After Iran used COVID-19 as an excuse to start INSTEX, they try now to get 5$ Billion aid from IMF. The US will not allow the IMF to fund Iranian middle-east expansion efforts and terrorism but Khamenei found a way to “con” the fund and to blind the West. He allowed Nasrallah to accept IMF assistance on behalf of Lebanon, thus channeling funds to Iranian interests, courtesy of the COVID beaten economy of USA and Europe.
Lebanon was on the verge of bankruptcy and in need of financial help even before COVID-19, without any outlook for reforms, a loss of control over the south of the country and massive immigration from Syria. Hezbollah is dominating Lebanese politics, opposing IMF help as interference. Lately we witness a change in attitude towards IMF assistance as Hezbollah only insists that such help should not harm the national interest. Hezbollah may be suffering from lack of financial backing which the Shiite terror organization used to receive from Iran. Now, with Iran in dire straits, applying themselves for IMF assistance, Hezbollah needs another source of income. The direct access to governmental finance would enable them at least to survive, as long as Iran recovering.
Iran itself is waiting for financial aid, as IMF claims that limited engagement with Iran over the last decades made it problematic to assess the current needs and justification for the 5$ Billion emergency grant. This takes time that Iran doesn’t have. The US already announced it will attempt to block such assistance, and 16.5% of voting share come very handy in this case.
The overall case seems clear, and Europe and the US share the same message on Lebanon. But Hezbollah‘s change of heart is clearly the outcome of Tehran’s urgent needs. IMF money will not only fund Hezbollah, a terror organization and IRGC subsidiary, but also Iran, who again tries to play the innocent victim, without a hint of backing up on Syria, Iraq, Yemen and human rights within Iran and naturally still advancing its nuclear interests, with more enriched material and new centrifuges.
