Hezbollah has been forced to make severe cutbacks to its spending. The Lebanese Shi’a militia has received more than $700 million a year, 70% of its revenue, from the Khomeiniist regime in the past. Now however Tehran’s ability to finance the group has been significantly diminished as a direct result of the Trump sanctions on the Islamic regime in Iran.
For more than three decades Hezbollah brass has prospered on lavish funding from Tehran, spending money belonging to the people of Iran, on benefits for Hezbollah militants, paying out social services for its ‘electoral base’ and assembling a colossal armory, with troops in Syria and Iraq.
Hezbollah’s Tehran-funded Al-Manar TV has shut down and its staff laid off. The once copiously backed projects that underpinned the group’s extensive funding for Lebanon’s Shiite community has also been slashed, which included free medicines and groceries for families of Hezbollah militants, employees and their extended families and relatives.
Senior Hezbollah officials and administrative employees of the group have anonymously acknowledged that Hezbollah fighters have either been laid off or have been assigned to the reserves. Officials and fighters who have kept their job have admitted to losing access to complementary benefits such as meals, gas and transportation, access to latest appliances and automobiles, etc.
High level Lebanese sources confirm that in the recent months, Hezbollah’s leadership has been feeling “great danger”. It has become clear that the party will have to make great sacrifices in the next stages of the game; this is causing panic among the party leaders, who seem to believe that Tehran’s regime will either sacrifice them in the coming war(s) or on paper as a pawn in negotiations.
The same sources add Minister of State Mohammad Fneish and Security Chief Wafiq Safa who are identified as the party’s most corrupt, are out of fear, pressuring the party leaders to neutralize the party from the threat of any war and pushing for integration into the defense strategy with Prime Minister Saad Hariri.
Below, State Department Spokeswoman, Morgan Ortagus reports on the success of the maximum pressure campaign and announces the results on Khomeinist Regime proxies such as Lebanon’s Hezbollah.
Source » isicrc