Defeating Hezbollah Inside Lebanon Is Only Half the Battle (the other half is the large Lebanese diaspora) by Michael Rubin

Recommendable! Here is some more background about these Hezbollah terrorists, which is perhaps not very well known.

"... Lebanon’s greatest export has always been its people. Historically, the country’s Shi’ite community was largely feudal. Shi’ites were subsistence farmers with little hope for political power or advancement. In The Innocents Abroad, American writer Mark Twain described his 1867 travels through Lebanon to Palestine; the Shi’ites whom he surely saw did not merit his inclusion. With little prospect for upward mobility, many Shi’ites emigrated to engage in business and trade, especially elsewhere in the Middle East, Africa, and South America. Today, the Lebanese diaspora population just in Brazil and Argentina is equal to Lebanon’s population. Not all Lebanese emigrants were Shi’ite, of course, but they were disproportionately so.

Into the mid-twentieth century, the lack of domestic prospects led Shi’ites who remained in Lebanon to embrace either Marxism or Arab nationalism. As the late historian Fouad Ajami explained in The Vanished Imam, Iraqi Grand Ayatollah Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah (1935-2010) sought to channel Shi’ite identity and discord into Shi’ism. He became the spiritual leader of Hezbollah. His influence extended past Lebanon, however, to the Shi’ite communities abroad.  ... Many have close ties to those who remained inside Lebanon. As Hezbollah’s tentacles grew through the 1980s and 1990s, the Lebanese diaspora became an important component of Hezbollah’s broader network.

In the Côte d’Ivoire and Guinea, for example, Hezbollah launders drug money and engages in organized crime. Between 2007 and 2011, Hezbollah operatives ran a scheme to ship used and stolen cars to West Africa, with Hezbollah then using profits to fund its military operations. The Lebanese Shi’ite diaspora in the United States also ran a cigarette-smuggling scheme to fund the terror group.

Nor does the diaspora only support Hezbollah financially. Iran’s 1992 assassinations at the Mykonos Café relied on Lebanese sleeper agents, and the agents responsible for the Iran-sponsored 1994 attack on the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires also drew upon the Lebanese diaspora community in the “triangle border” area between Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay.

In essence, there are two Hezbollahs—one in Lebanon and one spread out across the world. ...."

Defeating Hezbollah Inside Lebanon Is Only Half the Battle | American Enterprise Institute - AEI