What to do about EU’s pathological relationship with Hezbollah?

Europeans have criticized US President Donald Trump for distancing America from her traditional allies in NATO, while favoring his relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin. After relying on America for protection for over 70 years since the end of World War II, Europe is “now more worried about an America withdrawing from the transatlantic relationship than an overbearing superpower”, according to Richard Wike writing in the Atlantic.

Yet when European financial interests were threatened last year, German Chancellor Angela Merkel criticized bipartisan congressional legislation that proposed increasing sanctions against Russia because it targeted the European-Russia Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline in which German companies are invested. The legislation toughened sanctions on Russia over its Ukrainian invasion. Mrs. Merkel’s doesn’t seem to realize that she lives in a glass house.

American critics of Europe have focused on European underfunding of their NATO obligation, spending under 2% of their GDP, below their promised commitment.

However equally as troubling to both Congress and the administration is Europe’s associations and protection of the American-designated terrorist organization Hezbollah that operates freely in Europe, raising funds while threatening American and allied interests. The Europeans stick their collective heads in the sand as multiple Hezbollah planned attacks on European soil have been foiled within the last few years.

European appeasement of Hezbollah begins and ends with their failure to designate its political wing as a terrorist organization, despite Hezbollah itself having no distinction between its terrorist and political entities.

For the past four decades Europe has had an unspoken arrangement with Arab terrorist organizations, that they won’t commit terror on their soil if they are allowed to raise funds and operate freely there.

Germany’s history of capitulating to terror is long and unflattering. Just one month after the Palestinian Black September massacre at the Munich Olympics, they released the remaining perpetrators of the attacks.

A Der Spiegel investigation of German government documents released forty years after the attacks said, “Despite the still-vivid images of masked terrorists on the balconies of the Olympic Village...there was already active but secret diplomatic communication between... German representatives...talking to men like Abu Youssef, Ali Salameh and Amin al-Hindi, all of them masterminds of the Munich murders.”

In fact, Germany chose never to prosecute or even pursue the terrorists who murdered the unarmed Olympic athletes.

Today’s Hezbollah is yesterday’s Black September, except they are exponentially more powerful, literally control a country Lebanon, and are themselves directed controlled by the Iranian “supreme leader” and his Revolutionary Guards. According to the State Department, Iran is still designated as the number-one state sponsor of terrorism.

After the EU listed Hezbollah’s military but not its political wing as a terrorist entity in 2012, after they attacked a tourist bus in Bulgaria targeting Israeli civilians, the French foreign minister pledged, “there’s no question of accepting terrorist organizations in Europe.”

According to Mathew Levitt, a Washington Institute Counterterrorism and Intelligence expert, just three years after the attack “there is abundant evidence that Hezbollah is...engaging in terrorist activities in Europe.” Yet the EU continues to do business as usual with Hezbollah’s Iranian sponsors.

Far too many in Europe, especially Germany, fail to live up to their western values, favoring Iran over American interests, refusing to designate Hezbollah in its entirety as a terrorist organization.

Just a few weeks ago, an Iranian diplomat Assadollah Assadi was charged by German police with giving a high explosive bomb to an Iranian couple to detonate at an Iranian opposition rally outside of Paris. How did the EU respond? According to Struan Stevenson writing in UPI, “EU lawmakers on July 5 (one week later) approved plans for the European Investment Bank to do business with Iran... The EU appeasers seem to think that if you keep throwing steaks to the tiger it will become a vegetarian.” So what needs to be done? America must fundamentally change its policy towards Lebanon and acknowledge the reality that differentiating Lebanon from Hezbollah at this point is as incoherent as differentiating the military and political wings of Hezbollah. They are all one in the same, and America would be much more persuasive to Europe if it had a unified policy on Lebanon and Hezbollah.

Just as America viewed Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega as a narco-terrorist in the 1980’s and acted decisively, Hezbollah’s leadership needs to be viewed through the same prism. Hezbollah funds their terrorism through drugs and money laundering in Europe and South America, directly fueling the cocaine trade into the United States. That is a primary reason why America and Europe need both to call Hezbollah what it is, an enemy terrorist organization.

According to former Israeli ambassador Ron Prosor, “The moment it is classed as such, its bank accounts, businesses and finances would be treated as illegal, and heavily sanctioned. Its members would be placed on no-flight lists, and law-enforcement agencies can then use more effective tools. Hezbollah’s “free-trade zone” would officially be closed...Less money means fewer weapons.”

As Hezbollah expert Emanuele Ottolenghi of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies writes, in foreign policy, “Latin America is an indispensable theater of operations for the criminal networks that generate much of Hezbollah’s revenue. Paraguay hosts a significant and growing money laundering operation connected to Hezbollah in the Triple Frontier, where Paraguay intersects with Argentina and Brazil.”

There is bipartisan consensus in the House of Representatives with the Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee Ed Royce a Republican, and ranking member Elliot Engel a Democrat, co-authoring legislation sanctioning individuals and businesses that are the lifeblood supporting Hezbollah’s illicit operations.

As for Europe’s unsavory relationship with Hezbollah, just as the address to do anything in Syria is Moscow, the address to stop Hezbollah resides in Europe with Angela Merkel.

Merkel cannot plead ignorance. The German Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution figured there were nearly 1000 Hezbollah operatives and 300 Hamas members actively working within Germany.

German diplomats have claimed that Germany is resisting the US demand to outlaw Hezbollah because it will hurt Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. The rationale to defend Hezbollah is becoming more flimsy all the time.

To make the point absolutely clear that Europe has no interest in reigning in Hezbollah, the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs, Frederica Mogherini, justifies engaging with a terrorist entity like Hezbollah, because it allows for constructive engagement. This is the same person who defends Iran and actively undermines American interests by promoting Iranian trade, despite the direct complicity of Iran and Hezbollah in their ethnic cleansing of tens of thousands of Sunnis in Syria and Iraq to make way for a forced population transfer of Shi’ites controlled by Iran into Sunni areas, flying in the face of international law.

America needs to lead and demand that Europe will follow. As Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin said, “This Administration will expose and disrupt Hizbollah and Iranian terror networks at every turn, including those with ties to the Central Bank of Iran.” Your turn Chancellor Merkel.

The writer is director of MEPIN™, the Middle East Political and Information Network™. Dr. Mandel regularly briefs members of Congress on the Middle East. He is a contributor to The Jerusalem Post, The Hill, and The Forward.