EU urged by US to declare Hezbollah a terror group

Two MEPs said they would support the United States in their effort to persuade the European Union to declare Lebanon’s radical Shia Islamist group, Hezbollah, a terrorist group.
The move comes a day after Lebanon has formed a new government, led by prime minister Hassan Diab, who is backed by the group.
The US Ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell, and the American ambassador to the EU, Gordon Sondland, met with German MEPs David McAllister and Michael Gahler on January 22 in Brussels to discuss the proposal.
“We will try to draft something that finds sufficient support,” McAllister and Gahler said after the meeting. They said, however, that a final decision would be up to the European Parliament’s main political groups.
“The meetings we had today were encouraging. I am hopeful we will soon see a European Parliament draft resolution to ban Hezbollah throughout Europe. We will then have lots of work to do to get it passed,” Grenell said.
The group was founded during the 1975-90 Lebanese Civil War by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. It has been responsible for multiple acts of terror across the globe, including bombings and kidnappings of soldiers and civilians, as well as the execution of diplomats.
Hezbollah has been designated as a terror group by the US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Israel, Germany, the Arab League, amongst others. France, however, which ruled over Lebanon as part of its colonial empire, continues to have ties to the country and has opposed any move to officially deem the whole of Hezbollah as terrorists as Paris believes it would be seen as a provocation by Lebanon’s Shiite community and by Iran.
Honduras was the most recent country to declare the group as terrorists.