Jewish communities and law enforcement agencies in Latin America must be on high alert after Israel killed Hezbollah’s high command and destroyed large numbers of its weapons near the border, experts warned in recent interviews with Jewish insider.
There is now “an incentive for Hezbollah to try to hit soft targets abroad in response to what is happening to them in Lebanon,” Emanuele Ottolenghi, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told JI.
“The risk (to Jewish communities) has always been there, latent and present,” he added.
Latin America has long been an important base for Hezbollah’s activities originating in the border area between Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina, countries with a large Lebanese population. The tri-border area of these countries has weak law enforcement that the terrorist organization uses for money laundering. Hezbollah later expanded into Venezuela as Caracas became more aligned with Tehran.
In Latin America, Hezbollah is alone considered a terrorist organization in Argentina, Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras and Paraguay, weakening the authorities’ ability to prosecute members of its network in the rest of the region. The Lebanese terror group has long been involved in organized crime in Latin America to finance its terrorist activities around the world.
Hezbollah was behind major attacks in Buenos Aires: the 1992 bombing of the Israeli embassy, which killed 28 people and injured 242, and the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center, which killed 85 people and more than 300 were injured. The AMIA bombings continue to take place in Latin America, Ottolenghi said.
Yossi Mansharof, a senior fellow at the Misgav Institute for National Security, told JI that “Hezbollah always has the motivation” to attack Jewish sites around the world, but that it may now be increasingly motivated to do so. (The Jewish Insider’s Lahav Harkov is also a senior fellow at the Misgav Institute.)
“If Hezbollah thinks they are removing themselves from the eyes of the CIA and Mossad, they will go for it,” he said.
In November 2023, Brazil, in collaboration with the Mossad, thwarted planned Hezbollah attacks on the Jewish community.
Israel is recent capture of a Hezbollah ship captain holding a Panamanian passport was indicative of Latin America’s continued importance to the terror group’s operations, Ottolenghi said.
After Israel eliminated Much of Hezbollah’s senior leadership, Ottolenghi said, “the survival of the movement is at stake.”
Ottolenghi noted that “the challenge will be how to bring that money to Lebanon…The ability to transfer money may be smaller, but the incentive to increase it may be greater.”
Hezbollah will have to undertake a major fundraising campaign to try to rebuild, Mansharof said, calling it “the biggest project in its history, after taking the hardest blow since its founding in 1982. They need billions of dollars that Iran will give them cannot give because they are in an economic crisis.”
Latin America is an easy place for Hezbollah to raise and move funds despite sanctions, Mansharof said.
“There is a problem in Argentina,” he said. “Even when there are sanctions, Hezbollah manages to circumvent them. They need a very strong effort … to enforce sanctions and make arrests.”
Mansharof said the Lebanese Shiite community, Hezbollah’s base in Latin America, is now doubly important.
“Hezbollah will ensure that the large Shiite community in Latin America will remain loyal,” Mansharof said. “They will feed propaganda to keep the base… They have to make it look like they have won.”
Ottolenghi said Hezbollah is embedded in Latin America’s Shia Muslim and Lebanese expat communities, through mosques, cultural centers, schools and youth groups.
“When (Hezbollah leader Hassan) Nasrallah was killed, they organized public memorial services for him,” he noted. “These are networks that not only can be leveraged, but they have also deployed more militantly than before because there is a struggle going on.”
In addition, Ottolenghi said, thousands of people left Lebanon for Latin America in recent months as Israel began its ground invasion.
“They are very publicly and visibly raising money and facilitating the return of dual nationals to Brazil and Colombia,” he said. “A concern expressed by my contacts in the region is that they do not know who the people are who are coming back. They have a list of names and travel documents, but they do not know who may have ties to Hezbollah, and there are thousands.”