Iran’s Intensified Penetration of Latin America and the Caribbean

According to Dr. Evan Ellis, a Latin American specialist at the Strategic Security Institute at the US Army War College, Iran’s involvement in Latin America and the Caribbean constitutes a clear and present threat to the US mainland in the following manner:

• Increasing collaboration with China and Russia, in order to undermine the US strategic posture in its own backyard, Latin America;
• Planning, financing and launching anti-US terrorism in Latin America, around the globe and on US soil;
• Empowering and weaponizing anti-US regimes and organizations in Latin America and throughout the world;
• Bolstering illegal immigration to the US, which includes drug traffickers and terrorists;
• Undermining the stability of pro-US Latin American governments, such as Argentina and Paraguay;
• Leveraging ties with Latin America (e.g., export-import), in order to bypass US economic sanctions and score mega-billion-dollar money laundering.

Thus, on February 13, 2025, Admiral Alvin Holsey, Commander of the US Southern Command, testified at a Senate Armed Services Committee Hearing:

“Iran seeks to build political, economic, and military clout in Latin America with the assistance of sympathetic regimes and states.... Iran has increasingly developed criminal networks in Latin America, in an attempt to kill or kidnap enemies of the regime.... 

"Although the theocratic regime works primarily with Venezuela to provide drones and warships to Caracas, it also has expanded security cooperation with Bolivia. Iran has provided drones and river boats to Bolivia, and it has assisted Bolivia with cybersecurity matters and participated in combined military training exercises. Iran has expanded overtures to Brazil, and in January 2024 joined BRICS.... 

"Iranian partner Lebanese Hizballah has had a presence in Latin America since the 1980s [leveraging the presence of 7-10 million Lebanese immigrants]. The group has plotted attacks against targets in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Panama, and Peru. Hizballah launders money, extorts local populations, and profits from drug trafficking, primarily in the tri-border area between Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay. These illicit activities threaten regional stability and raise millions of dollars for the terrorist organization to plan attacks worldwide....

“[Iran’s Ayatollahs have collaborated with a multitude of Transnational Criminal Organizations (TCO)]. There are 35 TCOs based in the region. In 2023, they amassed an assessed revenue of $358 billion by engaging in the trafficking of humans, drugs, weapons, and wildlife, as well as the counterfeiting of goods and illegal logging, mining, and fishing....

"...six times higher than the defense budgets of all countries in the region combined, including Mexico....

"Cocaine production is reaching record highs.... 

"...With fentanyl increasingly trafficked throughout the Western Hemisphere. As Congress recognizes, [Iran’s close ally] China strategically and economically benefits from our nation’s fentanyl crisis.... 

"...According to the UNODC, the Americas have the highest regional homicide rates in the world... Additionally, both regional and foreign terrorist actors are equally active in the region.... 

" ...Colombian terrorist groups are leveraging emerging technology, and in 2024, they conducted more than 140 Unmanned Systems aerial attacks....”

Dr. Benjamin Young of the Rand Corporation wrote: 

“.... The long arm of the Iranian state – [defined by the US as ‘the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism’] - with Venezuela as its Latin American spearhead, extends into the Western hemisphere.... 

"Officers of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which is labeled as a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S., have also been active in Venezuela.... 

"Venezuela’s Maduro has allowed Iran to establish production facilities for its military drones within its borders. He also buys Iranian armed drones. Recently, Venezuela purchased Iranian-made Peykaap speedboats [aimed to facilitate the kidnapping of Iranian dissidents and other Americans to Iran via Venezuela], armed with anti-ship missiles. Tehran has turned Venezuela into its Latin American weapons depot and arms trafficking hub. Tehran regards Venezuela as the base for their subversive operations in the Western hemisphere....

“Using Caracas as a base for their subversive activities in Latin America, Hezbollah [Iran’s chief proxy] operates a criminal-terror network in the tri-border area of Brazil, Paraguay, and Argentina that generates important revenue for the terrorist organization. 

Hezbollah operatives move to/from Venezuela discretely. Many have roots in Venezuela's sizable Lebanese community, embedded within Maduro's security apparatus and intelligence network.... This foothold in Venezuela provides Iran and Hezbollah with closer access to the U.S. homeland.... "

The bottom line

Iran’s transformation from “The American Policeman of the Persian Gulf” to the leading global epicenter of anti-US terrorism and drug trafficking – including in Latin America and on US soil – is largely a derivative of 46 years of the self-destructive US diplomatic option toward Iran’s Ayatollahs, and 40 years of economic sanctions, which are always reversible (by a future US President).

These US policies have failed to moderate Iran’s Ayatollahs, whose 1,400-year-old-vision, the 1979 Constitution and their school curriculum, mosque sermons and official media mandate the subjugation of the “apostate” Sunni regimes, the “infidel” West and, primarily, “The Great American Satan.” This reality demonstrates that the only way to end the Ayatollahs’ rogue conduct, and thus minimize the level of wars and terrorism, is through an irreversible regime-change.