By Timothy Frudd
Contributing Writer
The Treasury Department announced sanctions on Thursday against 10 individuals accused of running a cash smuggling ring for Hezbollah, an Iran-backed terrorist group in Lebanon.
Those sanctioned by the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control were part of a network that helped the terrorist group evade sanctions and provided it with foreign currency outside the formal financial system, according to the department. The network allegedly used couriers traveling on commercial flights to transport cash between Iran, Lebanon, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates.
The sanctions targeting Hezbollah, also known as Hizballah, were announced just one day after President Donald Trump announced that the United States was planning to conduct economic warfare against Iran on an “unprecedented scale.” Trump warned that other countries would face economic consequences if they provided “any type of lifeline to Iran.”
“Hizballah and its allies exploit financing schemes including oil smuggling, illicit shipping, commodities sales, and bulk cash smuggling to generate and move funds across the region,” the Treasury said in a statement on Friday.
The network sanctioned by the Treasury was previously associated with Behnam Shahriyari, a now-deceased finance official for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force, according to the department. The Treasury noted that the cash-smuggling network served as an example of how support is funneled to terrorist proxy groups in the Middle East.
Yunus Alper Yilmaz, a Turkish businessman accused of running the courier network, was one of the individuals designated under the Thursday sanctions. Yilmaz used Turkish-based currency exchange houses as fronts and provided bank accounts and front companies for money transfers linked to the IRGC Quds Force, according to the Treasury.
Others targeted by the sanctions are Halil Ibrahim Kacmaz and Onder Dede, who were accused of collecting cash from the exchange houses, and Vasfi Akyuz, who was accused of being a cash courier and coordinating courier logistics.
Also sanctioned by the Treasury on Thursday for transporting cash for Hezbollah were Mehmet Akyuz, Mehmet Acur, Feyyad Karasalih, Masoud Mousafar, Gulay Kaya Savci and Emrah Ayaz.
Under the Treasury’s sanctions, the individuals will have any property and interests in the United States or under the control of U.S. persons blocked. The Treasury noted that secondary sanctions could be imposed on foreign financial institutions engaging in certain transactions with the sanctioned persons.
State Department spokesperson Tommy Pigott said in a news statement that the investigation and disruption of the smuggling network was achieved through collaboration with America’s Turkish partners. He said the network had been used to transport hundreds of millions of dollars, allowing the Iranian regime to “obtain foreign currency illicitly, evade sanctions and fund Hizballah.”
“The United States will not relent in targeting Iran’s financial support networks, including those enabling Hizballah to threaten peace, undermine the sovereignty of the Lebanese state, and endanger the security of our regional allies,” Pigott said.
The Treasury also announced on Thursday that Hezbollah was being redesignated as being “owned, controlled, or directed by, or having acted or purported to act for or on behalf of” the IRGC Quds Force. The designation was attributed to Executive Order 13224, which targets specially designated global terrorist organizations.
Hezbollah was designated a foreign terrorist organization by the United States in 1997 and as a specially designated global terrorist organization in 2001.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment before publication time.
In a Wednesday post on Truth Social, Trump announced that the United States was launching the “most crushing economic operation ever taken against any country” against Iran, blaming Tehran for not taking advantage of the opportunity to make a deal with the United States.
“This will be an ECONOMIC D-DAY, and we need all of our allies to stand with the United States of America to isolate, and defeat, the Iran threat,” Trump wrote. “These maniacs are on the ropes, and these HISTORIC MEASURES will cripple them and their ability to project terror worldwide.”
Although the president did not immediately provide details on what the economic operation would include, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Thursday that he planned to hold a press conference on Monday to discuss the administration’s plan to impose the “toughest sanctions in history on Iran.”
