Todd Bensman, senior research fellow for the Border Security and Immigration Center at The Heritage Foundation, spoke to a November 9 Middle East Forum podcast (video). The following summarizes his comments:
As a counter-threat to the U.S., the Iranian regime has had a presence in Latin America since the late 1980s and early 1990s. By 2007, it had extended its reach throughout Central and South America. To date, the regime maintains embassies and consulates across the region and more than 30 Iran-linked Shia community organizations in Latin America.
To date, the regime maintains embassies and consulates across the region and more than 30 Iran-linked Shia community organizations in Latin America.
In its current war against Iran, Washington is mindful of the explicit threats of retaliation issued by the regime, but it has ignored the threat of the Iran-Nicaragua relationship. “I call it a blind spot” in U.S. national security. Since Daniel Ortega assumed the presidency of Nicaragua in 2007, the anti-American socialist/communist leader has aligned with the Iranian regime and has exhibited nothing but hostility towards the U.S. Through clandestine activities, espionage, and military collaboration with Iran, Nicaragua has demonstrated its ability to strike regional targets at will since the early 90s.
There are many reports of Hezbollah training camps in Nicaragua with lists of Jewish targets throughout Latin America. Diplomatic flights from Iran to Nicaragua are purported to ferry protected members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) who are terrorists subject to international warrants. Under the Monroe Doctrine, the U.S. exerts pressure to roll back Iranian proxies in Latin America and oust them from there, but “I’m not seeing much evidence of that happening at all in this one country.”
In addition to the Iranian presence, Russia and China are also in Nicaragua and throughout the tri-border region of Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil. Hezbollah’s presence in the region is of particular concern to Costa Rica because the latter has many U.S. business interests and thousands of American expatriates with property there. Costa Ricans and others in the region are alarmed because Nicaragua has become the last “under-surveilled territory for the Iranians in the hemisphere.”
While targeting the U.S. itself is more difficult, the regime could target U.S. citizens abroad and/or business infrastructure in Latin America. Washington should exert the kind of pressure on Nicaragua that it exerts elsewhere in the region. Consider Hezbollah’s Iranian-inspired attack against a Jewish center and an Israeli embassy in Argentina in the 1990s. More recently, there was a suicide bomber attack on a Panamanian aircraft. Iranian assets move around the region to carry out their operations. Last year, a plot to assassinate the Israeli ambassador in Mexico City that emerged from Venezuela was thwarted.
Approximately 85 percent of the Central American country’s remittance money comes from the U.S. and amounts to billions of dollars annually.
For years, Iran, Hezbollah, and the IRGC exploited the anti-American, left-wing governments in Bolivia, Brazil, Cuba, and Venezuela to establish their presence in these countries. However, there are steps the U.S. can take to lessen the risk of an attack on U.S. citizens and interests in Latin America. A new influx of conservative leaders in the region is going after the Iranian proxies designated as U.S. foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs). The crackdown on the FTOs is in response to American “diplomatic, military, and surveillance pressure.” There should be consequences for any regime official aiding or supporting FTOs. Washington should “issue indictments for material support against high-ranking officials” in the same way it indicted Venezuela’s former president Maduro on drug and corruption charges.
Despite Nicaragua’s hostility towards the U.S., economic ties with America are substantial. Approximately 85 percent of the Central American country’s remittance money comes from the U.S. and amounts to billions of dollars annually. The U.S could intervene in that money flow the way it did with Cuba’s. U.S. fuel and petroleum products, on which Managua relies to keep its economy running, could be taxed. The country also relies on exports of its agricultural products to the U.S. These are all points that the U.S. could leverage to pressure Nicaragua to abide by a set of “benchmark timelines” and sever its ties to the Iranian regime.
Venezuela has been “the central hub of Iranian mischief-making and presence for years” under the Chávez and Maduro regimes. U.S. and Israeli intelligence made it their focus. Although Venezuela’s interim president, Delcy Rodriguez, has refused to honor Washington’s request that it sever ties to Tehran, claiming the independence and sovereignty to do as it pleases, “the reality is that they’re pretty much complying with Trump administration edicts.”
The Ortega regime protects Iranian clandestine forces, and it could easily project its actions from Nicaragua onto other Latin American countries.
Brazil’s new socialist leader, Lula da Silva, has helped the U.S. clear out Hezbollah operatives from the tri-border area to a degree. It would be bad for business to do otherwise under a Trump administration. “The U.S. State Department reports on counterterrorism give Brazil under Lula pretty high marks for counterterrorism.”
Iranian activities in Nicaragua are opaque, and the “shadowy reports” about a pervasive Hezbollah presence are unclear. The Nicaraguan military is weak and corrupt, prioritizing preservation of the regime. The Ortega regime protects Iranian clandestine forces, and it could easily project its actions from Nicaragua onto other Latin American countries.
The U.S. National Counterterrorism Center “is still in a pre-2025 mode” and needs updating since the U.S. began its war with Iran. While the State Department is pressuring Latin American governments to clean up their acts, it would be “prudent” for the U.S. to apply pressure on the territories where the Iranians have a known presence.
