs to have additional sources of income and by the way, additional sources of arms procurement because counterintuitively, they get plenty of weapons from Iran, but Iran tends to give them knockoffs of, knockoffs of Kalashnikovs. And at least for their Radwan Special Forces, they wanted the real thing. They wanted, you know, the original item. And so they started having these same international criminal networks that were developed to raise funds begin to get into black market arms deals for them as well. And that blossoms especially in South America, because there's so much opportunity there.
- [16:23]
A
I guess the, the ordinary listener or viewer is going to have a hard time imagining how this Lebanese group is actually doing that. How do you actually land what a team on the ground that connects with a cartel, you actually work with the cartel itself.
- [16:36]
B
I'm going to, I'm going to take a step back. You got to remember that there were Hezbollah support networks and Hezbollah operatives in South America going back for years already. Remember the 1992 bombing of the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires and a year and a half later the 1994 bombing of the Amiya Jewish Community center in Buenos Aires. And there were support networks for that in Brazil, in Argentina, from the tri border area, from Colombia. Several of the operatives who were involved in that and were not captured continued to operate in the region and develop and both do surveillance of targets throughout the region and also develop more Hezbollah or pro Hezbollah cadre. It's not like there's a membership card in your wallet and doing a lot of illicit financial activity to support Hezbollah. That's important because some of these people, probably through their individual activities, but they're still affiliated with Hezbollah. They get involved in illicit finance, including laundering funds for the cartel. And that develops relationships. Those relationships are important. So now someone in the cartel trusts this guy. And this guy is. He may be supported by supporter of Hezbollah, he may be originally from Lebanon, but as far as the cartel is concerned, primarily he's just one of the guys. And over time those relationships build. And then when that person, because of their connections to Hezbollah, has some unique capabilities that they can bring to the table, that's really valuable. DEA refers to people like this as super facilitators. A super facilitator can be a very high powered lawyer who knows how to launder money in a really fancy way and open front companies. It can be some Porsche McGeggy who's got a, you know, dilapidated truck but knows which part of the border to drive across and who to bribe and can move anything you want. A unique position. And so Hezbollah had a couple of things that were unique. First of all, they had the Hezbollah community. So if you are a Hezbollah guy in Brazil, where they speak Portuguese, you might be able to connect with a Hezbollah guy in Angola and Africa, where they speak Portuguese. Right. And. And if you draw a line from Brazil to West Africa across the 10th parallel, that's what US law enforcement refers to as Highway 10. It's the shortest route between South America and Africa. And it's the route across which the cartels would move their product. Hezbollah would be able to say, well, actually, I got some guys in that country. Name your West African country who can help. And then some of those drugs would stay there. Some of those drugs go up into Europe, and you're able to use your. Not cartel, not criminal, but Hezbollah connections to help that. That's very valuable to a cartel. Now you've got the ability, through your Hezbollah connections, to launder those funds, whether it's by buying expensive watches, whether it's by laundering funds through businesses that do a lot of cash, like a hairdresser. And I'm thinking of specific actual cases. A hairdresser and a guy who bought tons and tons of very expensive watches. And then. But more than that, Hezbollah has access in Lebanon and even in one case in Africa to banks. A major Hezbollah financier owns 60% of a bank in the Gambia. And Hezbollah had complete access to what was then known as the Lebanese Canadian Bank, Though it was not a Canadian bank. LCB was its name. Since been shut down. And basically LCB let Hezbollah bank whatever it wanted there and other banks in Jamal Trust and other banks in Lebanon. That is extremely valuable to a cartel because you can sell all the product you want. But if you can't launder the money and then get it into the formal financial system and then get it back into the cartel's pocket so they can buy their next fancy car or more product, it's not useful to them. For the cartel, it's not ideological at all. It's just business. For Hezbollah, it's their ideological actor. But this portion of it is also it's business. There's a lot of money to be made.
- [20:33]
A
So let's get to October 7th and post October 7th, especially in late 2024, we have the very successful Isra war on Hezbollah. The pager operations, walkie talkie operations, but also just the massive bombings, the entry into south Lebanon, the destruction of a great deal of Erdogan force infrastructure. Hezbollah is decimated and decimated without ever being able to launch its massive arsenal of missiles that were meant to set Tel Aviv on fire in the case of an Israel Iran war. And now Hezbollah is lacking firepower. It's literally short on fighters. It is no longer useful to Iran when Iran itself has to face Israel back in June of last year. And it begins to look for ways to make up A, the massive funding shortfall from Iran because Iran is now hurt, and B, to start the rebuilding. And so it doubles down. Now, you gave testimony that in October 2025. What does that look like? How does Hezbollah, since the war with Iran in June or even since the Israeli strike on Hezbollah back in 2024, how does Hezbollah begin to really take that and expand it?
- [21:41]
B
So Hezbollah got hit very, very hard in many, many ways. It's still there. It still poses threats to Israel. It still has rockets, though nowhere near as many as it had. It still has fighters, though not deployed fully along the blue line in bunkers and tunnels with all of this stuff. And it's facing multiple ongoing threats, not only from Israel and Israel striking Hezbollah weapons caches and operatives who are trying to rebuild things in the south crisis, but also from the fact that Iran is facing all of this stress and that diverts Iran's attention and funds. The Assad regime no longer exists in Syria and there is a new government in Lebanon that is not a fan of Hezbollah. Plenty of people are critical. I've been critical about whether they've done enough. But they are doing things that no government in Lebanon has done before and it is making a difference fast enough. We can debate all that, but it's making a big difference if you're Hezbollah. And by the way, by Hezbollah, I right, the top levels in the second and through the seventh and eighth levels have been decimated. Right. They weren't firing rockets at Israel, not only because many of those rockets were destroyed, but because nobody knew where the button was, nobody knew who to give an order, and there was no one to take an order. But their networks abroad have not been targeted. So suddenly their foreign networks, which have lost not a person, become a little more important because they're there and they're functioning. And now from a financial perspective, they're in a position to be able to help Hezbollah come up with the money to just. Let's just start with rebuilding. Re establishing itself a little bit. The amount of Hezbollah infrastructure, command centers, etc. Aside from the weapons and everything else that was destroyed, is massive, huge loss of fighters, which means many more families to support. If you want to continue to, as they refer to it, build a culture of resistance. Hezbollah still Guess the overwhelming majority of its funds from Iran. The US treasury recently revealed about a billion dollars with a B in the past year. But it is harder for them to get that money in. They're having to fly it in in cash from Turkey or uae. There's no longer flights from Iran. They're checking all the flights from Iraq. The borders are getting a little bit better. They can't get it in at a timely better. Even if the same amount of money is getting in, you can't count that it's going to get here by Tuesday when your bills are due. And we're now seeing a lot more action being done. Hopefully the amount of money Iran is. Hezbollah is going to shrink. Hezbollah sees all this writing on the wall and so they are doubling and tripling down again on these foreign networks. South America, Africa in particular, where they have a variety of things. They have deep pocket donors. They have Lebanese Hezbollah supporters, typically who have siblings back in Lebanon who either were because they've been killed or still are members of Hezbollah's militia. And they have great wealth. All kinds of legitimate businesses, or what I refer to as otherwise legitimate businesses because it would be. It would be legitimate. They weren't using them to also fund Hezbollah. All kinds of crime. And in South America in particular, with the touch connective tissue to Africa across Highway 10, money laundering for the cartels. There's big money to be made there. Now. The loss, the potential. I should say the potential loss of their connections in Venezuela could be significant. But at the end of the day, what's happened is Maduro and his wife have been removed from the scene. His regime is still there. I've yet to see evidence that either Iran, which has a significant presence in Venezuela, or Hezbollah's also significant presence in Venezuela are going to be affected. Maybe they will, but we don't have regime change in Venezuela. We don't have enough change in behavior in Venezuela. There is the potential for Hezbollah to have another big setback, but that hasn't.
- [25:27]
A
Happened yet on the ground in Lebanon. How much of Hezbollah remains? As near as you can figure. We've been talking about, you know, 200,000 rockets and missiles before the war with Israel, 50,000 active fighters, including some very talented and elite ones whose performance we saw in the Syrian civil war. A lot of that is decimated, a lot of command and control. But, you know, the Israeli war on Hezbollah didn't kill 50,000 people. So a great deal can be rebuilt. Very. How hard is it to rebuild the hierarchy chain? Right. How much is it?
- [25:59]
B
It's actually hard. And it takes time. When you take out people who have years and years of experience and trust with each other, lots of years of trust with Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Quds Force, people who know how the systems work, people who've gone through training, and those people are gone. And now the guy who's been in the job for two and a half years is suddenly being promoted five times up. That's going to take time. And on top of that, when the infrastructure's not there, the weapons aren't there, there's not as much money for the regular military stuff because so much of it has to go to the families of the people who've been killed and injured to literally rebuilding infrastructure. Hezbollah is fighting for its political position in Lebanon. We're facing an election in Lebanon in May. Assuming that there's no large scale resumption of hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah, there'll be an election in May. One of my big fears is that I see Israel having done a phenomenal job removing the two big baskets of threats that Hezbollah posed to Israel for many years, the rockets and the forward deployed personnel and weapons along the blue line, along the border. But Hezbollah, as you said, still has thousands of fighters and thousands upon thousands of small arms. And they pose right now a much, much, much bigger and immediate threat to Lebanon than they do to Israel. And as we get closer to the election in May, I fear that Hezbollah is going to deploy its Unit 121. Unit 121 is Hezbollah's assassination unit. They have a long history of assassinating people, fellow Lebanese in Lebanon, who they fear are being too vocal against them especially, but not only if they're Shia. Hezbollah is very focused on making sure it doesn't lose any more political position in Lebanon. And so it still has capabilities. And those capabilities they're going to seek to supplement by getting support, financial support, arms procurement, from their diaspora connections, even as they continue with the run that.
- [27:57]
A
Could be decisive in the rehabilitation. How do you stop it? How do you choke Hezbollah in Lebanon when all of this stuff is illicit?
- [28:04]
B
Lots and lots of different things at once. So the United States has engaged over the past several years in a really robust effort, both through multilateral organizations like Europol and Interpol and Ameri down in South America, and institutions like the International Institute of Justice based out of Malt, to gather people together and share information on what Hezbollah is doing in different places and using that as leverage to then say, Hezbollah is everywhere. They're not just some problem. Often Lebanon and Israel They're a problem in your neck of the woods, too. You should be designating them. You should be making sure you have the authority to deal with these people. So yesterday, Estonia, Estonia announces that over the past few weeks they have deported two students, a Pakistani and an Indian, both Muslim students, who they say were doing things in support of Iran and Hezbollah in Estonia. Other countries have enacted visa bans. Some countries have done designations or prescriptions outlawing Hezbollah. There's lots of different ways to do it. But getting more countries aware and doing something about it, getting involved in international joint investigations that involve things in their country or across their borders, making them aware. For example, you mentioned my recent congressional testimony a few weeks ago. I chose their. Not to take the easy road and just talk about the history of Hezbollah in Venezuela or Colombia, but to focus on a theme I don't think people pay enough attention to, which I mentioned briefly earlier, which is Hezbollah's proclivity for operating in free trade zones. Lots of countries they treasure, they're very protective of their free trade zones because the countries make a lot of money. Then that's great. But that doesn't mean that you shouldn't be cracking down an illicit activity there. It means you absolutely should. You need to be protecting the integrity of those free trade zones and your financial. The integrity of your financial system. So I think we need to be paying very, very close attention to what Hezbollah support networks are doing around the world. If you want to help try and avoid a resumption of hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon, if you want to give this new government in Lebanon a chance, if you want to enable the Lebanese armed forces to demonstrate that they actually can reassert a monopoly over the use of force, then you and I, everything we can to facilitate them and enable them. And the first thing we can do is stop Hezbollah from being able to raise money, raise arms. A big concern of mine right now is procurement of parts for drones because it's going to be harder, I hope, for Iran to be able to send large weapons systems because Syria is no longer there to do it easily. I anticipate we're going to see an increase in the drone wars because it's easy to procure drone components. They're largely dual use. They're small, they don't look like weapons. And we'll see drone swarms and other types of things we already see across the Jordanian border into Israel, across the Egyptian border into Israel for some time, people using drones to send weapons into people within Israel. And I think we're Going to see that and potentially attack drones. We need to be paying attention to that. All these different countries around the world, do what you can at home in your country to prevent Hezbollah from being able to rebuild itself. Or don't pretend to be shocked and dismayed when they try to rebuild themselves.
- [31:21]
A
That's such an important point. If we assume that people care about the future of Lebanon and the well being of Lebanon, a powerful Hezbollah guarantees another war with Israel. And the worst way to weaken Hezbollah, the worst way to fight Hezbollah, if again, our concern is not Israel's well being, but Lebanon's well being, is to do it on the ground between the Israelis and Hezbollah in a shooting war over Lebanese territory. You want to save Lebanon from that, you choke Hezbollah in ways that don't involve an Israeli bomb dropping anywhere in Beirut or anywhere in southern Lebanon.
- [31:53]
B
I tell people too, leave Israel out of it. A lot of these countries are investing funds or considering investing funds in the Lebanese armed forces and trying to support the new Lebanese government for lots of good reasons. And I tell them that is money thrown into the toilet if you don't also do things to enable them to succeed. Make that money that you're giving them work as opposed to throwing it at them, but then doing nothing about the biggest threat that is facing them.
- [32:20]
A
You focused so far on law enforcement and coordination. What about espionage is this. I know for a fact that there's Mossad involvement in this stuff. We saw the pager operation, etc. But you made the point that in fact the vast money laundering operations, drug trafficking operations were not touched over the last two years. Should this be something the Israelis focus on? Or conversely, President Trump is very concerned about drugs coming into the United States. We've seen that with Venezuela. That means that President Trump presumably would be keen on targeting these Hezbollah networks as well, which are also shipping drugs into the United States and Europe and Canada, et cetera. Is it time to start focusing on targeted assassinations that the Mossad knows how to do, on rolling up these networks, on infiltrating these networks? Again, I'm talking as somebody who has no idea if it's happening. It's gotta be some, some of it's gotta be happening. But a lot of the questions when you're talking about espionage across the world is where you put the bulk, where you put the focus, what you tell the institution to do most in the next two years, right? So should that be something that we're looking at, is that something Israel can do?
- [33:23]
B
So, look, I'm not going to get into the intel stuff that I know about from when I was in the US Intelligence community, because I could tell you, but I'd have to kill you, and I'm out now and have no clearances. But I can tell you from my experience that there's absolutely no way, not a chance in hell that this is not being pursued very, very vigorously for.
- [33:43]
A
Anybody, including by the United States, I assume by Israel, but including by everybody.
- [33:47]
B
Else, certainly by Israel. Though in the case of Israel, there is a question of resources. And I think it's fair to say that Israel is focusing resources on Iran in a very, very big way. You saw what Israel was able to do during the 12 Day War, infiltrating drone operators into the country and firing at Iran from within Iran and all kinds of things like that. That takes a lot of time and effort. But Hezbollah is part of that Iran threat network as we describe it here in the US the axis of resistance. It is a unique threat to Israel and there is a unique opportunity to really undermine it because of all the things we've discussed. So there's no question in my mind, absolutely none, that the Israelis are doing a lot of work there. I have to assume that the United States is too unlike many other countries. The United States has seen Hezbollah as a terrorist organization writ large for many, many years, even as it acknowledges that Hezbollah is also a political party and they're also social welfare provider, they're also a religious party. From the US Perspective, all those things are tarnished if you are also involved in terrorism, if you go rob a bank, but you're also, you know, A big donor to charities and you do all kinds of other wonderful things, they're not going to say, well, we're not going to prosecute you for robbing the bank because you do all those other wonderful things too. So we've been focusing on a Hezbollah in the United States for a very, very long time. I don't think that Hezbollah is the number one intelligence collection priority for the United States, but I think that it is certainly, I mean, this has actually been reported publicly. The Hezbollahs, even Hamas, etc, have been ratcheted up in the US intelligence priority list since October 7th. And beyond the intelligence, because intelligence is cool and it's sexy, but it's by no means the only thing. US Law enforcement has been just hammering at Hezbollah not only in the United States, but helping abroad for years and is continuing to do that. And the kind of counterterrorism diplomacy we were discussing earlier of getting other countries to do things and to Designate. This is really, really important. Something like 19 additional countries have designated or otherwise listed or done something about Hezbollah in just the past few years because of the stuff the US has done. And this makes a real difference. And if you look now, there are Hezbollah cases being prosecuted in the uk, in Germany, in Spain, there's stuff going on all over the place. There was just a big case in Brazil. There are some good things that are happening because of this.
- [36:18]
A
If the G7 or the UN Security Council invites you to tell them what to do, where would you focus? What would be that one piece of advice, two pieces of advice that would really make knock Hezbollah back on its feet.
- [36:33]
B
So I think it'd be two things and of course, you know, country by country, you'd have specific things, etc. But it comes down to two very, very big things. The first is even with Iran on its back heel, even with Iran facing very serious political and social challenges which are being driven by massive, massive economic problems, a tremendous environmental crisis, they're very likely going to have to abandon the capital in Tehran because of the environmental crisis. With all of that, Iran is still far and away the biggest benefactor in terms of money and weapons and training and intelligence for Hezbollah, but also Hamas, Houthis, Iraqi Shia militias. That is a spectrum. They're not all the same, but they're all part of that kind of family of allied militant groups allied with Iran in one way or the other. And so we really must figure out ways to, of making it much more difficult for Iran to be able to continue to fund and arm its proxies. Were it not for Iran, not Hezbollah or Hamas or the Houthis, none of these groups would be anything more than an annoying thorn in the backside. They would. None of them would have been anywhere near as capable as they'd proven to be. And this has to be, I think, our number one goal, that whether that's maritime activities, whether it's other types of things at borders, there's, there's lots of things that can still be done. Sanctions are a big part of it, but we need to be doing much, much more. To me, that is one the single biggest, most important lessons to come out of the tragedy that was October 7th and the war that followed. And it's actually a project that I'm leading, trying to figure out how to do that this year at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
- [38:09]
A
Before we move to the second thing, drill down into that. What do you mean we need to do more? Not just sanctions, figuring out how to stop Iran, give US an example. How do you stop them? There's already massive sanctions. And the sanctions are also adaptive. I know that American officials are looking into the laundering of oil through the Iraqi pipeline.
- [38:25]
B
Sanctions work best when it's action after action. You're a boxer in the boxing rink other than Rocky, right? Nobody wins a boxing match with one punch. It's a jab after jab after jab after jab. That's how sanctions has to work. You take one really nice action, you sit back and pat yourself in the back and go have a drink and don't think about it for another three weeks. They've already responded and found ways to evade what you've done 10 times over. So we need to be much more aggressive. Some people say that's whack a mole. It's not whack a mole. It is successive jabs in a boxing match. Right now, Hezbollah is doing very well off of the cash economy that is Lebanon right now. They've increased their ability to move and receive money through crypto. There are a variety of things that we need to deal with that. But leave sanctions aside for a moment. Lots to be done there. But that's the easy and the obvious I want to get people thinking about. How is it that Iran has been able so easy, easily and effectively, to move large items, large rockets, even if they're broken down into pieces, as they were for the Houthis, for example, and then reassembled in Yemen. How are they able to move these huge things so easily to the Houthis in Yemen, to Hezbollah in Lebanon? This is a logistics issue. This is kind of within our wheelhouse. This is our home court advantage in terms of our intelligence capabilities, our military assets, our ability to bring other countries together. Are they still being able to move things over land through Oman? I hear that's changing a little bit. Are they going to start moving more things through the sea? Where do we need to put assets the end of the day? And I'm not trying to poke my finger in the Biden administration's eye here, but Jake Sullivan, who's the National Security Adviser now, famously wrote this article in Foreign affairs just before October 7, saying the region's never been calmer. And he wasn't wrong in the sense that if you look just ab the water line, it was pretty calm. Well, now we understand that just below the water line, massive, massive, massive, dangerous things were happening. But we tend to be looking at, are things calm or are they not? If you look at the region right now, especially our golf partners, they all want calm. Everyone's focused on this word calm. And my fear is that they're willing to do that above, below the water thing again. As long as it appears calm, then anything that's going on is fine. And don't rock that boat and address the things that are happening just below the water, because that's going to disturb the calm. It's not actually calm. So we need to be doing things now to make sure that Iran's not able to help all these different groups, the Hamas, the Hezbollahs, rebuild. And that means disrupting their ability to move money, which would be a little more difficult, and disrupting their ability to move weapons, which is not easy, but should be a little bit easier than trying to track, you know, a dollar bill or a digital dollar bill or a crypto dollar bill. But this has to be where we come out after these years since October 7th. We will not allow this type of terrorist threats to build up again just below the water and suddenly surprise us. Oh, my God, where'd this come from? So that's the first thing. And then the second thing that I would tell these organizations and countries is what we were talking about earlier. There are real opportunities to make it much more difficult for Hezbollah and Hamas in particular. There are Hamas investigations and prosecutions that are now in Europe that are long overdue. There are organizations in Europe in particular, that Hamas has been able to use. Some are affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood that have been able to raise huge amounts of money for Hamas very, very openly in Italy, in the Netherlands, and in those two countries. They're now taking action against them. And this is long, long overdue. And there are many others. We have to stop with the pre October 7th mentality of, well, you know, we can't do everything. I'm not asking people to do everything. Identify the illicit activity that's happening in your country, which is enabling the region to be so destabilized. Don't tell me how upset you are over October 7th. Don't tell me how upset you are over the war that followed. If you're not willing to do the minimal amount that you can do enforcing your own laws in your own country to make it more difficult for those terrorist groups to engage in those types of activities. So choosing not to is a choice, and it's no longer acceptable. And so that I spent a lot of time with foreign countries on this, and I have to say I feel that there is a change. It's not like it's from 0 to 60 or 0 to 100, but I feel there is a change and people are beginning to understand. October 7th is a very, very painful wake up call. But at least in some ways, I think it is serving as a wake up call.
- [43:08]
A
I guess I want to just finish with your assessment. Do you think we will see Hezbollah suppressed, removed as a fighting force, the Shia deserve to be represented in parliament, etc. There'll always be some element of the politics, but at least as a kind of non state actor that can gut the state from within. Does Lebanon have a better future?
- [43:29]
B
I believe there's a real opportunity and a real chance for Lebanon to have a better future. There's much, much more that has to be done. And there is a delta between some of the things the Lebanese are saying and what really is. The Lebanese will talk about how many Lebanese Armed forces personnel are being deployed against Hezbollah at any time, but they'll give you the overall number and somewhere around 50% or more of those forces are not deployed at any time because the LAF lacks funds. And so those people are working second jobs, they're driving taxis, they're working construction. They're not deployed all at the same time. The Lebanese government recently kind of parsed words and they didn't quite say that mission accomplished in the south, but they said that, you know, phase one is largely complete. Israelis heard that as saying, we're done in the south. If you look at the press from Lebanon, the press from Israel, you can see the semantic difference. The LAF is still operating in the south. There's lots more they have to do in the south. There's, I believe, a good reason. The Israel Defense Forces are still carrying out targeted strikes in the south. And I believe that if you were to ask senior Lebanese Forces Armed forces personnel quietly, off the record in private, they probably wouldn't mind too much the help that they're getting because they can't do it all on their own. But it's an entirely different world for Hezbollah to be in a situation where Iran's on the ropes, the Assad regime no longer exists. And you know, say what you will about the Alshara regime in Syria and the guy's former Al Qaeda and we got to be wary of him, etc. But he is trying to keep Iran out of the country. He has taken the fight to Hezbollah on several occasions. He has seized weapons shipments that the Iranians are still trying to surreptitiously send through Syria and at home in Lebanon, Hezbollah no longer has free reign. They no longer have their own military bases that even the Lebanese armed Forces aren't allowed to go to. They are on the ropes. I do not see a situation where Hezbollah does not exist. And I do see a situation where it says, okay, if we have to be deployed farther north, we just need to get longer range missiles. But let's circle back to what we were just talking about. If we can make it more difficult for Iran to be able to send those longer range missiles, if we can continue our intelligence collection, to be able to identify where they might be trying to build their own missiles, the NIZRA has had some great success with that kind of intelligence collection and then targeting. There's an opportunity to keep Hezbollah up on its back foot and maintain a situation where the level of threat they pose to Israel is nothing like it once was. There's still a level of threat. If Hezbollah wanted to rain a lot of rockets on Israel tomorrow, they could, but they understand the consequence.
- [46:05]
A
But the farther north they deploy, the more of Lebanon comes into the crossfire.
- [46:09]
B
Of that future conflict, which I don't. Which I think Hezbollah would be okay with, but would be a, would be a, a deterrent for them because they. This, this war that they just started with Israel on October 8, 2023, nobody in Lebanon wanted because of the political and economic crises that the country had been facing for so long. And I think that's one of the reasons Hezbollah is facing such pushback at home. If they were to do something that would bring even more of the country under attack, I think they understand now there'd be consequence to that. Are there any circumstances in which they do it? Yes. If you had told me that there could ever be a situation where Israel and Iran would be in a direct conflict and Hezbollah would do nothing, I would think you're crazy. And that's exactly what happened. Hezbollah sent condolences, nothing more.
- [46:53]
A
That was astonishing.
- [46:54]
B
It was astonishing. But now, this time around, during the protests that have been going on over the past few weeks, there was a significant international effort to communicate to Hezbollah, don't do anything. And as Bulla communicated, we won't do anything unless the US or Israel do things kinetically to try and, you know, kill the supreme leader, etc. And that suggests that maybe they might have been willing to do some. Something if it came to something that they would consider an existential threat.
- [47:20]
A
Threat.
- [47:20]
B
And the removal of this regime in Iran, which I think will ultimately implode at some point, that is an existential threat. For Hezbollah to operate, to continue operating as, as the militant powerhouse that it had become. It has now been knocked down several notches, big notches. And there's more that has to be done to make sure it stays at that level or suffers even more setbacks. And so there's lots that needs to be done and not all of that is going to be kinetic.
- [47:46]
A
Matt Levitt, I take away from what you're saying that there are no solutions. There are only trade offs. The famous line there are no solutions, but there are great many options and opportunities to fundamentally change the equation. And Hezbollah will not be allowed to become what it once was. And that's something that certainly the Israelis are aware of and the west, and there's more awareness in the west that that's a problem. You talked specifically about, really the danger that Hezbollah poses as part of this larger drug operation to societies in Europe, in North America. Hopefully that has awakened people and that's something that we're going to see them acting on. Thank you so much for joining me. This was absolutely fascinating.
- [48:24]
B
Aviv, thank you so much for having me on the program. You really do a fabulous job educating people on complicated matters. So it's a real honor to be able to do this with you today.
- [48:32]
A
Thank you.