Israel has added a new name to its ledger of Hezbollah's enablers, and this time it is not a militia, a money changer or a front company with a post office box. It is a fuel distributor with a British registration, a Lebanese home and a family at its helm.
Defense Minister Israel Katz announced Thursday that the Defense Ministry's National Bureau for Counter Terror Financing has imposed sanctions on Coral Oil, a Lebanese energy company, after it supplied roughly 130,000 liters of diesel and gasoline to Al-Amanah, a fuel company owned by Hezbollah. The bureau designated Al-Amanah a terrorist organization in 2020.
The case, in the ministry's telling, illustrates how an armed organization survives on ordinary commerce. Fuel is a legitimate product, bought and sold by the tanker load across the region every day. But in Hezbollah's hands, the ministry said, it becomes something else entirely. "Fuel is not merely a commercial product for Hezbollah," the ministry said in a statement. The group uses refined fuel to move weapons and military components, to run generators and infrastructure, and to sustain its underground network. Supplying it, the ministry argued, means supplying Hezbollah with operational capability, and with it the means to advance attacks against Israel.
On paper, Coral Oil is a British company. In practice, according to the ministry, it is Lebanese through and through. It is owned by A. Yamin Group S.A.L. (Holding), a Lebanese company, and its own financial reports show that its business is conducted through its Lebanese branch.
At the center of that structure stands a single family. Three brothers, Oscar, Antonio and Edgar Yamin, have served as directors of Coral Oil since January 2017. In the group's documents, Oscar is listed as chairman and CEO, Antonio as the architect of its financial strategy, and Edgar as the man in charge of operations and supplier relations.
The ownership chain winds across borders before returning to Beirut. Until November 2025, Coral Oil was held directly by Fortuna, a company registered in the Isle of Man, with A. Yamin Group of Lebanon as the ultimate parent. That month, the holding was transferred to A. Yamin Group S.A.L. (Holding).
The documents, the ministry said, sketch a wider web: Coral Oil as one strand in a network of family-linked companies in the fuel and international trade sectors, conducting business with one another worth hundreds of millions of dollars, with the Yamin family at the top.
The sanction, the ministry said, reflects a broader shift in how Israel's security establishment pursues Hezbollah's finances. The aim is no longer only to target entities directly identified with the organization, but to reach the trade routes and supply chains that keep it running. "In this case," the ministry said, "we are dealing with refined fuel, a product that is legitimate in itself, that was made available to a company owned by Hezbollah."
The goal, it concluded, is to cut the thread that ties the legitimate world of business and commerce to the logistical machinery that allows Hezbollah to sustain its terror apparatus.
