The alliance linking Iran and its proxy, the Shiite jihadist group Hezbollah, to the authoritarian regimes of Cuba and Venezuela continues to pose a threat to the United States in the region, a year after an attack by another Iranian terror proxy sparked an ongoing war in the Middle East.
Experts have long denounced Iran’s decades-long plan to expand its influence in the region by brokering alliances via “cooperation agreements” with countries led by far-left governments in several fields such as military and economy. Most recently, and most alarmingly, has been the case of Bolivia, which the executive director of the Center for a Secure Free Society (SFS) Joseph Humire describes as Iran’s “most successful project” in the region.
Hezbollah has maintained a presence in the region for decades, acting on behalf of Iran to attack Israeli targets in Argentina during the 1990s. Hezbollah is responsible for the 1994 bombing of the Argentine-Israeli Mutual Association (AMIA) and the 1992 bombing of the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires. The 1994 AMIA bombing was the deadliest terrorist attack in the Western Hemisphere prior to the September 11, 2001, attacks.
The Venezuelan and Cuban regimes share longstanding deep, anti-U.S., and anti-Israel ideological relations with Iran. Those regimes’ ties to Iran were reinvigorated in recent years through the exchange of official head of state visits, starting with the visit of socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro to Tehran in 2022. Late Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi traveled to the region in June 2023 and the Cuban figurehead “president” Miguel Díaz-Canel visited Iran in December.
Both countries recently expressed their support of Iran’s latest missile attack on Israel, justifying it as Iran’s “legitimate defense against threats and crimes of the Israeli regime.”
In the case of Venezuela, Iran established its firm foothold in the country following the arrival of late socialist dictator Hugo Chávez’s “Bolivarian Revolution” to power in 1999. Chávez and Iran’s former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad held several encounters through the years in which Ahmadinejad often reiterated his support for Venezuela in “confronting imperialism” – namely, the United States.
Raisi claimed in June 2023 that Iran and Venezuela have a “strategic relation” with “common interests, views,” and “enemies.” The Venezuelan-Iran alliance “opened” the gates for Hezbollah’s increased presence in the region.
Maduro confirmed his regime’s military cooperation with Iran during his visit to Tehran in 2022. At the time, both countries signed a broad 20-year cooperation agreement. In March, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) warned of Iran’s growing military influence in Venezuela and the presence of military assets that directly pose a threat to U.S. cities within its attack range, such as Miami, Florida.
“The Venezuelan Armed Forces are the first to have armed drones in their inventory, courtesy of Iran. As well as the shipment of Iranian-made precision-guided short-range missiles, probably to arm the drones,” Humire said in February. “All has been delivered under the guise of commercial cargo shipment. This has been Iran’s modus operandi, as it did with Yemen; now we are seeing it in the region.”
It is largely believed that Tarek El Aissami, a former protegé of Hugo Chávez, served as the main liaison between the socialist regime and the Shiite jihadists. El Aissami, actively wanted by U.S. on multiple drug trafficking charges, occupied several high-ranking positions in the Venezuelan regime until he was purged by Maduro in 2023 in a purported “anti-corruption probe” and stands accused of stealing $3 billion in oil revenue from Venezuelan state coffers.
Several reports published in 2017 accused El Aissami of providing Venezuelan passports — often highly difficult for Venezuelan citizens to obtain — to Hezbollah members during his tenure as Interior Minister. El Aissami is also believed to have allowed Hezbollah members to sneak into Venezuela, granting them protection as the Shiite jihadists went into drug trafficking business in the region.
The Venezuelan Maduro regime increased its dependency on Iranian aid following the collapse of socialism in Venezuela during the 2010s. Since then, the Islamic regime has granted significant assistance to the Venezuelan regime, helping it stay afloat amidst the ongoing collapse of the country, providing it with oil amidst widespread shortages in 2020, repairing Venezuela’s rundown oil refineries, and refining its own Iranian oil in Venezuelan territory.
In return, the Maduro regime — in addition to allowing Iran to continue to grow its presence in the country through the 20-year cooperation agreement — gifted a supermarket chain that the socialists seized from private entrepreneurship to Iranian individuals linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Venezuela also gave away one million hectares of land to the Islamic regime in 2022.
In the case of Cuba — a U.S. designated state sponsor of terrorism — the communist Castro regime established ties with Iran in 1979 with the arrival of the Islamic revolution. During Raisi’s visit to Havana in 2023, Miguel Díaz-Canel vowed to continue the communist regime’s fight against “Yankee imperialism” with Iran, describing the late Iranian president’s visit as proof of the existence of “common values” between both countries.
“You have visited three Latin American countries that have a significant relationship with Iran’s Revolution, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba,” Díaz-Canel said at the time. “These nations, together with Iran, have had to heroically confront, with tenacious resistance, the sanctions, pressures, threats, blockades and interference of Yankee imperialism and its allies.”
“This visit reinforced our conviction that we have in Iran a friendly nation in the Middle East, with which to confide and talk about the most complex global issues,” he added.
Hezbollah directly expressed its support to the Castro regime during the historic July 2021 wave of anti-communist protests in Cuba, when dozens of thousands took the streets to demand an end of more than six decades of communist rule.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.