At the end of February, Syrian President Bashar Assad arrived in Tehran for an official visit. It was Assad's first excursion to Iran since the end of the Syrian war, and he wanted to thank his hosts for their military and financial help during it, as well as look into possible future bilateral cooperation.
While there, Assad met with the upper echelon of Iran. His most important meeting was with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. In the official picture of the meeting, the two are seen talking in Rouhani's residence in Tehran. Their body language says it all: it's obvious that they are at ease. Only one other person appears in the photo, and neither his face nor his name is familiar to anyone who isn't part of the inner circle at the center of Iran's relations with Syria and Hezbollah. Still, the very fact that the man was there, at a meeting of two national leaders, is telling.
The man is Mohammad Jafar Qasir, a senior official in Hezbollah, and someone who has the ear of both Damascus and Tehran. He is responsible for smuggling weapons and money for the radical axis, using a corridor that stretches from Tehran to Lebanon, via Syria. Qasir, who lives in the shadows, is better known as Hajj Fadi, and he is a key player in the Hezbollah machine. Although he is not a combatant, his position has made him a dominant figure in the organization and – as his presence in Tehran indicates – outside Hezbollah, as well.
A tailwind from the regime
Hajj Fadi, 50, was born and lives in the village Deir Qanoun in south Lebanon. But he spends most of his time on the road between Beirut and Damascus. He has apartments in both capitals, and in both, he keeps mistresses who are not Shiite Muslims. He is constantly surrounded by security and takes care to keep a low profile. Few people know who he is; even fewer know what he does.
He comes from a well-respected family. His brother Hassan (also known as Moussa) is married to the daughter of Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah. Another brother, Ahmed, is considered the Hezbollah's first martyr, after he was killed driving the explosives-laden car that brought down the IDF headquarters in Tyre, Lebanon, in November 1982. The bombing killed 91 people: 76 Israeli security personnel and 15 Lebanese prisoners.
Hajj Fadi has been handling Hezbollah's smuggling for the past 20 years, more or less since the IDF pulled out of south Lebanon. He operates freely in Syria and enjoys both backing from the regime and a high level of access to officials in the field. His closeness to Assad, which was exposed by the Tehran photo, demonstrates that anyone who thought that Damascus was displeased by Hezbollah activity within its borders was mistaken – Hezbollah and its leaders are welcome in Syria and free to do as they wish.
Hajj Fadi also has free access to Syrian army officers. Most of the smuggling convoys pass the Syrian-Lebanese border. They include weapons from Tehran, as well as some that are manufactured in Syria. His organization moves the weapons through illicit crossings near Al-Zabadani in Lebanon and Al-Qusayr in Syria, sometimes making use of Lebanese civilian infrastructure like the Masnaa border crossing, through which they have tried a number of times to smuggle parts belonging to Hezbollah's precision missile project.
A recent article on The Independent's Arabic-language site claimed that Hajj Fadi is cooperating with senior officials in the Syrian army, particularly Massoud Abbasi Samandar, who oversees Al-Qusayr region, which makes the smuggling work easier. A source told the site that Hajj Fadi also smuggles drugs and goods for his personal benefit, and has recently stepped up that particular aspect of his activity due to Hezbollah's financial distress and its leaders desire to get rich. It appears that even the Syrian army officials who work with him cash in on the smuggling industry, which is assessed to be worth a considerable amount.
Intelligence experts disagree about whether Hezbollah is a protégé of Iran and completely obedient to Tehran, or whether it is a patriotic Lebanese organization that enjoys Iranian support. The answer might be a combination of the two, but one thing is clear: the organization is completely dependent on Tehran and its continued financial support, without which it would cease to exist.
Over the years, Hezbollah has become a key part of the global activity of Iran's Quds Force. Here, too, experts disagree: does Iran operate outside its own borders because it fears an attack and wants to keep the fighting at a distance, or out of ideological motives and a desire to export the Shiite revolution to the rest of the world?
Either way, Iran is very active. The Quds Force funds close to 100,000 fighters across the globe, from Afghanistan and Pakistan to Iraq, Yemen and Syria, not to mention Lebanon and the Gaza Strip. It also funds numerous terrorist cells on five continents, including some who are suspected of being behind recent events such as the sabotage to ships in the Fujairah Port in the United Arab Emirates and the attack on Saudi oil infrastructure. Iran invests in supplying its fighters with everything from weapons to salaries to toilet paper, and Hezbollah plays a major role. Its people are involved, to one degree or another, in Iranian activity beyond Syria and Lebanon. Hezbollah mentors were active in Yemen and Iraq, for example. But on its home turf, Hezbollah is especially busy. The moment Iran first spotted Syria as an opportunity to promote its own interests, Hezbollah answered a call to the colors.
According to expert analysis, Iran has invested some $30 billion in Syria in recent years. Now it's time for it to receive something for its support of Assad, which will help ease the distress the renewed U.S. sanctions have caused to the Iranian economy. Iran is trying to gobble up what it can of Syria – ports, phosphate and oil resources, and even agriculture and education. Assad is too much in Tehran's debt to rebel. Aside from the concern that all this poses for Israel, it is displeasing to Russia, which wants to be the only one to come out ahead from the rehabilitation of Syria.
From weapons to mineral water
Israel's intensive actions in recent years (former IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eizenkot cited over 1,000 strikes and operations in 2017-2018) has checked Iran's plans to build naval, ground, and air bases in Syria, which it planned to man with tens of thousands of fighters and advanced weaponry as a means of creating a double front against Israel. The air corridor to the Damascus International Airport – a major base for Iranian smuggling – was a major target of the strikes. Everything from weapons to mineral water used to move through the airport on its way to Hezbollah in Lebanon or Iranian forces in Syria.
Hajj Fadi is the main conduit for all this. The Iranians are responsible for moving goods to Damascus, and from there he takes over. The strikes attributed to Israel have thrown a spanner in the works; the Iranians are flying to Damascus less frequently and when they do are forced to use other airports that are less convenient. As a result, they have defaulted to the land route, where it takes three to four days by road to move items from Iran to Syria. In at least one instance, one of these convoys was attacked. The incident was also attributed to Israel.
Russia, meanwhile, does not look favorably on the strikes, which are getting in the way of its work to rehabilitate Syria. When a Russian fighter jet was shot down last September, causing a spate of tension between Jerusalem and Moscow, it all began when the Israeli Air Force targeted a machine to manufacture precision missiles to keep it from being sent to Lebanon, a project that Hajj Fadi was overseeing. The article on The Independent site quoted a source at the Russian Embassy in Israel, who said that Russia had "made it clear" to its allies in Syria that the goal is to fight terrorism, and any other action by its allies would hold up the process of restoring calm to Syria.
The Russian criticism was not aimed at any one person, but no one in the know had any doubt that the source was referring to Hajj Fadi. Moscow knows his name, and his financial activity, particularly in terrorist funds, has prompted the U.S. Commerce Dept. to include him in its list of Specially Designated Nationals, with whom Americans and American businesses are largely prohibited from conducting transactions. This happened as a result of Hajj Fadi's growing involvement not only in smuggling weapons and other equipment to Hezbollah but also in all monetary movement throughout the region. The sanctions against Iran almost entirely keep it from using banks to send and receive money, so it needs a mechanism that will allow it to pay and accept payment in cash. Hajj Fadi is the man who makes it all happen.
From roundabout deals to sell oil despite the embargo to paying salaries of government workers in Syria, Hajj Fadi has his fingers in nearly every pie. Since Iran is barred from using banks to send funds to Hezbollah (an amount that totals some $800 million per year), the money is moved from Tehran to Beirut in cash form, and from Beirut is disbursed for various purposes. In the past, Iran tried to use virtual currencies like bitcoin but had no success. Today, everything is paid for in cash.
It's a complicated project that a number of entities are keeping close tabs on. Unlike the semi-open battle to curb weapons smuggling, there have not been any known attacks targeting the transfer of cash funds, but the possibility shouldn't be ruled out. An attack on a convoy carrying tens of millions of dollars in cash would do serious damage to both the payer and the payee.
Incidentally, it appears that Hajj Fadi isn't restricting his financial initiatives to the Iran-Syria-Lebanon axis. There are indications that he plays a part in Iran's funding of the Houthi rebels in Yemen and the financial aid Tehran supplies to terrorist organizations in Gaza.
A new center of power
Until recently, Hajj Fadi was a figure wrapped in mystery. He was known only to a very few and would move between his apartments and his mistresses and between his customers and his patrons. His public appearance in Tehran alongside Rouhani and Assad surprised everyone who is tracking his activity. The photo op was indicative of three things: that he is operating more openly than in the past; that he has the full confidence not only of Hezbollah and the Quds Force but the leaders of the radical axis themselves; and that he is now a tremendous center of power, which is significant, given that he is in charge of logistics, rather than being a fighter or an officer.
Shortly after the picture was taken, Hajj Fadi was seen again. This time, he was at Shebaa Farms, not far from the Israeli border at Mount Dov. He arrived at the site – where Hezbollah perpetuates its territorial dispute with Israel – along with other Hezbollah operatives and senior Hezbollah commander Mahmoud Qassim al-Basal, who works under him and helps him transfer money.
It is not clear why Hajj Fadi was visiting Shebaa Farms, but there is no doubt that he has become a major player in the region. It is likely that Israel is following him closely, given the strikes attributed to Israel that targeted operations Hajj Fadi was overseeing. As far as anyone knows, the man himself has not yet been in Israel's crosshairs, but Israel has already proved that it is taking action against other links in the chain. During the last escalation with Gaza, Israel carried out its first targeted killing in years against Hamad Hudri, a money changer responsible for distributing Iranian funds to Gaza-based terrorist groups. Hajj Fadi is much more important than Hudri, especially now that his close ties to the presidential palaces in Damascus and Tehran has been made clear.
Most important of all is the smuggling mechanism that Hajj Fadi built and manages, which sends advanced weaponry to Hezbollah and which is supposed to help the organization implement its strategic plans to equip itself with precision missiles and weapons that will pose a challenge to the IDF, as well as give the group that is helping Iran money to help it skirt some of the sanctions.
