"The November 5 announcement from the U.S. Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) targeted key elements of Hezbollah's financial network. Two operatives - Ossama Jaber, a Hezbollah financier who personally collected tens of millions via Lebanese exchange houses from September 2024 to February 2025, and Ja'far Muhammad Qasir, a sanctioned terrorist collaborating with Syrian oil magnate Yasar Husayn Ibrahim - were blacklisted for laundering Iranian cash into Hezbollah's war chest."
""We assume Iran still provides about the same amount of money, but Hezbollah is having a harder time getting it through on a timely basis. They can't just ship it from Iran or Iraq anymore without inspections, so they rely more on diaspora networks in South America and Africa," he tells The Cipher Brief. "All of this is against the backdrop of severe setbacks. Hezbollah intends to continue positioning itself to not only fight militarily but also assert an oversized, dominant position within Lebanon by virtue of force.""
"For Lebanon to emerge "free, prosperous, and secure," Hezbollah must be "fully disarmed and cut off from Iran's funding and control.""
OFAC designated key parts of Hezbollah's finance network on November 5, naming Ossama Jaber and Ja'far Muhammad Qasir for laundering Iranian cash into Hezbollah coffers. Jaber collected tens of millions via Lebanese exchange houses from September 2024 to February 2025. The cash-heavy, lightly regulated Lebanese economy enabled funding that paid paramilitary salaries and rebuilt infrastructure struck by Israeli operations. U.S. Treasury officials tied Hezbollah's viability to Iranian funding and urged disarmament and cutoff from Iran. Analysts say Iran likely still provides comparable sums but that delivery faces greater obstacles, increasing reliance on diaspora networks in South America and Africa.
Read at The Cipher Brief
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