The first congressional hearing on Hezbollah’s malign activities in the Western hemisphere in a decade took place this week, highlighting Venezuela’s embrace of Iran as a geopolitical partner and the Maduro regime’s efforts to transform the country into a regional hub for narcoterrorism. 

The bipartisan Senate International Narcotics Control Caucus convened the hearing, titled “Global Gangsters: Hezbollah’s Latin American Drug Trafficking Operations,” on Tuesday, to explore how Hezbollah’s influence in the region had expanded and determine the most effective ways for the U.S. to respond. Witnesses included Amb. Nathan Sales, who served as the State Department’s counterterrorism coordinator in the first Trump administration; Marshall Billingslea, the special envoy for arms control and a former Treasury official during President Donald Trump’s first term; Matthew Levitt, the director of the Reinhard Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy; and Robert Clifford, a former FBI official who worked in the counterterrorism space.

Senators and counterterrorism experts warned that Venezuela had established itself as the narcoterrorism epicenter of Latin America, and predicted that Hezbollah would deepen financial ties with Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro as a result. Senators on both sides of the aisle and hearing witnesses urged a hawkish approach to quell Venezuela’s behavior.

“We have long known that Hezbollah is one of Iran’s tools to destabilize and terrorize the Middle East. Until 2023, about 70% of Hezbollah’s finances came from Iran. Hezbollah held up its side of the transaction,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), the top Democrat in the caucus, said. “Over the last two years, both Iran and Hezbollah have suffered significant setbacks. Iran is now looking more inward and Hezbollah is cash starved. If we target Hezbollah’s financing, we can deny them the opportunity to rebuild.”

“Where will Hezbollah look for money? Hezbollah has operated in Latin America for almost 50 years, cultivating ties with drug traffickers and developing illicit finance and trade networks. Modern drug cartels and terrorist groups run more like Fortune 500 conglomerates than street gangs,” he continued. “If we want to be serious about fighting the drug traffickers behind American deaths, we must strike their financial networks.”

Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-OH), the newest member of the caucus, asked witnesses for their take on the U.S. potentially declaring Venezuela as a state sponsor of terrorism, to which Billingslea and Sales both responded that the South American country’s behavior met the legal standard.

“Maduro should know his days are numbered,” Moreno, who was born in Colombia, said. 

Sales also suggested that more Latin American countries should “designate Hezbollah in its entirety as a terrorist organization. Not just its so-called military wing, all of it.”

“During the first Trump administration, five Latin American countries did exactly that. Argentina, Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras and Paraguay,” Sales said. “According to a recent RAND study, the Latin American countries that sanctioned Hezbollah during the first [Trump] term have generally seen a drop in activity by the terror group. By contrast, Hezbollah has been more active in the countries in the region that haven’t designated it.”

Levitt noted that narcotics trafficking had become a key source of income for Hezbollah as Iran’s other financing wells dried up. 

“Hezbollah has a long history of turning to its diaspora networks when it’s facing financial stress. Iran is still believed to provide Hezbollah with about the same amount of money today that it did before the Oct. 7 attacks, but that is not enough money to do what it needs to do today. And Iran is having a much harder time getting that money to Hezbollah in a timely manner,” Levitt explained. 

“When Hezbollah is under stress, they traditionally reach out to their illicit financial networks around the world. We can expect that they will do the same today,” he continued. “If you need big money real fast, you turn to illicit activities and especially to narcotics trafficking. Hezbollah has demonstrated its ability to play an important and lucrative, niche role in laundering the proceeds of narcotics trafficking for a wide array of cartels.”

When the leaders of Georgetown University, the City University of New York and the University of California, Berkeley sat down on Tuesday morning to testify at a congressional hearing about antisemitism, they clearly came prepared, having learned the lessons of the now-infamous December 2023 hearing with the presidents of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and MIT, each of whom refused to outright say that calls for genocide violated their schools’ codes of conduct. 

Georgetown interim President Robert Groves, CUNY Chancellor Felix Matos Rodriguez and UC Berkeley Chancellor Rich Lyons were all quick to denounce antisemitism and even anti-Zionism at Tuesday’s House Education and Workforce Committee hearing examining the role of faculty, funding and ideology in campus antisemitism. 

But while the university administrators readily criticized antisemitism broadly, they struggled to apply that commitment directly to their field of academia. 

Lyons in particular offered a revealing look at the gulf between a university’s stated values and its difficulty in carrying them out. 

He was asked to account for the promotion of Ussama Makdisi, a Berkeley history professor who described the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks as “resistance” and later wrote on X that he “could have been one of those who broke the siege on October 7.” Why, Lyons was asked by Reps. Randy Fine (R-FL) and Lisa McClain (R-MI), did Berkeley announce last September that Makdisi had been named the university’s inaugural chair of Palestinian and Arab studies? 

Lyons first defended Makdisi: “Ussama Makdisi, Professor Makdisi, is a fine scholar. He was awarded that position from his colleagues based on academic standards,” Lyons said.  

Later, when McClain followed Fine’s line of questioning, Lyons went to great lengths to avoid criticizing Makdisi. 

“I want to separate the phrase from the person. If I heard some other person —” he said, before McClain cut him off. What, McClain asked, did Lyons think Makdisi meant with his tweet?

For five seconds, Lyons sat in silence. 

“I believe it was a celebration of the terrorist attack on Oct. 7,” he replied slowly. 

He shared that he had spoken to Makdisi about the social media post. Pressed to share what the conversation was like, Lyons returned to an earlier line: “He’s a fine scholar,” Lyons said. 

Lyons, like Matos Rodriguez and Groves, acknowledged that antisemitism exists at his campus. But they all struggled to reckon with what Republican lawmakers alleged was an explosion in antisemitism at each of the three schools after Oct. 7. 

“I believe that most Jewish students feel safe on our campus,” Lyons said, though he also said that he knows some do not feel safe. When asked why they may not feel safe, he demurred. 

“Well, I think there are Jewish people that don’t feel safe in lots of parts —” he said, cut off again by McClain, who asked him to speak specifically about UC Berkeley. 

“I think there is antisemitism in society,” Lyons said, before he was cut off again. 

Lyons repeatedly attempted to make the same point: “I do believe that public universities are reflections of society, and I believe the antisemitism in society is present on our campus,” Lyons said. Asked whether the actions that he takes or that his faculty take can influence the campus environment, he said yes. McClain accused him of “avoiding the question,” and asked: Would he commit to act to make sure all Jewish students and all students feel safe?

“I’m committing to striving to reach that goal,” said Lyons.

Each of the university leaders was asked, at different occasions, to account for faculty members who had shared antisemitic or pro-Hamas rhetoric. Matos Rodriguez, the CUNY chancellor, did not deny that the New York City university system employs antisemitic faculty, though he did not specify whether any action would be taken against them.

“We have faculty that might conduct themselves in antisemitic behavior, and we have no tolerance for it, and we’re clear about the expectations to follow all our rules and policies,” Matos Rodriguez said. “If any individual breaks those rules, they will be investigated, and the appropriate disciplinary action will be taken if warranted.” 

Presented with the cases of two faculty members who had shared pro-Hamas content on social media, Matos Rodriguez condemned Hamas, but did not say specifically if their rhetoric violated codes of conduct or led to any consequences.

“I have been very clear that Hamas is a horrible terrorist organization, and we have no tolerance at the City University of New York for anyone who would embrace that support of Hamas,” said Matos Rodriguez. “I clearly condemn the statements, and it’s been my testimony here, and our practice, that if any member of the City University community violates our policies and our code of conduct, we will conduct an investigation, and if discipline is warranted, we will take it, and we will not hesitate to do that, and we have done so.”

Groves, Georgetown’s president, shared early in the hearing that the university had taken action against Jonathan Brown, a tenured professor who faced criticism last month for a tweet calling for Iran to conduct a “symbolic strike” on a U.S. military base after Washington struck Iranian nuclear sites. Brown is no longer the chair of the university’s Arabic and Islamic studies program, Groves said, and he has been placed on leave pending an investigation. 

Groves, who faced several questions about Georgetown’s ties to Qatar, pledged to commit to disclosing every dollar that Georgetown receives from foreign sources. 

At the same time, he stood by Georgetown’s decision to award Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, the mother of the Qatari emir, with the university’s president’s medal in April. Sheikha Moza has a history of incendiary anti-Israel commentary on social media, including several posts praising the Oct. 7 attacks and Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, who orchestrated the violence. Rep. Mark Harris (R-NC) asked Groves why Georgetown gave her a medal, given those posts.

The medal was awarded because of her “decades-long work for educating, getting access to education, to the poorest children around the world,” Groves said. 

“I don’t support that tweet,” he added, when asked if Georgetown’s values include calls for the destruction of Israel. “That tweet is not consistent with Georgetown policy. We honored her for her decades of work in access to education to the poorest children of the world.” Georgetown would not consider revoking the award, he added.

Groves’ stated commitment to transparency about its sources of foreign funding — the university’s 20-year relationship with Qatar is well-documented and oft-criticized — stood in contrast to Lyons’ response to questions about whether he would disclose all foreign funding to Berkeley. 

“As a public university, I am not ready to commit to that on the fly. There are different donors to the university who request anonymity,” Lyons said. “What I’d be very, very happy to be very transparent about is exactly what is our process for vetting those things. We say no to a lot of foreign money. I promise you that.”

He would not give an example of foreign money he had rejected. 

Democrats at the hearing mostly used their time to criticize President Donald Trump’s approach to higher education, and his funding cuts that are affecting scientific and medical research at top universities. They highlighted his administration’s massive cuts to the Education Department, including at the Office for Civil Rights, the division tasked with investigating civil rights violations — including antisemitism — at American schools and universities.