Yet Iran’s efforts in the region also have yielded disappointments. Its Latin American partners do far more business with the United States and other Western nations than with Iran, and most have been reluctant to fully back the Islamic republic in disputes over sanctions or curbs on Iran’s nuclear program.
Some would-be allies also have been disappointed when Iran failed to deliver on promised development projects and joint ventures, such a proposed $350 million deep-water port for Nicaragua.
A report released in November by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank, questioned whether Iran ever could succeed at building an effective support network in the region, even if it managed to make good on its grandiose commitments.
“While Iran’s overtures to peripheral states have the potential to weaken U.S. attempts to contain and isolate Iran, Tehran’s web is fragile and possibly illusory,” the CSIS report said.
Iran’s ambitions in the region date back at least two decades, and Tehran was linked in the 1990s to two bombings of Jewish centers, including Argentina’s worst-ever terrorist attack in 1994.
Relations between Iran and Latin America began to warm shortly after the 2005 election of Ahmadinejad, who made the region a diplomatic priority. Iran has since opened six new missions there — in Colombia, Nicaragua, Chile, Ecuador, Uruguay and Bolivia — and has expanded embassies in Cuba, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and Venezuela.
Former U.S. intelligence officials say the presence of Quds Force officers and other military personnel in diplomatic missions enhances Iran’s ability to carry out covert activities, sometimes in conjunction with members of the Iran-backed Hezbollah militant group that operates extensive networks in Latin America and maintains ties with drug cartels. U.S. officials say the Quds Force was behind the alleged plot to hire Mexican drug gangs to assassinate a Saudi diplomat in Washington.
“For Iran to be so active in Venezuela and for the Quds Force to be there can only suggest Iran is serious about asymmetrical force projection into our neck of the woods. If Israel bombs Iran, we may well see retaliatory strikes aimed at U.S. interests coming from these Quds Force guys in South America,” said Art Keller, a former case officer with the CIA’s counterproliferation division.
As diplomatic relations have grown between Iran and Latin America, trade has soared. Iran recently surpassed Russia as the biggest importer of beef from Brazil, a country that saw its exports to Iran surge seven-fold over the past decade to an annual level of $2.12 billion. Commerce with Argentina has climbed nearly as rapidly. Trade with Ecuador leaped from $6 million to $168 million in a single year, from 2007 to 2008.
Analysts argue that an expanded foothold in Latin America also could provide Iran with strategic advantages in its protracted struggle with Western powers. In Venezuela, where President Hugo Chavez is an avowed supporter of Tehran’s nuclear ambitions, Iran has opened bank branches and transportation companies that U.S. officials say enable Iran to circumvent sanctions.
One Iranian-owned bank drew special scrutiny in a study commissioned by the Pentagon’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency. The study, released in May, described Venezuela’s Banco Internacional de Desarrollo as an “opaque” institution with an all-Iranian board of trustees.
The bank, which is now under U.S. sanctions for supporting terrorist networks, operates with only a single branch in Caracas and appears immune from oversight by the country’s regulators, according to the report’s author, Douglas Farah, a senior fellow at the International Assessment and Strategy Center.
Such institutions “afford Iran and its proxy elements state cover and effective immunity for its covert activities,” Farah said in testimony in July to the House Homeland Security subcommittee on counterterrorism and intelligence.
Through them, Iran can achieve such goals as “unfettered access to global banking facilities, ports and airports; mining of precursor elements for WMD and advanced weapons systems fabrication; and a regional base for infiltration and contingency operations aimed at undermining the United States and its interests,” Farah said.
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