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 is no rogue unit–officials say Unit 121 operates under the direct orders of senior Hezbollah leadership.  Guests: Monika Borgmann, German-Lebanese journalist and documentarian David Schenker ..read more

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 sees the region as a lucrative place for raising illicit funds to finance the group. Gulf states have taken notice, and more recently taken action targeting Hezbollah financing in the region. Guests ..read more

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, despite one operative’s efforts to stockpile bomb-making materials…in Houston, Texas. Guests: Russell Rosenthal, former FBI special agent and former FBI Legal Attaché and senior representative to I ..read more

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 operations against its enemies. The group also uses some unconventional means to recruit and radicalize followers and engages in cyber attacks and sleuthing targeting its enemies. Today, Hezbollah even produce ..read more

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’Ivoire, and illicit business activities in South Africa. Guest: Joseph Palazzo is the Deputy Chief of the Special Financial Investigations Unit within the U.S. Department of Justice’s Money Launde ..read more

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 to assassinate foreign diplomats in at least seven countries, including in Azerbaijan. Guests: Ambassador Arthur Lenk, former Israeli Ambassador to Azerbaijan (2005-2009) Mahammad Mammadov, Researc ..read more

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 marked as “cat litter,” signing up for flower arrangement classes as cover for travel to Bangkok, and bulk buying bottles of nail polish remover for reasons having nothing to do with makeup.   Guests ..read more

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 AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires. Here’s the backstory on Rada, recorded prior to the Treasury designation, and more on Hezbollah’s use of front companies to hide its criminal and terrori ..read more

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 ..read more

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 ..read more