{"id":8478,"date":"2017-10-11T21:52:51","date_gmt":"2017-10-12T02:52:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/?p=8478"},"modified":"2017-10-11T21:52:51","modified_gmt":"2017-10-12T02:52:51","slug":"u-s-steps-up-pressure-on-hezbollah-offers-reward-for-two-operatives-iran-freeiran","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/2017\/10\/11\/u-s-steps-up-pressure-on-hezbollah-offers-reward-for-two-operatives-iran-freeiran\/","title":{"rendered":"U.S. steps up pressure on Hezbollah, offers reward for two operatives – #Iran #FreeIran"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON (Reuters) Oct. 11, 2017<\/strong> – The United States on Tuesday offered multimillion-dollar rewards for two officials of the Iran-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah as the Trump administration prepared to unveil a strategy to counter Tehran\u2019s growing regional influence.
\nWashington will pay up to $7 million for information leading to the arrest of Talal Hamiyah, head of Hezbollah\u2019s foreign operations, and up to $5 million for Fuad Shukr, a top Hezbollah military operative, the State Department said.
\nThe rewards are the first offered by the United States for Hezbollah operatives in a decade, Nathan Sales, the U.S. counterterrorism coordinator, told reporters.
\n\u201cToday\u2019s rewards are another step to increase the pressure on them and their organization,\u201d said Sales.
\nOther extremists for whom the United States is offering rewards include Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the head of Islamic State, and Mohammad Jolani, the commander of al Qaeda\u2019s Syrian branch.
\nHamiyah has been on the department\u2019s foreign terrorist list since 2015 and Shukr was added in 2013. The United States named Hezbollah as a foreign terrorist organization in 1997.
\nNicholas Rasmussen, the head of the National CounterTerrorism Center, blamed the group for a litany of attacks around the world, and said it maintains a presence in \u201cnearly every corner of the globe.\u201d
\nPointing to the arrests of two men in the United States in June for alleged activities on Hezbollah\u2019s behalf, Rasmussen said that U.S. intelligence agencies assess that the group is seeking an ability to strike inside \u201cthe homeland.\u201d
\nSales signaled that as part of U.S. President Donald Trump\u2019s soon-to-be unveiled Iran strategy, Washington would press countries that have yet to designate Hezbollah as an international terrorist group to do so.
\n\u201cAdditionally, some countries have chosen to designate only Hezbollah\u2019s military wing, leaving its so-called political wing untouched,\u201d he said, apparently referring to the 28-member European Union <\/a>. \u201cBut that is a false distinction. Make no mistake. Hezbollah has no political wing. It is a single organization, a terrorist organization, and it is rotten to its core.\u201d
\nDesignating the group as a terrorist organization is \u201cnot merely symbolic,\u201d he continued.
\nBy not doing so, he said, countries \u201climit other governments\u2019 ability to freeze Hezbollah\u2019s assets, to shut down its front companies, to eliminate its fund-raising and recruiting capabilities and to prosecute Hezbolah associated networks. The United States will need allies in this fight.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON (Reuters) Oct. 11, 2017 – The United States on Tuesday offered multimillion-dollar rewards for two officials of the Iran-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah as the […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8480,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5,37],"tags":[109,110,111],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8478"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8478"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8478\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8481,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8478\/revisions\/8481"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}