While the United States maintains a naval blockade in the Strait of Hormuz and both American and Israeli forces remain on alert across the Middle East, Iran’s Qods Force has established a strategic rear base in Latin America. Iranian operatives sit inside intelligence agencies, defense ministries, and passport offices from Caracas to La Paz. This creates logistical depth, intelligence reach into the U.S. southern flank, and low-cost options for harassment and retaliation.
Venezuela remains the crown jewel. On December 30, 2025, the U.S. Department of the Treasury sanctioned the Venezuelan firm Empresa Aeronáutica Nacional and its chairman, José Jesús Urdaneta González, for overseeing the assembly and maintenance of Iranian-designed Mohajer-6 kamikaze drones, rebranded locally as the ANSU series. The company negotiated millions of dollars in sales and coordinated directly with Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps representatives on production at facilities such as El Libertador Air Base. Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps engineers remain embedded in Venezuelan security commands and the state oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela, advising on oil infrastructure protection, air defense systems, and drone operations that analysts describe as the “Houthis of the Caribbean.”
Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps engineers remain embedded in Venezuelan security commands and the state oil company.
These ties trace back to high-level meetings in 2012. The agreements enabled Qods Force personnel to integrate into Venezuelan intelligence services and opened pipelines for arms, forged documents, and operational support across the hemisphere. Mahan Air and Conviasa maintained near-weekly flights through a customs-free hangar at Simón Bolívar International Airport, shuttling Qods Force operatives, cash, sanctioned technology, and gold in return for drone components.
Even after the fall of Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro, the infrastructure endures. Venezuelan authorities issued approximately 10,000 passports between 2010 and 2019 to Iranian, Syrian, and Hezbollah-linked individuals. These documents grant visa-free access to more than 130 countries, including the Schengen zone. The tourist island of Margarita has become a Hezbollah stronghold. Operatives tied to the Lebanese-Venezuelan Nassereddine clan run money-laundering fronts, document forgery rings, and paramilitary training camps, using the island as a launchpad for regional activities. A Qods Force cell operating from the Iranian embassy in Caracas directed a foiled 2025 plot to assassinate Israel’s ambassador to Mexico. The cooperation extends to nuclear matters. Israeli intelligence assessments from 2009, supported by whistleblower evidence, document Venezuelan exploration of uranium supplies for Iran’s program under the cover of energy and defense pacts.
Bolivia has emerged as the next pivot point. In July 2023, the two countries signed a defense and security memorandum of understanding, framed publicly as cooperation on counter-narcotics and border control. The pact delivered Revolutionary Guard trainers, drones, cybersecurity specialists, and river patrol boats into Bolivian military structures, along with joint exercises and intelligence-sharing channels. On January 24, 2026, the United States pressed Bolivian authorities to expel suspected Qods Force spies and formally designate the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Hezbollah, and Hamas as terrorist organizations.
The spillover reaches other countries. In Peru, authorities arrested Majid Azizi, a suspected Qods Force officer, on March 8, 2024, in Lima. Peruvian police charged him with forming a terror cell of local recruits to target Israeli interests during a regional summit. In the Tri-Border Area linking Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay, Hezbollah’s established networks centered on trade-based money laundering, counterfeit goods, and drug trafficking continue to generate revenue that funds Tehran’s operations.
Facing isolation and military pressure in the Middle East, Iran has cultivated anti-American regimes to secure logistical depth and intelligence reach.
Regional governments have begun to push back. Ecuador designated the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Hezbollah, and Hamas as terrorist organizations on September 16, 2025. Argentina followed by designating the Qods Force and later the full Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in early 2026, citing the group’s support for Hezbollah’s past attacks on Argentine soil, including the 1994 bombing of the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires that killed 85 people.
This pattern reflects a classic great-power asymmetric strategy. Facing isolation and military pressure in the Middle East, Iran has cultivated anti-American regimes to secure logistical depth and intelligence reach. By fusing Hezbollah’s crime-terror networks with local drug routes and advanced drone technology transfers, Tehran has constructed a resilient platform in the Western Hemisphere.
The costs for Latin America run deep. Operatives embedded inside national intelligence and defense institutions erode sovereignty, fuel corruption, and lock governments into dependent relationships with Tehran. For the United States, the risks are immediate: operatives carrying legitimate Latin American passports, migration corridors that double as infiltration routes, and proxy attack vectors at a time when American attention remains divided.
Washington can no longer treat this southern front as secondary. Systematic expulsion of embedded operatives, aggressive enforcement of terrorist designations, and decisive disruption of financial and logistical networks have become strategic necessities. Iran plays a patient, long-term game in the Americas. The hemisphere cannot allow this rear base to solidify unchecked.
