Is Hezbollah Opening Franchises in Latin America?

By Douglas Farah

There is growing concern, both in the U.S. intelligence community and among other groups, that Hezbollah, after years of careful infrastructure building, is now more actively forming franchise operations in Venezuela, Paraguay, Colombia and elsewhere. Today the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designated nine individuals and supporting Hezbollah in the Tri-Border Area, one of a series of designations over the past year aimed at cutting off the expatriate flow of finances to Hezbollah in Lebanon.

According to a recent report Hezbollah now has a website in Venezuela, which claims responsibility for the unsuccessful Oct. 23 attempt to set off explosives near the U.S. embassy in Caracas.

The website, "Hezbollah in Venezuela" said the purpose of the attack was to call attention to the existence of a group by the same name, and to convert Latin America to Islam through Jihad. It promised more violent actions in the near future.

There is no question that Hezbollah has used Latin America for fund raising and a rear-guard area. My full blog is here.

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