Experts urge extreme caution on Iran's 'crown jewel' Hezbollah — terror group with US blood on its hands
· Fox News
Foreign policy experts are advising the Trump administration to continue to carefully watch Iran's behavior over its terror proxy Hezbollah — a group with American blood on its hands.
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The importance of Hezbollah to the Tehran regime is clear in the comprehensive U.S.-Iran memorandum of understanding. While the agreement does not mention the group by name, clause one of the 14-point MOU calls for the permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, including the cessation of conflict in Lebanon.
Lisa Daftari, editor-in-chief, told Fox News Digital that, "Hezbollah isn't just the Iran regime’s most prized proxy; it's the crown jewel of the regime's forward defense. For almost five decades, the Islamic Republic has invested billions building Hezbollah into a forward-deployed missile arsenal aimed directly at Israel's heart." She said "Losing Hezbollah would hurt the mullahs more than losing the Strait of Hormuz or anything else in their arsenal. That's why Hezbollah is clause one," of the MOU.
Daftari said Hezbollah is "a forward-deployed arm of the IRGC Quds Force taking Lebanon hostage," She said that "the IRGC created Hezbollah in 1982, trained it, armed it, funded it, and to this day embeds Quds Force commanders inside its command structure. Treating them as separate organizations is a fiction Tehran exploits."
While the State Department didn’t answer Fox News Digital questions over concerns raised by critics regarding the administration’s handling of Hezbollah, Secretary of State Marco Rubio took a tough line on the terror group when asked by reporters in the United Arab Emirates Tuesday about Tehran's terror proxies and why Iran's ballistic missile program was left out of the recent Islamabad memorandum of understanding (MOU).
Rubio insisted that regional proxy threats are fundamentally covered by the framework. "I think a careful reading of the MOU will see that when you talk about, for example, a complete – an end of hostilities in the entire region, well, that’s not possible. You can’t have the end of hostilities and conflicts in the region as long as Iranian proxies are launching missiles and drones from Iraq and are participating in terrorism like Hamas did and like Hezbollah did. So I do think it’s covered by the MOU, and it is an issue that will be gotten to at the appropriate time in these negotiations."
Hezbollah was designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the U.S. in 1997. Bill Roggio, senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense for Democracies (FDD) and editor of its Long War Journal, told Fox News Digital that "Hezbollah has a five-decade-long track record of killing Americans, starting with the Marine barracks bombing in Beirut in 1983, attacks on U.S. embassies and airplane hijackings."
Roggio said the efforts "continue to this day," with Hezbollah playing "a key role in establishing, training, advising and supporting the Iraqi militias, which are responsible for killing more than 600 American soldiers. Hezbollah also trained al Qaeda to use suicide car bombs, which it implemented in the 1998 suicide attacks on the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and perfected in theaters such as Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia."
In May 2025, A U.S. District Court determined that the torture of Lebanese American Amer Fakhoury was the responsibility of Iran, through its proxy Hezbollah. Fakhoury lost sixty pounds during a six-month period of captivity after being kidnapped by Hezbollah in Lebanon in September 2019. He died six months after his return to the U.S. of cancer that was diagnosed in prison in Lebanon.
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Zoya and Guila Fakhoury, Amer’s daughters and co-founders of the Amer Foundation, told Fox News Digital that their "family wants to see a peaceful, sovereign, and prosperous Lebanon" and welcomes "any effort that genuinely reduces violence and helps Lebanon move toward stability."
The Fakhoury's said that "lasting peace cannot come at the expense of accountability. True stability in Lebanon requires ensuring that terrorist organizations like Hezbollah no longer hold the power to intimidate, detain, and silence innocent people."
They expressed disappointment that there has been "little public focus on the Americans who remain unjustly detained by the Iranian regime." They added that "Any meaningful agreement with Iran should include concrete progress toward bringing every wrongfully detained American home."
A U.S. official told Fox News Digital that "The Trump Administration is committed to securing the release of all Americans unjustly detained in Iran and around the world. The Iranian regime has a long and shameful history of unjustly detaining U.S. nationals and other foreign citizens. The Iranian regime should immediately release all Americans unjustly detained in Iran. To ensure the safety and security and security of those Americans, we have nothing further to share at this time."
As talks brokered by the U.S. between Lebanese and Israeli officials resumed in Washington, the Lebanese president, Joseph Aoun, released a statement on his X account Tuesday, thanking the Vice President and Secretary of State, stating in part "for the attention that the United States is showing toward Lebanon, aimed at ending the war there, strengthening the authority of the Lebanese state, and the independence of its decision-making, considering it solely responsible for preserving national sovereignty, the dignity of the Lebanese people, and their safety."
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Walid Phares, a foreign policy expert and author of ‘Iran: An Imperialist Republic and U.S. Policy,’ told Fox News Digital that it was "a major mistake…to give the Islamic regime in Iran a power to include Lebanon and Hezbollah in the talks. He warned that "putting Lebanon on the agenda of the talks with the regime in Switzerland could collapse the Washington, D.C. platform."
Pressed by reporters while in Kuwait on Wednesday about Israel's continued military presence, Rubio drew a firm line on the administration's expectations, stating its hope is "that the Lebanese Armed Forces and the legitimate, sovereign Lebanese government will continue to be able to control and secure more and more of their own territory - because that's who needs to control Lebanese territory, not a terrorist group like Hezbollah. So that's the goal. And I think the Israelis have been clear. They don't have any quarrels with the Lebanese people, they don't have any claims on the territory of Lebanon."
Jonathan Conricus, a former international spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces, told Fox News Digital that "From an Israeli perspective, Hezbollah is not an organization that we can talk with or expect them to change their ways." He said that as a jihadi organization, "their primary objective in life is to wage holy war against the Jews, and then against Christians and against other what they consider to be infidels and Westerners. These are not people that you can negotiate or talk sense with."
Conricus, a senior fellow at the FDD, added that "there's a unique chance here to roll back Iranian aggression in the region and to dismantle the most important Iranian proxy Hezbollah." To do so, he called for "political pressure, information pressure and…economic pressure on Hezbollah [and] on all of its financial institutions."
A U.S. government official told Fox News Digital that "Secretary Rubio spoke to both [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu] and Aoun on Friday about solidifying ceasefire and future talks. As a result of those calls, the U.S. started a monitoring mechanism via [U.S. Central Command] so that our policymakers have real-time and accurate information about fighting in Lebanon."
The Washington talks between Lebanon and Israel are expected to continue into Thursday.