Matthew Levitt - Hezbollah - The Global Footprint of Lebanon’s Party of God

Additional Advance Praise for
Hezbollah: The Global Footprint of Lebanons Party of God

Matthew Levitt has laid out a timely and relevant history of Hezbollah, a global terrorist organization often referred to as the A Team of terror. This book comes at the right time as Hezbollah continues its decades-long war against the United States, Israel, and our allies around the globe while it attempts to consolidate political power in Lebanonon its behalf and for the Iranian regime.

Juan Zarate, former Deputy National Security Advisor for Combatting Terrorism and author of the forthcoming book, Treasurys War

Richard Armitage, then Deputy Secretary of State, once described Hezbollah as the A team of international terror. In his extraordinary new book, Matthew Levitt explains why Hezbollah is seen as such a global threat. Levitt paints a compelling picture of Hezbollahs terror activities not just in the Middle East but throughout Europe, Asia, Africa, and North and South America. While Western intelligence and law enforcement agencies have tracked and disrupted Hezbollahs global activities for years, this highly unsettling story has been largely unknown to wider publics. Thanks to Levitts meticulous and well-written book, that should no longer be the case.

Ambassador Dennis Ross, counselor at the Washington Institute; former Special Assistant to President Obama and Senior Director for the Central Region at the National Security Council

This book tells the sinister story of a highly sophisticated organization that for more than thirty years has been an archetype of worldwide illicit activities. Hezbollah effectively combines its overt social and political activities with covert criminal and terrorist operations on a global scale. Matthew Levitts painstaking collection of a rich array of data provides uncomfortable evidence of The Global Footprint of Lebanons Party of God. This book is essential reading for policymakers and the international intelligence community.

Uri Rosenthal, former Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Netherlands

In Hezbollah: The Global Footprint of Lebanons Party of God, Matthew Levitt, through adept storytelling and impressive attention to historical detail, manages to teach even long-time students of the Middle East a great deal about Hezbollah. The book leaves little doubt as to the increasing importance, danger, and international reach of Hezbollah. It will be an important resource for serious scholars of the Middle East and a great read for anyone interested in better understanding the region.

Andy Liepman, Senior Policy Analyst, RAND Corporation; former Principal Deputy Director, National Counterterrorism Center

Matthew Levitts book touches a key point of the growing debate on Hezbollah: the European approach to the phenomenon. It is a reminder for us Europeans that there are threats that might seem distant geographically, but could nevertheless have a strong impact politically on the continent as well.

Franco Frattini, Justice and Chamber President of the Italian Conseil dEtat (Supreme Administrative Court); President of the Italian Society for International Organization (SIOI); former Italian Foreign Minister (20024 and 200811)

This book on Lebanese Hezbollah is a unique incisive insight into its global terror tentacles around the globe. No one has catalogued these terrorist connections and plots in such forensic detail as Matthew Levitt, especially how the terror nexus between Hezbollah and Iran has continually evolved. It systematically lays bare Hezbollahs operational capability and its multiple intersections with Iranian intelligence architecture. This should be required reading for every intelligence analyst and terrorism researcher.

Magnus Ranstorp, Research Director, Center for Asymmetric Threat Studies, Swedish National Defence College

HEZBOLLAH

The Global Footprint of Lebanons Party of God

MATTHEW LEVITT

2013 Matthew Levitt. All rights reserved. No part of this book may
be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic
or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any
information storage and retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Levitt, Matthew, 1970
Hezbollah : the global footprint of Lebanons party of god / Matthew Levitt.
pages cm
Includes bibliographic references and index.
ISBN 978-1-62616-013-2 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Hizballah (Lebanon) 2. LebanonPolitics and government.
I. Title.
JQ1828.A98L48 2013
324.25692'084dc23

2013002933

This book is printed on acid-free paper meeting the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence in Paper for Printed Library Materials.

15 14 13 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 First printing

Printed in the United States of America

For my parents,
who made it all possible

And my wife and children,
who make it all worthwhile

THIS BOOK IS THE PRODUCT of a decade of research and writing, based on interviews with officials and experts from five continents, declassified intelligence reports, court documents, and much more. Some people spoke on the record, but more spoke on background or not for attribution, either because they still work in government or because they feared putting at risk their future access to people in Lebanon. Many people also helped me obtain documents that, though unclassified (or declassified), were not necessarily accessible to the public. I have thanked these people privately, and do so again herethe reader will not know their names, but they know who they are and will recognize themselves in this acknowledgment all the same.

Special thanks are due to my friends and colleagues at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, where I am a senior fellow and direct the institutes Stein program on counterterrorism and intelligence. I am especially grateful for the support of the institutes executive committee, board of trustees, and executive director Robert Satloff. The institutes senior research staff was a constant source of support, and I am a wiser person for having the opportunity to be a part of this truly remarkable intellectual community.

I owe a special thanks and acknowledgment to the various research assistants and interns at The Washington Institute who at some point over the past few years put their hearts and souls into this study, including David Bagby, Ben Freedman, Shoshana Haberman, David Jacobson, Julie Lascar, Jake Lipton, Julia Miller, Michael Mitchell, Jonathan Prohov, Aaron Resnick, Guive Rosen, Gabriela Rudin, Nick Shaker, Melissa Trebil, and Kelli Vanderlee. As researchers, data organizers, fact checkers, editors, formatters, sounding boards, and partners in crime, the institutes cadre of researchers have been second to none throughout this project.

But among the research assistants who worked on this book with me, four stand out for the amount of time and energy they invested in the project. Samuel Cutler, Stephanie Papa, and Becca Wasser each spent over a year organizing material, scheduling interviews, drafting timelines, and so much more. These three saw me through the long haul of organizing the massive quantity of material I collected into a coherent, usable archive so that I could start drafting chapters. All told, Divah Alshawa will have spent over two years on this project, including many rounds of final editing, fact checking, and formatting. I often had to kick her out of the office at the end of the day, only to find that shed gone home and worked on the manuscript there too. Any errors or typos that may have slipped through are mine alone, but the reason there will be so few, if any, is that Divah made sure that would be the case.