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US Targets Hezbollah Leaders With Sanctions


FILE - Lebanon's Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah addresses his supporters during a religious procession to mark Ashura in Beirut's suburbs, Nov. 14, 2013.
FILE - Lebanon's Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah addresses his supporters during a religious procession to mark Ashura in Beirut's suburbs, Nov. 14, 2013.

The United States and Gulf partners imposed additional sanctions on Lebanon's Hezbollah leadership Wednesday, targeting its top two officials, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and Naim Qassem.

The U.S. Treasury Department said four other individuals also had been sanctioned, as was the group Islamic State in the Greater Sahara. It was the third round of sanctions announced by Washington since the United States pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal last week.

Wednesday's sanctions targeted members of the primary decision-making body of Hezbollah, the Treasury Department said in a statement.

"By targeting Hezbollah's Shura Council, our nations collectively rejected the false distinction between a so-called 'Political Wing' and Hezbollah's global terrorist plotting," Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said.

FILE - Lebanon's Hezbollah deputy leader, Sheikh Naim Qassem, casts his vote as he stands next to Hezbollah parliament candidate Amin Sherri at a polling station during the parliamentary election, in Beirut, Lebanon, May 6, 2018.
FILE - Lebanon's Hezbollah deputy leader, Sheikh Naim Qassem, casts his vote as he stands next to Hezbollah parliament candidate Amin Sherri at a polling station during the parliamentary election, in Beirut, Lebanon, May 6, 2018.

The measures were imposed jointly by Washington and its partners in the Terrorist Financing and Targeting Center, or TFTC, which include Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and United Arab Emirates, it said.

A number of those targeted by the TFTC had been previously blacklisted by the United States.

On Tuesday, the United States imposed sanctions on Iran's central bank governor and an Iraq-based bank for "moving millions of dollars" for Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard.

Last week, the U.S. Treasury imposed sanctions against six individuals and three companies it said were funneling millions of dollars to the Revolutionary Guard's external arm, the Quds Force.

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    Reuters

    Reuters is a news agency founded in 1851 and owned by the Thomson Reuters Corporation based in Toronto, Canada. One of the world's largest wire services, it provides financial news as well as international coverage in over 16 languages to more than 1000 newspapers and 750 broadcasters around the globe.

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