Sudan has committed to designating Hezbollah as a terror organization as part of its US-brokered agreement to normalize relations with Israel, a senior US official said Friday.
The issue was not mentioned in the joint statement from Israel, Sudan and the US released by the White House on the normalization agreement, and no comment was immediately available from Khartoum.
The move would mark a dramatic shift for Sudan, which was a staunch ally of Iran until 2016, helping the Islamic Republic smuggle rockets and other weapons to Palestinian terror groups in Gaza. This prompted Israel to repeatedly bomb military facilities in Sudan, according to foreign reports.
Hezbollah is Iran’s main proxy in the region, and both Israel and the US have been calling on the international community to join them in blacklisting the Lebanese Shiite terror group.
Sudan would be following the lead of Estonia and Guatemala, which both took official action against Hezbollah this week.
Guatemala on Friday declared Hezbollah a terrorist organization, agreed to bar the group’s operatives from its territory and “to fight against financing” the terror group, Israel’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
Estonia’s Foreign Minister Urmas Reinsalu said on Thursday that Hezbollah posed “a considerable threat to international — and thereby Estonian — security.” He appeared to stop short of blacklisting the group entirely.
His ministry stated that entry to Estonia will be prohibited for “Hezbollah affiliates about whom there is information or there are reasonable grounds to believe that their activity supports terrorism and who therefore pose a threat to the Estonian as well as international security.”
Read More: Times of Israel
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