US Senior Advisor for Arab and African Affairs Massad Boulos accused Iran of using "Hezbollah" to "sow chaos" in the region, AFP reported.
Commenting on the latest measures by the Treasury Department against financial networks linked to "Hezbollah", Boulos said that the step shows Washington's determination to disrupt "terrorist financing networks".
"Iran uses "Hezbollah" to sow chaos in the Middle East, undermine Lebanon's sovereignty and threaten our regional allies," Boulos said.
The United States announced new sanctions against the "Hezbollah" financing network, highlighting the Lebanese terrorist group's close ties to Iran's Revolutionary Guard.
The legal classification of "Hezbollah" as a terrorist organization has been amended to note that it operates "in service of the Iranian regime under the command of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps," and specifically the elite Quds Force, the Treasury Department said in a statement.
The new redesignation "clarifies that Hezbollah is an Iranian proxy, not an independent organization, as the previous designation suggested," a State Department official said. "This underscores that Hezbollah operates with little or no respect for Lebanese sovereignty, the Lebanese people, or the Lebanese state."
"This measure builds on years of U.S. designations that have repeatedly documented the operational, financial, and logistical integration between Hezbollah and the Lebanese government." and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the State Department official said, calling Hezbollah an "extension" of the latter.
"This is not a Lebanese resistance movement," as Hezbollah describes itself, the official said.
The new sanctions target 10 individuals who are alleged to be part of a network that transfers cash to Hezbollah, which has already been repeatedly sanctioned by the United States, the Treasury Department said in a statement.
"The network uses couriers traveling on commercial flights between Lebanon, Turkey, the UAE and Iran to move up to hundreds of millions of dollars between jurisdictions, providing Hezbollah with "a channel outside the official financial system to acquire foreign currency and circumvent sanctions," the statement said.