Hezbollah is a terrorist outfit, it should be treated as one

Western intelligence elements have revealed that the Lebanese terror organization, Hezbollah, which takes its orders from the Iranian regime and is considered the most dangerous terror organization in the world, has been experiencing a string of operational failures in recent years. Its attempts to set up terror infrastructure and sleeper cells around the world have been thwarted causing a great deal of frustration in the organization, which has invested huge resources in building worldwide terror cells all the while dealing with major political and budgetary problems.
In the afternoon of March 17, 1992, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Talal Hamiyeh made a brief phone call to a subordinate. Minutes later, a massive car bomb exploded, destroying the Israeli embassy, instantly killing 29 people and wounding 242 more. Within minutes, Western intelligence agencies were focusing on Hezbollah - who is directed by Iran to carry out terrorist attacks when ordered.
Hezbollah is a recognised terrorist organisation despite its attempts to falsely portray itself as a legitimate political entity in Lebanon. But while Hezbollah has committed atrocities across the Middle East and was responsible for carrying out the largest terror attack in the history of Argentina and all of Latin America, the Iranian terror proxy could be losing its strength as law enforcement authorities and intelligence agencies close in on its operatives. In recent years, Hezbollah's sleeper cells have consistently failed to plan or carry out terror attacks as authorities take further steps to thwart them.
The division responsible for planning and implementing these terror attacks is veteran Unit 910, the External Security Organisation (ESO), a discrete branch within Hezbollah and led by Hamiyeh, responsible for the terror attacks carried out in Argentina in the 1990s and in Bulgaria in 2012, killing hundreds of people, and the new attack unit commanded by Ali Wahib Yassin, also known as Abu Jihad.
Hamiyeh replaced Imad Mugniyeh, number two in Hezbollah's leadership, as head of the ESO after Mughniyah was killed in a 2008 car bombing in Damascus. 
Hamiyeh has been implicated in the 1992 and 1994 attacks in Argentina and the U.S. government is offering a reward of up to $7 million for information on him. The U.S. Department of Treasury also designated Hamiyeh in 2012 as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) for providing support to Hezbollah's terrorist activities in the Middle East and around the world. 
Western intelligence agencies have been hard at work, especially over the past two years, exposing Hezbollah's modus operandi and planned terrorist operations. 
But Hezbollah constantly attempts to hamper these efforts through its extensive network of social foundations in Lebanon engaged in health, education, welfare, and media. The main goal is to provide support for Hezbollah's military infrastructure, to spread its ideology - mainly among youth - and strengthen Hezbollah's image among the Shi'ite sect in particular and Lebanese society in general. 
For years, Hamiyeh relied on gaining support from within sympathetic Shi'ite communities and from which Hezbollah could recruit collaborators and agents. 
However, the terror organization sources support from elsewhere as it constantly attempts to dodge authorities. Their current strategy focuses on the establishment of sleeper cells, for which it recruits Muslim citizens of various countries, especially Pakistan and Afghanistan. They include students and various professionals, who the organization assumes will not raise suspicion and be able to easily blend in. These recruits are trained in Lebanon and Iran to carry out terror attacks. This diverges from the unit's usual modus operandi that is based on recruiting Lebanese Shiites with dual citizenship, also chosen for the ease with which they can travel without arousing the suspicion of the local security apparatuses.
Today, Hezbollah's modus operandi in the Tri-Border Area (TBA) of Paraguay Argentina and Brazil is similar to its recruitment tactics in Lebanon. As in Lebanon, Hezbollah has funded the establishment of Shi'ite communal institutions across Latin America and has offered financial support to sustain already-existing ones. The result is that clerics and school teachers are imparting Hezbollah ideology to local, impressionable young men. 
In addition to its terror activities, Hezbollah cooperates with drug cartels in the TBA. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) gathered evidence during the Obama Administration proving that Hezbollah had transformed itself from a military and political organization into an international crime syndicate, involved in running illicit drugs and weapons trafficking and money laundering operations on a global scale.
But it seems Hezbollah is more successful at being a global criminal syndicate than a terrorist organization. 
During the past two years, and especially in recent months, operatives belonging to Hezbollah's attack units have been exposed, detained and questioned on suspicion of their involvement in setting up terror infrastructure for the organization, as have been cased recently in Thailand, Uganda, Italy, the UK and elsewhere. These measures have shed light on the organization's recruiting and training methods, but also on the identity of its future targets. These exposures led, among other things, to the designation of Hezbollah as a terror organization in Britain and Argentina in 2019, without artificially distinguishing between its political arm and its military wing. The security bodies evidently believe that measures must be taken against the organization and its commanders using all the tools at their disposal - underscored by the U.S designation of Salman Salman as a senior ESO official and the seven million dollar prize offered in exchange for information regarding him.
For example, Lebanese national Hussein Mahmoud Yassine, who was arrested in Uganda in 2019, was reportedly recruited into Hezbollah's foreign liaison unit by senior Hezbollah official Ali Wahib Hussein. Hezbollah instructed Yassine to identify potential US and Israeli targets in Uganda and the region, to recruit other Lebanese nationals for Hezbollah operations, and to attempt to recruit Muslim Ugandans to act as Hezbollah intelligence agents.
Hezbollah, which used to operate covertly but with a fair amount of freedom in many countries worldwide, is now seeing the concerted efforts it invested in building terror infrastructure all over the globe sustain blow after blow. Western intelligence sources welcome this achievement, which has saved innocent lives. They emphasize that they will continue working on exposing Hezbollah's terror activity across the world, and in adding it to additional countries' terror lists.
Since its 2012 attack in Bulgaria, Hezbollah terrorist plots have been disrupted in Azerbaijan, Bolivia, Cyprus, Belgium, Guinea, Egypt, Turkey, Kuwait, Nigeria, Panama, Peru, Thailand, the UK, the US, Germany, France, Italy, and the Czech Republic. In the past six years alone, Hezbollah has attempted terrorist attacks on five of the world's seven continents. Fortunately, their plots were foiled by intelligence agencies or failed under Hezbollah's own disorganization. 
But can Hezbollah's sleeper cells be weakened completely? 
One way to do that is for more countries to work together to designate Hezbollah a terror organization, without distinguishing between its military and political wings. 
In 2016, even the Arab League declared Hezbollah a terrorist group, only days after the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) adopted the same stance.
The U.S government has repeatedly pursued Iran and Hezbollah's terror activities, typically through Justice Department indictments and Treasury Department Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) sanctions, and it has been joined in those efforts by foreign governments across several continents.
With multiple intelligence and counterterror agencies following Hezbollah's activities and thwarting sleeper cells before they can act, the terror group will find itself further weakened and will continue to find it much more difficult to carry out terror attacks in Western countries.
 
Nadia Hussain is political analyst and researcher based in Norway