When Scrutiny Begins, It Doesn’t Stop

It’s easy to see how this can scare a lot of people:

The US Treasury Department is closely monitoring several Lebanese banks and may take punitive action against one of them soon, Al-Liwaa newspaper reported on Wednesday. The department has placed one Lebanese bank under “focused surveillance” due to “suspicious activities by the bank and movement of funds concerning a Lebanese party,” the daily quoted an anonymous US source as saying. The Treasury may take punitive measures against the bank as it did earlier this year against Lebanese Canadian Bank, the source said

As I wrote before, it will be very difficult to find any Lebanese bank that doesn’t have dealings with Hezbollah, simply because Hezbollah represents a significant chunk of the population that the banks serve.

This is why the scrutiny of Lebanese banks should be looked at as a tool being used by the American administration to put pressure on Lebanon and Hezbollah. Remember, this came in parallel to the Americans freezing weapons deliveries to the Lebanese army. What I’m still not sure of though is why this pressure is being exerted: Is this simply the result of the fall of Hariri and Hezbollah’s political taking over? Or is it meant to pressure the PM designate Najib Mikati against forming a Hezbollah government?

It is also worth mentioning that the threat of scrutiny is as powerful as scrutiny itself in these cases.

Update: The American embassy in Beirut strongly denies this.