It’s no secret that Iran has been steering Hezbollah’s operations in Southern Lebanon, overseeing Hamas’s (now dwindling) presence in Gaza, and funneling arms and aid to a slew of terrorist agents across the Middle East. Through such covert maneuvers, Tehran managed, initially unnoticed, to set up camp in Israel’s backyard.
As Venezuela, Bolivia, Cuba, and Nicaragua continue to depend on Iranian support, Tehran could easily leverage its current position and influence for its agenda.
Should Americans — half a world away from the turmoil in the Middle East — be alarmed by this slippery tactic? Maybe. Iran’s modus operandi of using proxy military agents, cunning diplomacy, and economic partnerships to expand its global spheres of influence has never been limited to the Middle East. In recent years, Tehran’s sights have been dead set on the underbelly of the Western Hemisphere. According to a 2022 report by the Spanish Institute for Strategic Studies, “For Tehran, Latin America is an international priority.” As Tehran continues to forge links with the “Global South,” Latin America’s geographical proximity to the U.S. strengthens its “ability to poke the U.S. in the eye,” in analyst Eldar Mamedov’s words, and allows for proxy agents to be planted in the U.S.’s backyard. (READ MORE: The Venezuela Template Against Democracy)
Despite vast religious and cultural differences, Iran has long viewed the Latin American left’s revolutionary and anti-U.S. sentiment as an expression of ideological alignment to its own revolutionary and anti-West agenda. The 1980s and 90s were a strategic period of gathering information, building goodwill, and establishing cultural and intelligence networks via Hezbollah in dispersed Shiite communities in Argentina, Colombia, and Venezuela. By 2010 Iran had embassies in all Latin American capitals, established lines of credit, and was backing the construction of mosques, Islamic charities, and cultural centers.
Perhaps the greatest cultural campaign was through the Tehran-controlled Spanish-language HispanTV channel operating off Venezuela’s TeleSUR. Described by opposition groups as “disinformation efforts” and broadcasting outlets for “Tehran’s conspiracy theories, Holocaust denial, and anti-Semitism,” HispanTV has effectively reached audiences in roughly seventeen countries since going live in 2011. It’s objective? To disseminate widespread sympathetic animosity toward the West and drive home “the need for radical change in world order, with the United States as the chief obstacle,” noted journalist Douglas Farah.
Recently, the focus has shifted from social and cultural assimilation to greater economic and military partnerships. Although Tehran takes pains to shore up its long-standing relations with revolutionary Nicaragua and Cuba, the greatest effort in recent years has focused intently on Venezuela and Bolivia.
In Venezuela, the former Chavez-Ahmadinejad partnership of the early 2000s procured Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) officers as regional military advisors and cemented bilateral relations that have carried well into Nicolás Maduro’s current presidency. Leveraging this precedent of good relations, Tehran built military-industrial complexes in Venezuela that, on the one hand, increased its military exports to the region, while on the other provided bases for IRGC’s Quds Force and Hezbollah operating in Venezuela and covertly advising ELN and FARQ militants in neighboring Colombia.
Iran’s persistent expansion has been filling the international power vacuum in the region left by the former Soviet Union.
A 2021 meeting between Venezuelan Foreign Minister Felix Plasencia and Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi in Tehran reinvigorated the spirit of the former Chavez-Ahmadinejad alliance and came in the wake of an international scare. Months prior, Iranian warships proposed steaming to the Venezuelan coast — a wake-up call to the international community of Iran’s potential to patrol the waters between Caracas and Havana. While on the heels of Plasencia’s meeting, Maduro proceeded to sign a twenty-year agreement on oil, military, and economic cooperation with Tehran.
In Bolivia, the rich bilateral relations that Ahmadinejad established with Evo Morales — resulting in a new embassy in La Paz in 2008 and solidifying agreements in agriculture, mining, and security — experienced a slight setback under right-wing Jeanine Áñez’s interim presidency in 2019, but resumed with greater zeal after Luis Arce was elected to office in November 2020.
The strengthening of new ties was made evident by “opaque” defense and security agreements that Bolivian Defense Minister Edmundo Novillo signed with his Iranian counterpart, Mohammad Reza Ashtiani, in Tehran in the summer of 2023. The contents of these agreements still aren’t entirely public, but Novillo shed light on possible military drone and patrol boat deals to fight drug traffic and ensure border security. (READ MORE: Five Quick Things: A War With Venezuela, Maybe?)
Recent diplomatic reactions to the current Israel-Hamas war in Gaza have only further unveiled Iran’s tightening grip on domestic and foreign policy in the Andes. Arce never condemned the October 7 attack, and when Israel Defense Forces (IDF) entered Gaza two weeks later, Arce broke all diplomatic ties with Israel, followed, hours later, by Colombian President Gustavo Petro and Chilean President Gabriel Boric recalling their ambassadors from Tel Aviv. Israeli Foreign Affairs spokesman Lior Haiat spoke on X (formerly Twitter) calling out Bolivia’s diplomatic break for what it is: “A surrender to terrorism and to the Ayatollah’s regime in Iran.”
Former Colombian president Ivan Duque has repeatedly voiced concerns over Hezbollah’s mobility in Venezuela “that can clearly allow members of Hezbollah to enter Colombia” and entangle his country, and others, in foreign geopolitical hot spots. For some, Duque’s cries come unwarranted. Oliver Stuenkel, a Latin American political analyst, recently pointed to the region’s “growing benefit of being a bystander to geopolitical turmoil” as a selling point for investors “betting on Latin America to reduce their exposure to geopolitical conflict.” For others, however, Hezbollah’s ties to the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires that left eighty-five people dead is a persistent reminder that Latin America is not a bystander to geopolitical affairs nor safe from foreign nefarious actors.
As Venezuela, Bolivia, Cuba, and Nicaragua continue to depend on Iranian support, Tehran could easily leverage its current position and influence for its agenda — either in the spread of radical religious and social policies or by entangling Latin American militaries with proxy agents and terrorist groups in distant geo-political hotspots. (READ MORE: Exploiters Closer to Home)
Argentina, Paraguay, Guatemala, Honduras, and Colombia are currently the only Latin American countries that designate Hezbollah as a terrorist group — and by implication condemn Iranian involvement in the region. But with Colombia’s first left-wing president now in office, it’s questionable whether Petro will retain this position or join the “Iranian bloc” next to Maduro, Arce, and President Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua.
In familiar yet alarming ways, Iran’s persistent expansion has been filling the international power vacuum in the region left by the former Soviet Union. Iran has sought to polarize an already fractured left-v-right political and social landscape and “poke the U.S. in the eye” with potentially violent repercussions. With President Biden’s southern border crisis spiraling out of control, it’s worth mentioning the fact that Iranian proxy cells have joined the ranks of drug dealers and gang members pouring across the Rio Grande. With all international eyes currently fixed on Iran’s hands meddling in Lebanon and Gaza, it would be prudent to glance south now and then before it’s too late.