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Under the headline: “US Sanctions: Abbas Ibrahim Wanted by Name!” Maysam Rizk wrote in Al-Akhbar newspaper: It was not surprising that the US decision, which was issued under the Act “Magnitsky” to impose sanctions on the leader of the “Strong Lebanon” bloc, Representative Gebran Bassil, After a threat that lasted more than a year. However, the thing to keep in mind, based on the details of the negotiations that the Americans have conducted with the former secretary of state, is that the United States of America has reached the stage of giving everyone a choice in Lebanon: either with him and against Hezbollah in all, or with Hezbollah and against its interests, and there is no room for any. A space in the middle that allows differentiation from the party, without attending to the American agenda. Basil, despite all the positive signals he gave the Americans in various cases since the beginning of the threat of sanctions, did not survive. Signals that the Americans did not pay much attention to, because what was expected and required was a final dissolution of the alliance with Hezbollah, and then inevitably move on to hostility with the party, which Basil rejected, and the sanctions came in response to that.
Although the sanctions imposed by the United States on the two ministers, Ali Hassan Khalil and Yusef Fenianous, were expected, noting that it was the first time that the narrow circle of Speaker of Parliament Nabih Berri and the head of the Marada Movement, former Minister Suleiman Franjieh had arrived. . However, what is currently being prepared in the United States Congress, shows strong evidence of the desire of some parties within the United States to expand the circle of sanctions and abuse them by using them to order the Lebanese interior, and exercise more pressure not on Hezbollah or its allies, but even on parties that are not hostile to the Americans, but do not act according to their agenda, as now required to be put in place. On the sanctions list through a bill pending approval. The bill, introduced by Rep. Joe Wilson, head of the US House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs and Homeland Security, titled Hezbollah’s Money Laundering Prevention Act of 2020, aims to “halt activities of party money laundering around the world “, defining the border triangle in Latin America, between Brazil, Paraguay, Argentina and southern Lebanon, where banks are prohibited from locating in them or will be threatened with sanctions, demands – according to publishes on the Congress website – placing the Director General of Public Security, Major General Abbas Ibrahim, on the sanctions list.
Although this proposal, supported by 12 US legislators from the Republican Party, is still pending, it indicates a dangerous trend in the United States, which is that there are US parties that no longer want to target Hezbollah, but it has become clear that they reject any compromise. As well as Refusing to have parties in the Lebanese state that deal with the United States in accordance with the normal relations between an official body in the Lebanese state and the latter. This proposal is the greatest proof that what is required of Americans is to recruit everyone to serve the American agenda and meet its demands, otherwise sanctions will be their part.
Perhaps the most important thing that this proposal shows is to mention Major General Ibrahim, since the proposed laws that are usually presented in Congress set the general framework and leave the US administration the right to determine the names, persons and entities, while that Wilson’s proposal requires that the Director General of Public Safety be punished on his behalf. Therefore, if the proposal passes and becomes law (this process can take at least a year), the US administration will be obliged to put Ibrahim on the sanctions list.
