Two German reports have said that Hezbollah was behind the ammonium nitrate that exploded at the Port of Beirut on August 4, revealing that Iran’s Revolutionary Guards had sent three shipments of the chemical to the Shiite party in 2013.
The first report published by Der Spiegel on Friday said that it was not Russian national Igor Grechushkin who owned the ship “Rhosus” that brought the chemicals to Lebanon, but rather Cypriot businessman Charalambos Manoli, who maintained a relationship with a bank used by Hezbollah in Lebanon.
The newspaper said Manoli made every effort to conceal the ownership of the Rhosus.
It said American investigators have accused the bank of money laundering for Hezbollah.
“Another of the bank’s customers was a suspected Syrian front company that had been involved in the country’s chemical weapons program. It was to this bank that Manoli owed money,” Der Spiegel wrote.
In another report, the German daily Die Welt said Hezbollah is believed to have imported up to 670 tons of ammonium nitrate to Lebanon between 2013 and 2014.
The newspaper said it was made privy to information obtained by “Western intelligence,” including purported documentation of the alleged transactions.
According to information from Western intelligence agencies available to Die Welt, Hezbollah in Lebanon received large deliveries of ammonium nitrate, which are closely related to the material detonated in Beirut.
The paper said the first transaction occurred on July 16, 2013, for a 270-ton shipment of ammonium nitrate, sent from Iran to Lebanon at a stated cost of 179,399 euros.
A second payment for the same quantity of ammonium nitrate was made in October 23 of that year, this time at a price of 140,693 euros.
The second shipment is believed to have been transported in flexible bulk containers by plane, likely on private Iranian airlines considered fronts for the Revolutionary Guard.
Then on April 4, 2014, a third transaction was charged for one billion Iranian rials (61,438 euros). While the amount of ammonium nitrate received was unclear, the paper estimated it to be between 90 and 130 tons given the previous charges, for a total of up to 670 tons.
Die Welt said that on the Iranian side, the deliveries are said to have been organized by the logistics department of the Quds Force, while on the Lebanese side, the man responsible for receiving the shipment was Mohammad Qasir, under US sanctions since May 2018 for allegedly acting as a critical financial conduit between the Quds Force and Hezbollah.
