Reported by Itai Zehorai

For more than 30 years as the organization’s leader, Nasrallah turned Hezbollah not only into an influential political and military force but also into a massive economic power that generated billions of dollars in revenue for him. This is how money worked in service of the terror industry.

83 tons of explosives, which landed with precise timing by Israeli Air Force Jets, directly on Hezbollah’s main headquarters in the heart of the Dahieh district in central Beirut – erased within seconds the entire central command leadership of the terrorist organization.

“The IDF eliminated Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the Hezbollah terrorist organization and one of its founders, along with Ali Karaki, the commander of Hezbollah’s Southern Front, and other Hezbollah commanders,” the IDF spokesperson announced on Saturday – thus issuing the official stamp on the departure from the scene of one of the most bitter, difficult, and sophisticated enemies Israel has known.

Nasrallah, considered one of the founding fathers of the organization, which he established alongside Lebanese Shiite and Iranian factors somewhere in the early 1980s, led Hezbollah for more than three decades. Even in his early years in the organization, at just 22 years old, he was appointed to the important position of being responsible for the “Bekaa” area and quickly advanced up the ranks.

Just three years later, he became the deputy chairman of the Beirut Council, one of the three arms of the militia at the time, and quickly became the organizational and military head in the city, alongside his second hat – a member of the organization’s political bureau. In 1987, he became the “head of the executive council,” and by virtue of this, served as a member of the organization’s supreme council.

The significant turning point in his life came in the early 1990s. In 1992, the then Secretary-General of Hezbollah, Abbas al-Musawi, was assassinated by the IDF – and so just a decade after the organization’s establishment, at only 32 years old, Nasrallah was appointed to lead it.

For 32 years, he was the main decision-maker and the sole approver of strategic processes, during which the Shiite-extremist leader turned the organization from a small, almost negligible movement in global terms, into one of the deadliest, most powerful – and even wealthiest terrorist organizations in the world.

Hundreds of Millions Courtesy of the Iranian Patron

For a decade, since we first published in Forbes Israel the list of the wealthiest terrorist organizations in the world, the Hezbollah terrorist organization has been at the top of the ranking, with revenues that cross the billion-dollar threshold per year. Iran, which invested a cumulative amount of tens of billions of dollars in the “Hezbollah project” over more than three decades, has been the main and important capital source of the organization over the years. According to the investigation we published, the budget that the Quds Force allocates to Hezbollah is estimated at $700 to $800 million per year – depending on the extent of sanctions wrapped around the Ayatollahs’ regime’s neck and the price of oil, of course, which accounts for about 80% of Iran’s income.

The main victim of the toxic connection between Iran and Hezbollah is Lebanon itself. In recent years, its economic and political situation has deteriorated, and as a mirror image, Hezbollah’s influence on the country and Iran’s grip on it have strengthened.

Thus, as Lebanon became more polarized, weak, and dependent, Nasrallah’s hold on the Shiite strongholds strengthened – and with it, Iran’s influence. Oil shipments and aid transferred from Iran further strengthened Nasrallah’s position among the Shiite population. The distress of the Lebanese people, still suffering from shortages of basic products such as food, medicine, and fuel, was exploited by Hezbollah and Iran to bring as many of Lebanon’s needy citizens under their patronage – especially among the Shiite population.

Read full report: https://forbes.co.il/e/iran-drugs-real-estate-and-meat-this-is-the-financial-empire-built-by-nasrallah/