Argentina to Blacklist Hezbollah Under U.S. Pressure

Date: 12 July 2019 - 21:49

News ID: ۶۸۰۰۷

BUENOS AIRES (Dispatches) – The Argentine government confirmed Thursday that it is preparing in a decree to designate the Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah as a terrorist organization.
Hezbollah's designation coincides with a visit to Argentina by U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who will commemorate the 25th anniversary of the AMIA bombing during a ceremony next Thursday.
The AMIA bombing, which occurred July 18, 1994, killed 85 people and has long been blamed by the U.S. government on Hezbollah, which has rejected it.
One of U.S. President Donald Trump's top foreign policy advisors and a former CIA director, Pompeo has extended support to Mauricio Macri and his government's policies.
"We are evaluating different possibilities. One of them is to pass a decree," sources in the Ministry of Security and the Financial Intelligence Unit told the newspaper.
The two entities have been tasked by President Macri to find the "most rapid" solution to achieve the goal of including the resistance movement in the list of terror organizations.
"We do not have a majority in Parliament, and it would take too long to pass a law there," highly-placed sources in the Argentine government explained to La Nacion.
Argentina hosted a regional summit with the United States in attendance earlier this week, during which the two sides discussed ways of "countering Hezbollah.”
Earlier this week, the U.S, Treasury Department imposed sanctions on two Hezbollah members of Lebanon’s parliament and a security official responsible for coordinating between the resistance movement and the country’s security agencies.
Hezbollah "rejected and denounced" the move, saying it "widened the assault on Lebanon and its people.”
The movement was formed following the occupying regime of Israel’s invasion of Lebanon and the ensuing occupation of its southern parts in the 1980s. It currently constitutes Lebanon’s de facto military power.
Since then, the movement has helped the Lebanese national army retake the occupied regions from Tel Aviv and thwart two Israeli acts of aggression in 2000 and 2006.
It has also been playing a significant role in the Syrian army’s fight against Takfiri terror groups, including Daesh and Nusra Front, and preventing the spillover of the foreign-backed war into Lebanon.
Some 50 Hezbollah individuals and entities have been blacklisted by the U.S. since 2017.