Fausta's Blog

American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture

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Hezbollah in South America

Stratfor report,
Hezbollah in South America: The Threat to Businesses.

The report features two sections, Corruption, and Terrorism and Crime. On the latter,

Businesses in the region face a greater risk of collateral damage from attacks or violence associated with drug trafficking. Although Hezbollah has an incentive to tamp down drug-related violence for the same reason it will avoid terrorism — namely, violence draws official action, and government action is bad for business — the violence associated with these routes and networks could still adversely impact operations by disrupting legitimate supply chains and posing a threat to employees in the field.

Read the whole thing.

Prior posts on Hezbollah here.

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How will the Iranian protests affect Latin America?

There are 21 reported deaths from the protests that started last Thursday in Iran. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei blamed Iran’s “enemies”

Other Iranian officials had blamed “foreign agents” and an online “proxy war” waged by the US, the UK and Saudi Arabia for the violence.

Khamenei’s remarks followed more deadly violence on Monday, in which nine people were killed, including seven protesters, a member of a pro-government militia and a policeman. Twelve others were killed over the weekend as the protests intensified.

For years Iran has targeted Latin America for recruitment,

Iranian intelligence and military efforts to recruit young men in Peru, train them in Iran, and return them to Peru. A Hezbollah movement has now been established in the country.
. . .
a former Iranian official with knowledge of the country’s terror network who claimed that “more than 40,000 of the regime’s security, intelligence and propaganda forces” have been successfully placed in the region. According to another source cited in the article, the Quds Force has established command and control centers in two Latin American countries.

Last November, Iran promised to send warships to the Gulf of Mexico

Iran will likely use the warships’ visit to South America to advance its relationship with Venezuela, a US adversary, the outlet reported.

Seven years ago I was posting on Iran-Venezuela ties.  Hezbollah and Iran have continued their expansion in our hemisphere (emphasis added)

Overall, Latin America, Central America, and the Caribbean offer Iran and Hezbollah fertile territory to build relations, bolster economic development and spread their ideology. Their efforts are made easier by governments such as Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Ecuador, whose hostility to U.S. interests manifest as non-cooperation on U.S. counterterror and defense partnerships. The Iranian regime also associates with the Bolivarian Alliance of the Countries of Our America (ALBA), a group created by Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez, which resists the United States through political and economic means.

What is perhaps the most worrisome tactic of Iran and Hezbollah is the use of seemingly innocuous acts of diplomacy to obscure drug smuggling and money laundering. According to the U.S. government, Iran has relied on Latin America to evade sanctions by signing economic and security agreements in order to create a network of diplomatic and economic relationships.

According to Infobae, Lebanon-based Hezbollah generates at least $10million/year from drugs and weapons trafficking, but Hezbollah’s total take may be much larger at  the Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay Tri-Border Area (TBA).

Venezuela – going back to the Aeroterror flights days – continues to be on top of Iran’s list, granting Iranian military firms large tracts of isolated land to develop missile technology.

Venezuela’s Vice President, Tareck El Aissami, has allegedly issued passports to members of Hamas and Hezbollah.

This means members of the two organizations, as well as drug lords from narco-terror groups such as FARC, not only coordinate and work together, but also are awarded state sponsorship from the highest levels of government

While this took place, the Obama administration allegedly covered up for Hezbollah in Latin America; They killed a probe of the terror group to get the Iran deal. According to Josh Meyer’s extensive report,

As a result, some Hezbollah operatives were not pursued via arrests, indictments, or Treasury designations that would have blocked their access to U.S. financial markets, according to Bauer, a career Treasury official, who served briefly in its Office of Terrorist Financing as a senior policy adviser for Iran before leaving in late 2015. And other “Hezbollah facilitators”arrested in France, Colombia, Lithuania have not been extradited — or indicted — in the U.S., she wrote.

Whether Iran and Hezbollah use the region to circumvent sanctions, traffic drugs, launder money or plan future attacks, there is a real and growing threat.

Will the protests in Iran have any effect on this? Only if there’s regime change.

But Iranian expansion in the Americas continues to be one of the ignored stories of the decade.
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Obama & Hezbollah: The cunning defeat of Project Cassandra & What is to be done?

John Batchelor’s podcast, The cunning defeat of Project Cassandra & What is to be done? with guest David Asher is a must-listen:

In its determination to secure a nuclear deal with Iran, the Obama administration derailed an ambitious law enforcement campaign targeting drug trafficking by the Iranian-backed terrorist group Hezbollah, even as it was funneling cocaine into the United States, according to a POLITICO investigation.

The campaign, dubbed Project Cassandra, was launched in 2008 after the Drug Enforcement Administration amassed evidence that Hezbollah had transformed itself from a Middle East-focused military and political organization into an international crime syndicate that some investigators believed was collecting $1 billion a year from drug and weapons trafficking, money laundering and other criminal activities.

In the news,
Sessions orders review of abandoned Hezbollah-linked drug prosecutions.Inquiry follows POLITICO report that potential cases languished amid Obama drive for Iran nuclear deal. More on this at Legal Insurrection.

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Obama administration allegedly covered up for Hezbollah in Latin America

Long-time readers of this blog will remember that I have blogged about Hezbollah‘s inroads in our hemisphere for the last decade (for additional posts see also Hizballah Hizbollah).

Josh Meyer’s fascinating report, The secret backstory of how Obama let Hezbollah off the hook, highlights the connections between the drug trade and terrorism:

Over the next eight years, agents working out of a top-secret DEA facility in Chantilly, Virginia, used wiretaps, undercover operations and informants to map Hezbollah’s illicit networks, with the help of 30 U.S. and foreign security agencies.

They followed cocaine shipments, some from Latin America to West Africa and on to Europe and the Middle East, and others through Venezuela and Mexico to the United States. They tracked the river of dirty cash as it was laundered by, among other tactics, buying American used cars and shipping them to Africa. And with the help of some key cooperating witnesses, the agents traced the conspiracy, they believed, to the innermost circle of Hezbollah and its state sponsors in Iran.

And

The untold story of Project Cassandra illustrates the immense difficulty in mapping and countering illicit networks in an age where global terrorism, drug trafficking and organized crime have merged, but also the extent to which competing agendas among government agencies — and shifting priorities at the highest levels — can set back years of progress.

And while the pursuit may be shadowed in secrecy, from Latin American luxury hotels to car parks in Africa to the banks and battlefields of the Middle East, the impact is not: In this case, multi-ton loads of cocaine entering the United States, and hundreds of millions of dollars going to a U.S.-designated terrorist organization with vast reach.

What did the Obama administration do about it?

They killed a probe of the terror group to get the Iran deal (emphasis added)

After 9/11 the DEA launched investigations into Venezuelan crime syndicates, links between Colombian drug-traffickers and Lebanese money-launderers, and the “suspicious flow of thousands of used cars” from the U.S. to Benin, Mr. Meyer explains. The U.S. military was also investigating links between Iran and Shiite militias with improvised explosive devices that killed hundreds of U.S. soldiers. “All of these paths eventually converged on Hezbollah,” he writes.

By 2008 the DEA had “amassed evidence that Hezbollah had transformed itself” into a global crime syndicate “that some investigators believed was collecting $1 billion a year from drug and weapons trafficking and money laundering,” Mr. Meyer reports. DEA’s Project Cassandra was born to take down the Hezbollah operation by busting its “innermost circle.”

For instance,

Alleged Venezuelan drug kingpin Hugo Carvajal was arrested in Aruba in 2014. Venezuela’s close alliance with Iran is no secret and reeling in “the chicken,” as Carvajal was known, would have generated key intelligence about cocaine trafficking to the U.S. and North Africa. The Netherlands mysteriously intervened and returned him to Venezuela.

When Colombia arrested Walid Makled, a Syrian-born Venezuelan who was alleged to be shipping ten tons of cocaine to the U.S. each month, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos refused U.S. extradition requests and sent him to Venezuela. Mr. Obama repaid Mr. Santos by backing his amnesty for the FARC, the largest drug cartel in the Americas.

Additionally, (back to Meyer’s article),

As a result, some Hezbollah operatives were not pursued via arrests, indictments, or Treasury designations that would have blocked their access to U.S. financial markets, according to Bauer, a career Treasury official, who served briefly in its Office of Terrorist Financing as a senior policy adviser for Iran before leaving in late 2015. And other “Hezbollah facilitators”arrested in France, Colombia, Lithuania have not been extradited — or indicted — in the U.S., she wrote.

Billions of drug trade money funding terrorists. Tens of thousands of lives ruined. Read The secret backstory of how Obama let Hezbollah off the hook.

This warrants a most rigorous congressional investigation.

Related: “Venezuela looks like a failed economy. In fact, it’s Iran’s frontier in the Americas”

Cross-posted at WoW! Magazine.

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Trump goes after Hezbollah in LatAm

Best news on the Hemisphere for a very long time,
How Trump Is Going After Hezbollah in America’s Backyard. The pro-Iranian militant group is up to no good in Latin America—and U.S. officials are pushing back.

The administration’s counter-Hezbollah campaign is an interagency effort that includes leveraging diplomatic, intelligence, financial and law enforcement tools to expose and disrupt the logistics, fundraising and operational activities of Iran, the Qods Force and the long list of Iranian proxies from Lebanese Hezbollah to other Shia militias in Iraq and elsewhere. But in the words of Ambassador Nathan Sale, the State Department coordinator for counterterrorism, “Countering Hezbollah is a top priority for the Trump administration.” Since it took office, the Trump administration has taken a series of actions against Hezbollah in particular—including indictments, extraditions, public statements and issues rewards for information on wanted Hezbollah terrorist leaders—and officials are signaling that more actions are expected, especially in Latin America. Congress has passed a series of bills aimed at Hezbollah as well. The goal, according to an administration official quoted by POLITICO, is to “expose them for their behavior.” The thinking goes: Hezbollah cannot claim to be a legitimate actor even as it engages in a laundry list of illicit activities that undermine stability at home in Lebanon, across the Middle East region and around the world.

Read the full article. It ends with, “Expect some aggressive disruption.”

As Capt. Picard used to say, “make it so.”

UPDATE
Linked to by Pirate’s Cove. Thank you!

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Venezuela: From a post nine years ago

I posted this on June 16, 2008,

On the same week that Chavez was supposedly telling the FARC to lay down their arms, Venezuelan journalist Patricia Poleo reported that Venezuelans of Arab ancestry are being recruited under the auspices of Tarek el Ayssami, Venezuela’s vice-Minister of the Interior, for combat training in Hezbollah camps in South Lebanon. Here is my translation.

That was then, this is now:

Tareck Zaidan El Aissami Maddah (Spanish pronunciation: [taˈɾek ˈsaiðan ˈel aisˈsami ˈmaða]; Arabic: طارق زيدان العيسمي مداح‎‎,[3] born 12 November 1974)[4] is a Venezuelan politician who has been Vice President of Venezuela since January 2017.

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Venezuela’s new VP’s Hezbollah connection UPDATED

Emili Blasco, author of Boomerang Chavez: The Fraud That Led to Venezuela’s Collapse, reports that Nicolás Maduro’s new vice-president is none other than Tarek El Aissami, who, as you may recall has been tied to the Cartel of the Suns and to Islamic networks. El Aissmi was a key figure as Hugo Chávez allowed Hezbollah, Hamas and al-Qaeda to use Venezuela as a bridge to other Latin American countries.

Blasco asserts that El Aissami’s ascension blows the pretense of dialogue with the opposition (link in Spanish), and that

“El cambio sitúa a El Aissami como número dos del Gobierno, restando poder a Diosdado Cabello, quien, aunque fuera del Ejecutivo, se venía considerando como el segundo hombre fuerte del chavismo.”
[my translation: The change places El Aissami as number two in the government, subtracting power from Diosdado Cabello, who, even not in the Executive branch, was regarded as chavismo’s second strongman.]

There’s also the issue of succession, as the country becomes more unstable,

“Con este nombramiento, el exministro de Justicia e Interior y hasta ahora gobernador de Aragua se coloca en excelente posición para la sucesión de Maduro en el caso de que en el chavismo se produjera un relevo. Si debido a la crisis económica y humanitaria de Venezuela, Maduro se viera forzado a dejar el poder, su vicepresidente le sustituiría hasta las elecciones presidenciales de finales de 2018.”
[my translation: With this nomination, the former Minister of Justice and Interior and current governor of Aragua is in an excellent position as Maduro’s successor would chavismo need an heir. If Maduro was forced to leave office due to Venezuela’s economic and humanitarian crisis, his vice-president would serve until the 2018 presidential elections.]

The WSJ explains:

The governor takes the vice presidency amid a push by the opposition to oust Mr. Maduro through a recall referendum, which polls show the highly unpopular president would likely lose if it were to take place.

Mr. El Aissami would assume the presidency if a referendum takes place and Mr. Maduro were to lose, although the proposed vote is tied up in courts amid government allegations that the opposition used fraudulent signatures in its petition.

El Aissami is not the only cabinet member who the U.S. is investigating on drug charges. Hugo’s brother, Adán Chávez, was named Minister of Culture, and Néstor Reverol, the current interior minister, last year was indicted on drug-smuggling charges by the U.S., highlighting, in Blasco’s opinion, Venezuela’s emergence as a narcostate.

UPDATE
Essential listening on El Aissami (h/t The Tower):

Update 2
Must-read: Venezuela’s New VP is a Suspected Drug Smuggler with Ties to Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah

The Wall Street Journal reported in 2014 that while El Aissami was its governor, Aragua was home to the explosives company Parchin Chemical Industries and the drone-makers Qods Aviation, two companies owned by Iran’s military and sanctioned by the United Nations Security Council for their involvement in the Islamic Republic’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

After Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif visited Venezuela last August, Emanuele Ottolenghi, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, speculated that one of the reasons for the trip was to shore up Iran’s ballistic missile program. Ottolenghi cited a recently-discovered contract between the two countries to jointly produce solid rocket fuel.

RELATED:
From Nov. 2014: The Iran-Cuba-Venezuela NexusThe West underestimates the growing threat from radical Islam in the Americas.
From August 2016: [Iran’s foreign minister] Zarif Leveraging Latin America Trip to Boost Iran’s Ballistic Missile Program

Cross-posted at WoW! Magazine.



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ICYMI: Hezbollah teaming up with Colombian cocaine lords

Islamist Militants Join Latin American Drug Lords in Explosive Duo. Hezbollah Seeks Closer Links with Drug Cartels Due to Iran’s Falling Oil Revenues

This week, the DEA announced the arrests of Hezbollah operatives with connections to ‘La Oficina de Envigado,’ a major Colombian Drug Trafficking organization responsible for a large share of the cocaine shipped to US and European markets. The presence in Latin America of Hezbollah, the Lebanese-based and Iran-backed Shi’a Islamic terror group is hardly news.

The group has been active in money laundering and other illicit activities in the region for decades, predominantly in the lawless tri-border region between Brazil, Paraguay, and Argentina. Most notably, Hezbollah bombed a Jewish center in Buenos Aires in 1994, killing 85 and wounding hundreds. However, the recent increase in cooperation with drug traffickers, as evidenced by these high-profile arrests, represents an alarming trend and a dangerous prospect for the future of hemispheric security.

But hey, who’s paying attention?

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