By Le Figaro — CRITICISM – The excellent investigation carried out by Sofia Amara and Jérôme Fritel reveals the networks of hidden financing, thanks to drugs, of the Shiite militia. Hezbollah, the prohibited investigationa three-part documentary not to be missed, this Sunday February 5 at 8:55 p.m. on France 5. With Hezbollah,Iran has created the most powerful asymmetrical military force in modern history.” One of the hardest to pin down as well. Former CIA agent Robert Baer, ​​who spent years tracking down Lebanon’s “Party of God,” knows this. More than a real investigation into its forty years of existence, Hezbollah, the prohibited investigationthe documentary in three 52-minute episodes each by journalists Jérôme Fritel and Sofia Amara, broadcast this Sunday February 5 on France 5, is first and foremost the story of an infiltration operation by the financing networks of the Lebanese Shiite militia in from drug money.

Alongside Bashar al-Assad

An infiltration codenamed Cassandra, which will lead the sleuths of the American DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) from Colombia and Venezuela to West Africa before ending in a fiasco on the altar of cold realpolitik in Paris, the day of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s visit to France in January 2016. Thanks to telephone interceptions, the DEA had managed in the early 2000s to infiltrate one of its agents of Lebanese origin with Chekri Harb , responsible on behalf of Hezbollah for part of the drug trafficking that the movement organizes from Colombia.

Over more than fifteen years, the agency then succeeded in identifying one by one the barons of a cartel which brought in up to 1 billion dollars a year to Hezbollah. From Ali Fayad, in charge of buying weapons for drugs in Russia and Ukraine for the war waged by the militia alongside Bashar el-Assad in Syria, to Mohammed Nourredine, who supervised operations in Europe from Paris , via Ali Joumaa, Ali Kharoubi, Adnan Tabaja and Abdallah Safieddine, the “godfather” of the cartel, as if by chance ambassador of the militia to his Iranian godfather.

Abductions of Americans and French

With Operation Cassandra, the Americans believed they could finally avenge their dead, fallen in Lebanon in the 1983 attacks against the multinational force, remotely controlled by Imad Moughnieh, the military legend of Hezbollah, also involved in drug trafficking. The American services will eventually eliminate it with the help of the Israelis in 2008 in Damascus.

These years of blood are traced: from the kidnappings of Americans and French in Lebanon by Iranian fake noses, to the Israeli withdrawal from South Lebanon under the impetus of the Shiite militia, to the explosion at the port of Beirut on August 4, 2020. This is the least convincing part, built on testimonies from notorious opponents of the Shiite formation. A State within the Lebanese State, a terrorist organization for many countries, but whose political branch, represented in Parliament, is not, for France, for example. A formation vilified by its Sunni Arab enemies and Israel, but glorified by others.

A renewed impunity

The documentary says nothing about Hezbollah’s ability to adapt, recognized by Emmanuel Macron during his visits to Beirut in the summer of 2020. And as his endorsement of the historic agreement on the sharing of gas fields in the Mediterranean with Israel, a peace treaty with the enemy who does not say his name – we must maintain appearances, as with drugs. The testimony of the number two of the movement shows it clearly. Sheikh Naïm Qassem denies, without convincing, both the role of cocaine in the financing of Hezbollah and that of his party in the assassination of Rafic Hariri, revealed on August 21, 2006 by Le Figaro, and which international justice will eventually establish .

Powerful allies

But having become over the years a key player in the Middle Eastern game, Hezbollah has powerful allies (Iranian or Russian). Bitter DEA investigators realize this when all prosecutions of cartel bigwigs fall on the heels of the signing of the international Iran nuclear deal on July 14, 2015. From there, their task disturbs in Washington where one bets on the thaw with Tehran which obtains the stop of the continuations, thus the impunity, once more renewed of Hezbollah. A long and rich investigation to see. » Follow all the news from TVMagazine on Facebook And Twitter .