Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah admitted on Friday that his group is “frank about the fact that Hezbollah’s budget, its income, its expenses, everything it eats and drinks, its arms and rockets, come from the Islamic Republic of Iran.”
In a speech marking 40 days after the death of senior Hezbollah commander Mustafah Bedreddine in Damascus, Nasrallah derided the new US sanctions against his party, claiming that Hezbollah “will not be affected ” because it does not use any banks.
“We totally reject this [U.S.] law until the Day of Judgment. … Even if the law is applied, we as a party and an organizational and jihadi movement, will not be hurt or affected,” Nasrallah said
“As long as Iran has money, we have money… Just as we receive the rockets that we use to threaten Israel, we are receiving our money. No law will prevent us from receiving it…”
“The law will not have any financial impact on Hezbollah. I have said before that we do not have commercial or investment projects and commercial institutions that operate through banks,” he said,
Nasrallah’s remarks come around two weeks after a bomb blast targeted the Beirut headquarters of BLOM Bank, the second largest bank in the country.
Several parties were quick to point the finger at Hezbollah over the bombing due to the fact that the attack coincided with the row with the banking sector.
Nasrallah did not mention in his speech the June 12 bombing of BLOM Bank, which was among the financial institutions in the country that froze Hezbollah-linked accounts.
Nasrallah’s speech, according to analysts is a major embarrassment to the Obama Administration, since it appears that by ending the sanctions against Iran in return for the nuclear agreement the US is now “playing a critical role in assisting and facilitating the ways through which Hezbollah receives this significant aid from the Iranian government.”
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