What the Trump administration should do in Latin America to go after Hezbollah

Excerpt

On Friday, a Miami court sentenced Ali Nasreeddine Kassir, a Miami-based Lebanese businessman and suspected Hezbollah facilitator, who pleaded guilty to passport fraud and conspiring to commit money laundering totaling over $70 million. Kassir’s conviction is the opening salvo in a string of interconnected cases implicating alleged Hezbollah financiers Nader Mohamad Farhat and Mahmoud Ali Barakat, and their U.S.-based business counterparts. When combined, these cases involve money transfers worth hundreds of millions of dollars through the U.S. financial system, allegedly for laundering criminal proceeds, including from drug trafficking, and terror finance.

Emanuele Ottolenghi is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington-based nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.