An Israeli airstrike in southern Lebanon, on Tuesday, took out a key terrorism financier who was running a shadowy network used for transferring hundreds of millions of dollars annually from the Iranian regime to Hezbollah.
“IDF eliminates Haytham Bakri, head of the ‘Al-Sadiq’ Currency Exchange, who funneled Iranian Quds Force funds to Hezbollah,” the Israeli news website Arutz Sheva reported Wednesday.
The millions of dollars flowing through Bakri’s criminal network were enriching Hezbollah’s terrorist leadership, arming its Shia-Islamist militia, and fueling its campaign of terror against Israel.
“These funds are used by Hezbollah for military purposes including purchasing weapons, manufacturing means, and providing salaries to operatives, and are diverted for terrorist purposes and to finance the continuation of Hezbollah’s terrorist activities,” the news outlet added.
“Bakri operated with the Hezbollah terrorist organization to transfer funds for Hezbollah terrorist activities,” the IDF said in a statement Wednesday.
The IDF released a video exposing the Iranian mechanism of transferring money to its proxy terror group Hezbollah:
“The ‘Al-Sadiq’ Currency Exchange serves as a funds storage and transfer mechanism for the Hezbollah terrorist organization, for funds originating from the Iranian Quds Force,” the IDF explained.
Bakri elimination comes days after an Israeli airstrike in Iran killed IRGC-Quds Force commander Behnam Shahriyari, who was responsible for the transfer of money and weapons to Iranian terror proxies across the Middle East and beyond. “Shahriyari exclusively oversaw the mechanisms that enabled the transfer of hundreds of millions of dollars annually to the Quds Force and its proxies,” the Israeli military revealed Wednesday.
The killing of Bakri and Shahriyari constitutes “a severe blow to the Iranian financing routes to Hezbollah,” the IDF added.
Amid varying reports about the success of Israel’s pre-emptive operation ‘Rising Lion’ and U.S. ‘Midnight Hammer’ strikes, Iranian foreign ministry spokesman admitted that the regime’s nuclear weapons sites have been ‘badly damaged.’
The admission comes as President Trump declared that U.S. bombing of key Iranian facilities in Fordo, Natanz, and Isfahan had “obliterated” the regime’s nuclear weapons program. “Monumental Damage was done to all Nuclear sites in Iran, as shown by satellite images. Obliteration is an accurate term,” he said Wednesday.
The Times of Israel reported Iranian official remarks:
Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei on Wednesday confirmed the country’s nuclear facilities had been “badly damaged” in American strikes over the weekend, amid clashing evaluations on the extent of the success of operations against Tehran’s nuclear program.Speaking to Al Jazeera, Baghaei refused to go into detail but conceded the Sunday strikes by American B-2 bombers using bunker-buster bombs had been significant.“Our nuclear installations have been badly damaged, that’s for sure,” he said.
According to the initial assessment by the IDF, the joint U.S.-Israeli strikes may have set back the Iranian nuclear weapon capabilities, requiring years to restore.
“I can say here that the assessment is that we significantly damaged the nuclear program, and I can also say that we set it back by years, I repeat, years,” IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir said.
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