The Atlantic Council reported: “…. A narcoterrorism conspiracy involves dissidents of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), drug cartels in Mexico, the Islamic Republic of Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah [Iran’s proxy] …. The Hezbollah crime-terror network moved to Colombia and to the Tri-Border Area between Paraguay, Brazil, and Argentina….
Hezbollah’s External Security Organization has co-opted many Lebanese families throughout Central and South America as well as the Caribbean…. It is tied to a vast transnational criminal network that includes an array of businesses in Latin America, laundering illicit funds….
In October 2018, the US Justice Department named Hezbollah alongside three major Mexican cartels and the Central American gang MS-13 as transnational criminal organizations…. A logistical air bridge exists between Caracas, Damascus, and Tehran.
Thus, more than 300,000 Venezuelans reside in a city called As-Suwayda in southwestern Syria (“little Venezuela”), many of them dual-nationals. Hezbollah has helped the Maduro regime become the central hub for the convergence of transnational organized crime and international terrorism in the Western Hemisphere, multiplying the logistic and financial benefits for both….
Hezbollah’s influence within, and infiltration of, Lebanese expat communities gives Iran a gateway to grow its footprint in Venezuela….
“Iran has deep-rooted connections in several African nations—through its own agents or those of Hezbollah…. In 2017, the US Justice Department charged two naturalized U.S. citizens, holding Lebanese passports, with providing material support for Hezbollah’s targeting of military installations and airports in New York City….”
The Congressional Research Service (ibid) notes special Iranian operations – including drug trafficking, money laundering, terrorism and intelligence – in the Tri Border Areas (Argentina-Paraguay-Brazil and Chile–Peru–Bolivia), Ecuador, Uruguay, Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua and Mexico, focusing on leftist governments that share the goal of reducing U.S. influence in the region. In 2012, Iran launched a Spanish-language satellite TV network as part of its ideological, cultural and religious campaign. An Iranian intelligence network was established in Guyana.
According to the State Department Iran Country Report, 2020, the Iranian government continued supporting terrorist plots. For instance, Albania, Belgium and the Netherlands have either arrested or expelled Iranian government officials implicated in terrorism on their soil. Iran remains unwilling to bring to justice senior al-Qaeda members residing in the country, allowing them to operate a core facilitation pipeline through Iran since at least 2009, and enabling them to move funds and fighters to South Asia and Syria. In Bahrain, Iran supports and trains local Shia terrorists.
In Yemen, Iran has provided weapons and advanced equipment such as unmanned aircraft systems, training, and other support to Houthi militants, who have engaged in attacks against Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Iran supports various Iraqi Shia terrorist groups, which have targeted US installations, while committing human rights abuses against Sunni civilians. Iranian forces have directly backed militia operations in Syria with armored vehicles, artillery, and drones.
Iran has supplied Hezbollah in Lebanon with thousands of rockets, missiles, and small arms, advanced weapons systems and technologies, as well as assisting the group in creating infrastructure that would permit it to indigenously produce rockets and missiles to threaten Israel from Lebanon and Syria. Iran has provided hundreds of millions of dollars in support of Hezbollah and trained thousands of its fighters at camps in Iran. Hezbollah fighters have been used extensively in Syria to support the Assad regime….”
The bottom line
*The well-documented domestic and external rogue track record of Iran’s Ayatollahs should not take a backseat to speculative assessments of their future track record. Such an error of judgement threatens the survival of all pro-US Arab regimes, and undermines the national security and homeland security of the US.
*The track record of Iran’s Ayatollahs, on the one hand, and the assumption that they are good-faith negotiators constitutes a self-destruct oxymoron.
*When dealing with the rogue Iranian regime, one should not exclude the military option or the regime-change option. Such an exclusion generates a robust tailwind to Iran’s Ayatollahs, while betraying Iran’s oppressed ethnic and religious minorities.
*While there may be substantial cost to a military option, it would be dwarfed by the regional and global cost of a nuclear Iran, including the cost to the US national and homeland security.
Image: Reuters