Reports by various news organizations recently surfaced naming ten “countries of interest” to the US State Department.

Lebanon reportedly made the list.

People travelling from or through Lebanon and nine other countries, alongside an additional four “state sponsors of terrorism,” are now subject to enhanced airport screenings on flights going to the United States. There are a variety of reasons Lebanon might be one country of heightened concern—with Hezbollah at the forefront. 

“In general, these are fairly substantial and sustainable measures that will be closing the loopholes that could be exploited by people who want to do harm to the United States,” said Ryan Gliha, Public Affairs Officer at the US Embassy in Beirut. Neither Gliha, nor other US government officials in Lebanon or the States, could confirm Lebanon is on the list, but he said “countries are selected in consultation with the State Department based on the list of state sponsors of terrorism and current intelligence.”

The new measures came after the December 25 incident during which Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, 23, attempted to bomb a Northwest Airlines flight going from Amsterdam to Detroit. The Transportation Security Administration under the US Department of Homeland Security initially tightened measures for all flights going to US destinations, but loosened those measures on Sunday to focus on threat-based and random screening for every individual passing through state sponsors of terrorism and countries of interest.

The ten countries of interest are reportedly Lebanon, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Yemen, Nigeria, Somalia, Algeria, Saudi Arabia and Iraq. The four US-designated state sponsors of terrorism are Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria.    

Lebanon may be one of the 10 countries named for a variety of reasons, starting with Hezbollah, which is on the list of 42 foreign organizations the US considers terrorist groups. While Hezbollah’s status as a terrorist group is up to whom you ask, there is no question that the Party of God’s power does produce a security issue, as the Lebanese government does not have full control of its borders, Paul Salem, director of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Lebanon, told NOW.

Matthew Levitt, director of the Stein Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, agrees. “[Hezbollah] has been of increasing concern over the past few months given the increase in the number of cases of Hezbollah’s activity abroad, most recently here in the United States,” Levitt said. In November 2009, two Lebanese men in Philadelphia were charged with attempting to provide material support to Hezbollah through Syria, Reuters reported. The group’s recent operations in Egypt also sparked concern.    

But Hezbollah alone should not be a matter of concern to US security, Salem said. “The US groups everyone into one; the Sunni radicals and Shia Resistance fighters are all put in the same box,” he said, highlighting that Hezbollah is not involved in supporting Al-Qaeda, and Al-Qaeda does not support Hezbollah. “They are sworn enemies,” he noted.  
 
Both Salem and Levitt suggested other security issues that got Lebanon on the list include threats based in Lebanon’s Palestinian camps, home to Al-Qaeda-inspired organizations like Fatah al-Islam, the radical Islamist group that fought a 15-week battle with the Lebanese army in 2007. Salafist Jihadi groups, and Hamas and Al-Qaeda-affiliated individuals, are also concerns to the US, Levitt said.

Lebanon making the list is not only significant for the underlying politics, but also for what it reveals regarding the contradicting efforts of the Obama administration. In June 2009, President Obama gave a speech in Cairo, Egypt where he declared his hope for “a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world; one based upon mutual interest and mutual respect.” Now, however, his administration is enforcing tighter security measures that single out people travelling from or through the Arab world based on their country of origin. Even US allies Iraq and Saudi Arabia were among the ten named countries.

The inconsistent nature of Obama’s policies may best be seen with Obama’s Deputy Assistant and National Security Advisor for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, John Brennan. In regard to relations between the United States and Iran, Brennan wrote in a 2008 volume of The Annals, a policy and scientific journal, that the next president must “encourage greater assimilation of Hezbollah into Lebanon’s political system.” 

Levitt, however, doesn’t believe the new security measures are necessarily problematic. “I think [Obama] has a policy of trying to help the Lebanese Armed Forces and trying to stabilize Lebanon,” he said. “I don’t think that from a domestic homeland security perspective, recognizing that travel from or through Lebanon can be a vulnerability is in any way necessarily incongruent with his other policies.”

Still, he highlights an important point. “The vast majority of the Lebanese have nothing, and want nothing, to do with terrorism. And we should want them and welcome them here in the United States,” he said.