Confronting Iran in Latin America

Jaime Daremblum über die iranisch-lateinmerikanische Achse und die Notwendigkeit, ihr entgegenzutreten:

Iran’s meddling in the Western Hemisphere began long before Obama took office. Yet it has accelerated over the past year, during a time when the U.S. has been trying to build international support for anti-Iran sanctions. Some have argued that the Iran-Venezuela alliance is merely an „annoyance,“ rather than a serious threat to regional security and stability. But Iran has also improved its strategic relations with populist governments in Nicaragua, Bolivia and Ecuador. All of those countries are led by acolytes of Hugo Chávez, the Venezuelan strongman. (After Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stole his country’s national election last summer, Nicaraguan leader Daniel Ortega sent him a congratulatory note expressing his „love and admiration.“)

Chávez, lest we forget, is a major patron of terrorism: His government continues to fund the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), which has been one of Latin America’s most violent and murderous terrorist organizations since the 1960s. Iran, of course, remains the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism. „Given Iran’s ties to Hezbollah and Venezuela, Venezuela’s ties to Iran and the FARC, the FARC’s history of building alliances with other armed groups, and the presence of Hezbollah and other armed Islamist groups in Latin America, it would be imprudent to dismiss this alignment as an annoyance,“ writes Latin America analyst and former Washington Post reporter Douglas Farah. [Weiterlesen…]