terrorists in Venezuela

By Carlo Munoz - 04/23/12 05:10 PM ETPanetta: Iranian influence in South America akin to 'expanding terrorism'

Tehran's efforts to expand its circle of influence in South America is tantamount to exporting state-sponsored terrorism into the region, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said. 

"We always have a concern about in particular the [Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps] and [their] efforts . . .  to expand their influence not only throughout the Middle East but into [South America] as well," Panetta told reporters Monday. 

"That, in my book, that relates to expanding terrorism. And that's one of the areas that I think all of us are concerned about," he added. 

Panetta's comments came as he was en route to Colombia as part of a scheduled round of visits to various South American countries this week. 

Iran’s recent diplomatic push into South America could help Hamas and Hezbollah expand their foothold in the region. 

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has visited the region six times over the past six years. 

Tehran has also expanded its network of embassies and cultural centers in Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia and Nicaragua during that time. 

Iran’s increased engagement with its South American allies is one way Tehran can get around the raft of economic and diplomatic sanctions imposed by the United States and its allies.

Hamas and Hezbollah have also leveraged its connections to narcotraffickers and other transnational crime syndicates in the region to raise money for future terror operations, Southern Command chief Gen. Douglas Fraser told Congress in March. 

“We do see evidence of international terrorist groups benefitting from ... illicit trafficking and money laundering” in South America, he said in written testimony during a March 13 Senate Armed Services Committee hearing. 

Specifically, both Iranian-backed terror groups look regularly to South America to finance their operations in the Middle East, Frasier said at the time. 

Those activities are conducted through both  “licit avenues such as charitable donations, and illicit means, including trafficking in drugs, counterfeit and pirated goods,” the four-star general told members of the Senate panel.

Game Changer in U.S.-Venezuela Relations

José R. Cárdenas served in several foreign policy positions during the George W. Bush administration (2004-2009), including on the National Security Council staff. He is a consultant with Vision Americas in Washington, DC.

Bombshell testimony on Capitol Hill last week by U.S. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper has dramatically altered the stakes in Washington’s relations with the Hugo Chávez regime in Venezuela. Speaking before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence for the annual Worldwide Threat Assessment, Clapper said that Iranian leaders had changed their calculus and are now prepared to respond to perceived threats with terrorist attacks inside the United States.

Clapper said: “The 2011 plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States shows that some Iranian officials — probably including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei — have changed their calculus and are now more willing to conduct an attack in the United States in response to real or perceived U.S. actions that threaten the regime. We are also concerned about Iranian plotting against U.S. or allied interests overseas. Iran’s willingness to sponsor future attacks in the United States or against our interests abroad probably will be shaped by Tehran’s evaluation of the costs it bears for the plot against the ambassador as well as Iranian leaders’ perceptions of U.S. threats against the regime.”

The implications for U.S.-Venezuela relations are clear. Now that it has been assessed that Iran is prepared to attack the U.S. homeland, focus must now be placed on its capabilities and means to do so. That Hugo Chávez has made Venezuela — less than a three-hour flight from Florida — one of Iran’s most important international allies is now a paramount concern to U.S. security agencies.

Indeed, Chávez’s deep-seated economic, military, and intelligence relationship with Iran, running into the tens of billions of dollars, provides an enormous cover for covert operations and other destabilizing activities. That relationship runs from establishing Venezuela’s Margarita Island as a center for Iranian and Hezbollah operations in the Americas and facilitating Iran’s development of a nuclear capability by helping it obtain uranium, to blunting  sanctions by providing Iran’s access to Venezuela’s banking system and jointly trafficking in weapons (here and here) and narcotics. The DEA believes a weekly flight between Iran and Caracas is used for, among other nefarious purposes, smuggling South American cocaine to the Middle East.

Moreover, we know already that a member of the terrorist networkplotting to detonate fuel tanks at JFK International Airport in New York in 2007 was arrested on the run to Venezuela, where he planned to board a Venezuelan flight to Tehran.

Lastly, the explosive documentary aired last month on Univisión, “The Iranian Threat,” included not only incriminating information on Venezuelan and Iranian diplomats discussing cyberattacks on sensitive U.S. computer systems (The State Department subsequently expelled the Venezuelan diplomat from the United States, where she had been re-posted), but also compelling evidence on how young Latinos are targeted for recruitment and paramilitary training in Iranian and Venezuelan camps visited by Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Colombian FARC.

As the Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, put it succinctly in another hearing last week, “The Iranian regime has formed alliances with Chávez, Ortega, Castro, and Correa that many believe can destabilize the hemisphere. These alliances can pose an immediate threat by giving Iran – directly through the IRGC, the Qods force, or its proxies like Hezbollah – a platform in the region to carry out attacks against the United States, our interests, and allies.”

In addition, Clapper told the Senate that the intelligence community remains concerned about Iran’s ties to governments in the region and was tracking the issue closely, adding, specific to Iran’s activities in the region, “there is more to unfold here.”

Clearly, Clapper’s testimony reflects a substantial change in the U.S. government’s own calculus about Iran, Venezuela, and the Western Hemisphere.  If Iran is now prepared to strike the U.S. homeland, then all actions need to be pursued to debilitate its capability to do so, and that means targeting its presence in Venezuela. Hugo Chávez made a very dangerous bet when he introduced Iran to the Western Hemisphere. Now, he should be made to pay the price.