The United States has redesignated Hezbollah as an Iranian proxy operating under the command of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force and imposed sanctions on an alleged financing network accused of moving hundreds of millions of dollars via airline couriers. The US Treasury linked the network, which it said is led by Turkish businessman Yunus Alper Yilmaz, to cash transfers on commercial flights between Lebanon, Türkiye, the UAE and Iran, describing the arrangement as a route outside the formal financial system to obtain foreign currency and evade sanctions. A State Department official said the change specifies Hezbollah is not a stand-alone Lebanese resistance movement but an extension of the IRGC-QF, building on its 1997 foreign terrorist organization listing and 2001 specially designated global terrorist designation. The step comes as Washington prepares broader economic measures aimed at crushing Iran’s economy and as the US mediates Israel-Lebanon talks that remain strained by continued hostilities. Lebanese authorities say an Israeli air and ground campaign has killed more than 4,300 people; truces brokered on June 4 and June 26 have not halted fighting, with fresh Israeli strikes reported in southern Lebanon. Separate threads of the wider confrontation include US pressure on Iranian oil and evasion networks, severe inflation inside Iran, and the USS Abraham Lincoln’s extended Middle East deployment as another carrier arrives to relieve it.