Are Iran and Hezbollah Activities on the Rise in Latin America?

After the inauguration of Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in Brazil, Iran announced that it would send two of its warships to the South American country.

The Russian state news agency Sputnik announced just two days before the ships were scheduled to arrive, as published in the official gazette of the Brazilian government. However, the ships did not arrive.

What prompted Iran to change its plans? Or rather, what did Iran plan in the first place? And why is Iran present in South America basically?

 

Surprising Missions

Officially, Iran says its ships Dena (a Mowj-class frigate) and Makran (a former crude oil tanker converted helicopter carrier and is now the largest ship in the Iranian navy) are en route to the Panama Canal, and crossing the Pacific Ocean will be the focal point of its plans to “go around the world.”

Researcher Leonardo Coutinho said in an article on the National Interest that so far it is not known what prompted the Iranians to change their plans and possibly their course.

According to Coutinho, an event that doesn’t seem connected may reveal part of the answer. On January 16, seven days before Iranian ships arrived in the port of Rio de Janeiro, the U.S. Air Force sent a WC-135R Constant Phoenix aircraft to South America to identify atmospheric signs of nuclear activity.

Coutinho finds that sending such an aircraft on an unprecedented mission to gather a basic reading of normal South American atmospheric conditions is surprising.

The plane took off from Puerto Rico and collected atmospheric data off the coasts of Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname, French Guiana, and part of Brazil.

It also traversed an area from the north to the Rio de Janeiro area, where Iranian warships were scheduled to dock. The U.S. military did not intend the mission to be secret, as the plane’s transceiver data was publicly available via flight control platforms.

Days later, a second flight took off, reversing its course around South America, collecting data over the Caribbean, the northern coast of Venezuela, and over the waters of Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru.

On this route, it flew over the Panama Canal, the supposed strategic destination of the Iranian fleet.

 

Strategic Alliance

Coutinho notes that this radiation survey over South America may be a warning to Iran, creating problems for Tehran

Monitoring natural radiation levels in the region could become an obstacle if Iran has plans to use South America for nuclear testing.

If Iranian ships are carrying radioactive material or weapons for testing abroad, possibly off Venezuela, the United States could determine changes in the atmosphere from its survey before the ships arrive in Brazil.

When it comes to Iran, everything is not what it seems. Between 2005 and 2020, stories that Iran was producing missiles in Venezuela captured the attention of researchers and governments looking for evidence that the two regimes were coordinating sanctions violations.

While the West has overlooked, Iran and Venezuela have deepened their relationship through clandestine networks that may have supported the previous nuclear program and transferred materials, people, and financial and technological resources between the two regimes.

Iran’s covert efforts have led many analysts to suspect that a network of tunnels was dug under Venezuelan military facilities in Maracay, north-central Venezuela, to hide the missiles.

Today, it would not be absurd to consider the possibility of using such facilities for nuclear tests in partnership with Iran.

Coutinho concludes that it is difficult to determine why Iran’s naval mission in South America was postponed or even canceled.

Perhaps the mission was just another empty provocation, or it was a smokescreen for clandestine activity, such as the transfer of nuclear material.

If the first scenario is true, Iran may have achieved what it wanted by stirring up tensions, forcing the United States to spend time, money, and attention in a pure propaganda process.

But if Iran had plans to deliver nuclear material to the region, they might have found themselves trapped and had to reconsider their strategy.

 

Expanding Internationally

In 2022, The Spanish Institute for Strategic Studies published a study by researcher Alberto Priego, stating that Iran has been expanding internationally for decades, taking Latin America as its main destination.

According to Priego, the continent’s apparent disparities, proximity to the United States, and international importance have made it a target of the Iranian revolution.

Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua have become Iran’s main allies, which is culturally shocking but increasingly entrenched reality.

Iran did not hesitate to use its diplomatic missions, Lebanese diaspora, and religious centers to this end, which ended up forming a special model of influence based on three institutions: embassies, the Lebanese diaspora, and social and cultural centers.

It may seem that Iran does not care about Latin America, given the distance and cultural dimension, but the facts show that this is not the case.

For Tehran, Latin America is an international priority, and its penetration has increased since the mid-eighties.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry has previously described Latin America as “of great value in its fight against capitalism and the world order.”

Despite the fact that Hugo Chavez’s rise to power represented a revolution for Iran in the hemisphere, Iran had already established networks in other places such as Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, and Nicaragua before that.

The long-forgotten revolutionary character of the ayatollahs makes Iran a missionary state trying to extend the social and political changes it introduced in 1979.

 

Key Goals

Turning to more specific issues, Priego sees that Iran’s interests in Latin America can be mapped with four key goals it pursues in the hemisphere

The first is increasing international influence, since one of the problems Tehran has faced since 1979 has been international isolation.

Besides the Israeli Occupation and the United States—the two most well-known enemies—Arab countries such as Morocco, Bahrain, Sudan, and Saudi Arabia have no diplomatic relations with Tehran either.

The second goal is destabilizing the United States, as Iran’s hostility to the United States is matched only by its hostility to the Israeli Occupation.

Iran has found in the South American continent a deadly weakness for the United States, and its main idea is to try to make Washington feel insecure and push it to focus efforts on its continent, thereby reducing its presence in the Middle East.

The third goal is earning foreign exchange through money laundering and asset generation.

Because of its international isolation, Iran suffers from an almost structural lack of resources. Despite being one of the world’s largest hydrocarbon reserves, international hostilities and sanctions mean Iran must seek alternative sources of funding.

The fourth goal is the control of natural resources since Latin America is a continent rich in minerals, especially the elements necessary for the production of nuclear weapons, namely uranium.

Iran has an ambitious nuclear program that needs to be fed with uranium, a material available in Venezuela, Bolivia, Brazil, Argentina, and Peru.

Finally, the fifth goal is the recruitment and training of persons for violent purposes.

Hezbollah’s presence in Latin America is by no means new because it dates back to the nineties, and since then pro-Iranian militias have been present in many Latin American countries either through Hezbollah or as a privilege for the Lebanese group.

In the case of Venezuela, there are up to six training camps for Shiite militias spread between the outskirts of the capital and Margarita Island.