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Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro this June during a visit to Iran signed a multidimensional, 20-year cooperation treaty. The pact includes agreements on Science and Technology as well as deals on Agriculture, Communication, Culture and Tourism. The Maduro regime’s startling provision of one million hectares (roughly 2.5 million acres; nearly 4000 square miles) of farmland to Iran was kept under wraps until Iranian agrarian economist Ali Revanizadeh disclosed it to the Venezuelan press.

The land grant will ostensibly be used to grow staple crops, such as corn and soy beans, allowing water-starved Iran to better feed its population. Iran’s current use of Venezuela, however (here, here and here ), combined with Iran’s militia, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), raise the possibility that Iran and its surrogate terrorist groups, such as Hezbollah and Hamas , might be using the vast acreage for military and terrorist operations.

Hezbollah already runs paramilitary training centers in restricted sections of Venezuela’s Margarita Island. The terrorist group has considerable support from some of Venezuela’s prominent Lebanese clans such as the Nasr al Din family who reportedly facilitated Iran’s penetration of Margarita Island. Intensive recruitment efforts by Shiite Islamic clerics among Venezuelans and elsewhere are have been known to include zealous converts to undertake revolutionary missions.

The Maduro regime has apparently been so welcoming to Iranian intelligence agents that some of Hezbollah’s long-established Latin American network at the tri-border nexus of Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay has been overtaken by Hezbollah activities on Venezuela’s Margarita Island, a tourist area northeast of the country’s mainland.

Iran, along with the Chinese Communist Party, is in the process of strengthening Venezuela’s military against the US, for instance by deliveries of combat drones , considered a threat by Columbia.

Iran’s alliance with Venezuela most importantly provides Tehran with opportunities to target US interests in Latin America and potentially the southern United States.

China, Russia and Iran were reported to be running war drills in Latin America last month. According to The Centre for a Secure Free Society, this is a “strategic move that seeks to preposition forward deployed military assets in Latin America and the Caribbean.”

Iran and Venezuela began developing close links during the tenure of the former Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez (2002-2013). Chavez and Iran’s former President Ahmadinejad signed many bilateral agreements, capped by a Chavez visit to Tehran in 2010.

Iran also has exploited its close ties to Venezuela in order to legitimize the anti-US and anti-Israeli themes of its state-owned Spanish language entity, HispanTV, broadcast throughout Latin America.

Iran, along with Venezuela, seems to be using its influence with Latin American regimes to develop an anti-US coalition in America’s backyard. In addition, Commercial satellite imagery in late May, 2021, confirmed the presence of seven Iranian naval attack boats on the deck of the Makran, an Iranian fast attack craft. Other Iranian ships, suspected of planning arms transfer, changed course.

Iran’s massive interference in Venezuela’s affairs should raise concerns about the hemisphere’s democracies and whether Caracas is still sovereign. The US and Latin American democratic states need to monitor how much Venezuelan sovereignty is being surrendered to authoritarian enemies of freedom.

Tehran initiated its ongoing efforts to deliver tons of fuel to Venezuelan ports during the Chavez presidency (1999-2013). Both Venezuelan and Iranian economies suffer from strict American sanctions. Consequently, they have found ways of diluting the effects of sanctions by bartering in petroleum and foodstuffs. This pattern of petrol deliveries from Iran to Venezuela is occasionally thwarted. In 2020, for example, US ships halted 4 tankers in the Strait of Hormuz and seized oil bound for Venezuela.

Tehran has helped prop-up Venezuela’s depressed economy by maritime deliveries of oil-filled tankers. Now, remarkably, this cooperation involves the cession of Venezuelan national territory to the Islamic Republic. The US and some allies have challenged Venezuela’s cooperation with Iran. As early as 2008, Turkey seized 22 containers off an Iranian ship. Some of the cargo housed explosive materials, destined for Venezuela.

Iran and Venezuela also appear to have established an air bridge between Tehran and Caracas. The flights are manned by an Iranian crew and enable both regimes to maintain secrecy in the possible global transport of weapons and terrorist operatives. In May and June of this year, flights of former IRGC/Quds Force aircraft flew several missions carrying only Iranian and Venezuelan nationals. One aircraft was a formerly Iranian-owned Boeing 747 with no cargo aboard.

While air and seaborne arms deliveries are high-profile evidence of Iran’s ties with Venezuela, Tehran’s cooperation with Venezuelan intelligence agencies, although less visible, is also intense. The Islamic Republic’s support for Hezbollah terrorist operations is pervasive throughout Latin America. Hezbollah recruits from Venezuela’s ten million strong Lebanese diaspora. Iran and Hezbollah cooperate in training of intelligence agents and in developing sources who reside in Venezuela and Colombia as well as in the tri-border region of Brazil, Paraguay, and Argentina.

Emanuele Ottolenghi, a specialist on Iranian and Hezbollah operations in Latin America, in testimony before the U.S. Congress, outlined Hezbollah’s links with major drug cartels to raise funds for Iranian-sponsored operations in the region.

Two other Venezuelan clans from Lebanon who are helping to expand Iranian influence in Latin America are the Rada and Saleh extended families. These networks have hooked up with local gangs and drug cartels, forging these groups into transnational criminal organizations. Their relationships have secured financially rewarding deals for Hezbollah such as the amphetamine “Captagon” that it sells to ISIS. A Rada clan principal Amer Mohammad Akil Rada helped plan the terrorist bombings of the Argentine Jewish Social organization (AMIA) and the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires in 1994 and 1992, respectively. The Saleh Clan chiefly operates as a Hezbollah-associated terrorist and narcotics cross-border group along the Colombian-Venezuelan border. Hezbollah bases in Venezuela have facilitated intelligence networking in the Mideast as well, including enabling meetings of Venezuelan security officers with intelligence operatives in Syria.

This Iranian Hezbollah terrorist network in the region also has been one source of proselytizing efforts to convert Latin Americans to Iran’s version of Shia Islam.

One Islamic cleric, Teodoro Darnott, a convert to Islam, identifies himself as the “Imam of Hezbollah in Venezuela.” Occasionally Iranians have been apprehended by US border guards illegally crossing America’s long, porous border with Mexico. These illegal aliens could be fulfilling passive missions such as filling up Iran’s Hezbollah cells in the U.S., while others could be commissioned to execute intelligence or terrorist-support operations.

Venezuela’s comprehensive, invasive links with its authoritarian allies are continuing to challenge Maduro’s administrative control of his regime and the country’s territorial sovereignty.

Maduro’s links to Iranian intelligence agencies are additionally being used to execute operations inside the US. Iranian terrorists in mid-July had planned to kidnap anti-Islamic regime activist Masih Alinejad from her Brooklyn home while transporting her by speedboat to Venezuela. Latin America’s Iranian Hezbollah network appears poised to strike democratic interests throughout the hemisphere.