U.S. ambassadors push European Union to ban Hezbollah

U.S. Ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland (center) | Alex Wong/Getty Images

Influential MEPs say they would back a ban, but some EU nations do not want to damage ties with Lebanon.

Influential members of the European Parliament said Wednesday that they would support a U.S. effort to persuade the EU to ban Hezbollah as a terrorist group, a day after the organization solidified a major role in Lebanon’s newly formed government.

Two top U.S. diplomats — Richard Grenell, the ambassador to Germany, and Gordon Sondland, the ambassador to the EU — met with German MEPs in Brussels on Wednesday to discuss the proposed ban, and they appeared to win some support.

David McAllister, the German MEP who chairs the foreign affairs committee, and Michael Gahler, another prominent German on the committee, told POLITICO after the meeting that they would support a resolution calling on the EU to ban Hezbollah, but they stressed that it would be up to the Parliament’s main political groups to bring forward a resolution.

„We will try to draft something that finds sufficient support,“ Gahler said. Both Gahler and McAllister are members of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s party, the Christian Democratic Union.

In December, the German parliament approved a resolution calling on the government to ban all of Hezbollah from operating in the country. Germany and several other EU nations distinguish between the group’s political and military wings, and currently only ban the military wing of the Iranian-backed group.

The U.S. has long designated Hezbollah as a terrorist group, and the U.K. decided last year to ban Hezbollah in its entirety.

But Hezbollah holds enormous political stature in Lebanon, which only seemed to increase with the announcement of a new government on Tuesday, which is largely the result of a deal between Hezbollah and its rivals.

The effort to ban Hezbollah in Brussels is likely to face serious, perhaps insurmountable, opposition from countries that want to maintain strong ties to Lebanon, including France, and that see the full ban as unnecessarily provocative. Hezbollah has a large faction in the Lebanese parliament.

Still, Grenell said he was optimistic after Wednesday’s meetings. “The meetings we had today were encouraging,“ he said. “I am hopeful we will soon see a European Parliament draft resolution to ban Hezbollah throughout Europe. We will then have lots of work to do to get it passed.” Grenell also argued for the ban in an opinion piece for POLITICO.

Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the EU, called on the bloc to get in gear.

„Now is the time for the EU to step up and work with us,“ Sondland tweeted. In another post, he called Hezbollah „a threat to us all.“