The Australian Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security (PJCIS) is set to review Australia‘s stance on Hezbollah after an inquiry was launched into why the country doesn’t list Hezbollah entirely as a terrorist organization.
The inquiry followed the United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s call on world countries to take action against the Iran-backed group after the U.S. Treasury Department imposed sanctions on 7 Lebanese nationals connected to Hezbollah and its financial association Al-Qard Al-Hassan.
Australia recently re-listed Hezbollah‘s External Security wing as a terrorist organization. It is the military and security wing that operates outside Lebanon.
Now, there will be pressures on the Australian government to explain why it doesn’t follow the lead of other major world countries and designate the organization as a whole, or at least its entire military wing.
Hezbollah is comprised of its paramilitary wing, the Jihad Council, and its parliamentary wing, the Loyalty to the Resistance Bloc.
In 2018, PJCIS urged the government to consider “extending the listing to include the military wing” of Hezbollah. But the government response last year was that it was satisfied that its current listing was appropriate, according to the Australian digital newspaper Brisbane Times.
More than 65 countries have designated Hezbollah as a terrorist organization.
