Irán has expanded its influence in Latin América with a double threat: extremist ideology and alliance with criminal groups. According to analysts, Tehran conducts illicit business with Venezuela, supports the expansion of the terrorist group Hezbollah into the region, and benefits from illegal mining.
By Diálogo – Digital Military Magazine
Sep 14, 2021
“Organized crime is a fundamental piece in exporting jihadism, especially when the Islamic Republic itself is under heavy sanctions,” Luis Fleischman, professor of sociology at Palm Beach State College, Florida, and International Relations expert, told Diálogo.
Fleischman explained that Iran’s activities have three main components: criminal, strategic, and propaganda. “Iran uses its own ships, aircraft, and transport companies to traffic drugs and alcohol, smuggle oil, carry out money laundering, and traffic weapons.”
In the same way that Iran receives money from opium production in Afghanistan in exchange for weapons to the Taliban, in Latin America the country has sent weapons and cash to Venezuela, Fleischman noted. “Venezuela is a mega narco-state that has partnered with Iran to promote its own criminal activities.”
Tehran also benefited from the Nicolás Maduro regime’s illicit gold sales. According to security expert Douglas Farah, Iran received $500 million in gold bars from Maduro in exchange for more than 1.5 million barrels of oil and repairs at state-owned Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA, in Spanish) facilities. “Given tightening international sanctions [on Caracas and Tehran], Iran has now become Maduro’s partner of choice in the sale of illicit gold,” Farah said in an August 13, 2020 report from the Atlantic Council.
Hezbollah support
The criminal component of Iran’s activities in the region includes supporting the Hezbollah terrorist group. “Over the past decades, Hezbollah has built a well-oiled, multibillion-dollar money-laundering and drug-trafficking machine in Latin America,” Emanuele Ottolenghi, senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said in a July 14, 2021 report.
Ottolenghi said that one of the key figures in the criminal network is the Lebanese national Nasser Abbas Bahmad, who founded an organization to traffic cocaine from Ciudad del Este, Paraguay, in 2016. The group hid the drug in carbon containers that were exported to countries such as Argentina, Spain, and Malaysia.
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