July 18: This post has been corrected.
Last year, Iranian President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visited his ally President Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, where
the firebrand leaders unleashed defiant rhetoric at the United States.
There was
a quieter aspect to Ahmadinejad’s visit in January 2012, according to Western
intelligence officials. A senior officer in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards
Corps (IRGC) traveled secretly with the presidential delegation and met with
Venezuelan military and security chiefs. His mission: to set up a joint intelligence
program between Iranian and Venezuelan spy agencies, according to the Western officials.
At the secret meeting, Venezuelan spymasters agreed to provide systematic help to
Iran with intelligence infrastructure such as arms, identification documents,
bank accounts and pipelines for moving operatives and equipment between Iran
and Latin America, according to Western intelligence officials. Although
suffering from cancer, Chavez took interest in the secret talks as part of his
energetic embrace of Iran, an intelligence official told ProPublica.
The senior IRGC officer’s meeting in
Caracas has not been previously reported.
“The aim is to enable
the IRGC to be able to distance itself from the criminal activities it is
conducting in the region, removing the Iranian fingerprint,” said the
intelligence official, who requested anonymity because
he is not authorized to speak publicly. “Since Chavez’s early days in power, Iran
and Venezuela have grown consistently closer, with Venezuela serving as a
gateway to South America for the Iranians.”
A
year and a half later, Chavez has died and Ahmadinejad is no longer president.
But the alliance they built is part of an Iranian expansion
in the Americas that worries U.S., Latin American, Israeli and European
security officials.
Experts cite public
evidence: intensified Iranian diplomatic, military and commercial activity in
the region; the sentencing this year of an Iranian-American terrorist in a plot
to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington; U.S. investigations alleging
that Hezbollah, Iran’s staunch ally, finances itself through cocaine trafficking;
and a recent Argentine prosecutor’s report describing Iran’s South American spy
web and its links to a 2007 plot to bomb New York’s JFK airport.
There is considerable debate inside and outside the U.S. government about the
extent and nature of Iran’s activities, however. That debate dominated a U.S.
congressional hearing this week about a new State Department report that
assesses the Iranian threat in Latin America, a region made vulnerable by
lawlessness and an increasingly anti-U.S. bloc of nations.
The report resulted from a bipartisan bill, the Countering Iran in the Western Hemisphere Act,
signed into law by President Obama in January. That measure called for a
comprehensive U.S. response to Iranian incursions and a study based on threat
assessments by intelligence and law enforcement agencies. Most of the study is
classified. A
two-page unclassified section says that “Iran
has increased its outreach to the region working to strengthen its political,
economic, cultural and military ties.”
Nonetheless, the State Department assessment concludes that “Iranian
influence in Latin America and the Caribbean is waning” as a result of Western
sanctions, U.S. cooperation with allies and “Iran’s poor management of its
foreign relations.”
In a recent interview about the issue, a senior U.S. government official gave a measured
assessment comparable to the new report.
“The countries of the region need to watch carefully
for Iran as a threat within a spectrum of issues of concern in the region,”
said the official, who was not authorized to speak publicly. “I don’t see it as
a major threat now. This is worth watching. It is something there is legitimate
attention to given Iran’s history.”
The law’s sponsor, Rep. Jeff Duncan, R-S.C., criticized the State Department’s findings
Tuesday at a hearing of a House homeland security subcommittee that he
chairs. Duncan does not think Iranian influence has declined so soon after
a series of events and trends — including recent public warnings by
intelligence and Pentagon chiefs — that brought about the passage of the
Countering Iran Act.
“This administration refuses to see Iran’s presence — so near U.S. borders —as a threat
to U.S. security,” Duncan said. “We know that there is not consensus on this
issue, but I seriously question the administration’s judgment to downplay the
seriousness of Iran’s presence here at home.”
State Department officials contacted by ProPublica declined to respond because the report is
classified. They said they will discuss the issue with
legislators in private.
As a sign of growing Iranian influence in South America, Duncan cited the absence of
a key witness at the hearing: Alberto Nisman, an
Argentine special prosecutor.
In May, Nisman released a 502-page report as part of a long
investigation of a car-bombing that killed 85 people
at the AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires in 1994 — the
deadliest terror attack in the Americas before 2001. The report describes the
evolution of Iranian spy networks in the region and shows their role in attacks
in Argentina and the foiled New York airport plot.
Although Nisman had initially accepted the congressional invitation
to discuss his investigation, last week his government abruptly barred him from
traveling to Washington. The Argentine attorney general said that the topic of
the hearing “had no relation to the official mission of the [Attorney
General’s] office,” Nisman wrote in a July 1 letter
to Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, chairman of the House
Committee on Homeland Security.
“The
government of Argentina has silenced this prosecutor,” McCaul
declared at the hearing Tuesday. “I consider this to be a slap in the face of
this committee and the U.S. Congress.”
Expressing
disappointment in a letter to Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner,
McCaul and Duncan said the attorney general’s
decision “[calls] into question the authenticity of your intentions” to “pursue
justice and truth on Iranian involvement in the AMIA bombing.”
The context for
the unusual move to block the testimony is Argentina’s pro-Iranian shift.
Argentina has had tense relations with Iran since the AMIA attack. A previous
bombing in 1992 — also blamed on Iran — destroyed the Israeli
embassy in Buenos Aires and killed 29 people.
In 2003, Nisman was appointed special prosecutor with a mandate to
revive a probe that had bogged down in dysfunction and corruption. He indicted
seven Iranian officials and a Hezbollah chief as the masterminds three years
later, and Interpol issued arrest warrants for them. Iranian officials denied
any role and described Nisman, who is Jewish, as “a
Zionist.”
But six months
ago, the Fernández de Kirchner government agreed with Iran to form an
independent “truth commission” about the AMIA case. Argentina’s about-face was
blasted by Jewish groups, the political opposition, the
Israeli government and U.S. officials. Critics call it a political maneuver
that makes justice even less likely at this late date. Argentina’s growing ties
to Iran coincide with an increasingly confrontational attitude toward the
United States, Spain and other Western nations.
“The Argentine president has already made her decision to curtail DEA
activities, publicly and repeatedly attack the United States as an
imperialistic and warmongering nation, and reopen relations with Iran that make
a mockery of the rule of law,” Douglas Farah, president of the IBI Consultants
national security consulting firm, testified at the hearing.
Duncan said in an
interview that he believes Argentina’s policy change results partly from
economics. Iran-Argentine trade has increased by more than 500 percent to $1.2
billion annually in the past eight years, according to the testimony of Ilan Berman, vice president of the American Foreign Policy
Council, a think-tank in Washington.
The attacks in Buenos
Aires in the 1990s revealed the existence of Iranian terror networks in the
Americas. The Argentine investigation connected the plots to hubs of criminal
activity and Hezbollah operational and financing cells in lawless zones, such
as the triple border of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay and the border between
Colombia and Venezuela.
Indicted AMIA plotter
Mohsen Rabbani, an alleged spymaster using the cover
of Iranian cultural attaché in Buenos Aires, oversaw the establishment of
intelligence networks in embassies, front companies and religious and cultural
centers in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Guyana, Paraguay and Uruguay,
according to the Argentine prosecutor’s report. The Iranian spies teamed with Hezbollah
to carry out both bombings, according to Argentine, Israeli and U.S.
investigators.
Today, the fugitive Rabbani is based in Iran and continues to play a key role
in Latin American espionage, directing ideological and operational training for
recruits who travel from the region, according to U.S. law enforcement
officials and witnesses at the hearing.
The election of
Ahmadinejad in 2005 spurred an Iranian outreach campaign in Latin America
intended to find new allies and markets and counter Western pressure over
Iran’s nuclear ambitions, according to Berman. Iran increased the number of its
embassies in the region from five to 11, launched a Spanish-language television
channel and doubled its regional trade to $3.67 billion today, though many of
its economic commitments have not materialized.
The Iranian expansion
dovetailed with the rise of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (known by
the Spanish acronym as ALBA), a bloc of leftist, populist, anti-U.S.
governments including Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua.
In 2008, the U.S. Treasury Department
designated a Venezuelan diplomat and a Venezuelan businessman as terrorists for
allegedly raising funds for Hezbollah, discussing
terrorist operations with Hezbollah operatives, and aiding travel of militants
from Venezuela to training sessions in Iran. In 2011, Iranian Defense Minister
Ahmad Vahidi, who is wanted by Interpol for the AMIA
bombing, attended the inauguration of ALBA’s regional defense school in Bolivia,
according to testimony at the hearing.
The FBI and DEA teamed up that same year to foil a plot in which commanders of the Quds Force, the external operations wing of the IRGC, were charged with directing an Iranian-American operative to use Mexican cartel gunmen to kill the Saudi ambassador in Washington. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told the U.S. Senate in January 2012 that the assassination plot “shows that some Iranian officials — probably including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei — have changed their calculus and are now more willing to conduct an attack in the United States.”
At a hearing of the House Foreign Affairs Committee days later, U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, then the committee chairman, warned that Iran’s Latin American alliances could pose “an immediate threat by giving Iran — directly through the IRGC, the Quds Force [an external unit of the IRGC] or its proxies like Hezbollah — a platform in the region to carry out attacks against the United States, our interests, and allies.”
The aborted 2007 plot
to attack JFK was an attempt to use that platform, according to the Argentine
special prosecutor. A Guyanese-American Muslim who had once worked as a cargo
handler conceived an idea to blow up jet fuel tanks at the airport. He formed a
homegrown cell that first sought aid from al Qaida, then coalesced around Abdul
Kadir, a Guyanese politician and Shiite Muslim
leader.
The trial in New
York federal court revealed that Kadir was a longtime
intelligence operative for Iran, reporting to the Iranian ambassador in Caracas
and communicating also with Rabbani, the accused AMIA
plotter.
“Kadir
agreed to participate in the conspiracy, committing himself to reach out to his
contacts in Venezuela and the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Nisman’s
report says. “The entry of Kadir into the conspiracy
brought the involvement and the support of the intelligence station established
in Guyana by the Islamic regime.”
Police arrested Kadir as he prepared to fly to Iran to discuss the New York
plot with Iranian officials. He was convicted and
sentenced to life in prison.
The Argentine
investigation unearthed other signs of Iranian terrorist activity. It cites the
testimony of the former director of Colombia’s intelligence agency, Fernando Tabares. He described a mission by an Iranian operative to
Colombia via Venezuela in 2008 or 2009. Working with Iranian officials based at
the embassy in Bogota, the operative “was looking at targets in order to carry
out possible attacks here in Colombia,” Tabares
testified.
Witnesses at the
House subcommittee hearing Tuesday described Venezuela as a gateway through
which Iranian operatives travel to and from the region unmolested and obtain
authentic Venezuelan documents to enhance their covers.
Witness Joseph Humire, a security expert, cited a report last year in
which the Canadian Border Services Agency described Iran as the top source of
illegal migrants to Canada, most of them coming through Latin America. Between
2009 and 2011, the majority of those Iranian migrants passed through Caracas,
where airport and airline personnel were implicated in providing them with
fraudulent documents, according to the Canadian border agency.
The allegations are
consistent with interviews in recent years in which U.S., Latin American and
Israeli security officials have told ProPublica about suspected Middle Eastern
operatives and Latin American drug lords obtaining Venezuelan documents through
corruption or ideological complicity.
“There seems to be an effort
by the Venezuelan government to make sure that Iranians have full sets of
credentials,” a U.S. law enforcement official said.
Last year’s secret talks
between Iranian and Venezuelan spies intensified such cooperation, according to
Western intelligence officials who described the meetings to ProPublica. The
senior Iranian officer who traveled with the presidential entourage asked
Venezuelan counterparts to ensure access to key officials in airport police,
customs and other agencies and “permits for transferring cargo through airports
and swiftly arranging various bureaucratic matters,” the intelligence official
said.
Venezuelan leaders
have denied that their alliance with Iran has hostile intent. They have
rejected concerns about flights that operated for years between Caracas and
Tehran. The State Department and other U.S. agencies criticized Venezuela for
failing to make public passenger and cargo manifests and other information
about the secretive flights to Iran, raising the fear of a pipeline for
clandestine movement of people and goods.
The flights have been discontinued, U.S.
officials say.
State Department
officials say the Iran report reflected a consensus among U.S. government
agencies. In contrast, homeland security Chairman McCaul
said the intelligence community is more concerned about the Iranian threat than
the State Department.
The DEA and Treasury Department
have been especially active on the issue. Recent indictments and enforcement
actions have revealed a complex global network of cocaine trafficking and money
laundering networks that allegedly poured millions of dollars into the coffers
of Hezbollah in Lebanon. Those mafias, led by accused gangsters of Lebanese
origin operating in Colombia, Venezuela and Panama, allegedly have links to the
Iranian government as well, according to U.S. court documents.
The State Department
says a concerted effort by diplomats, intelligence officers and law enforcement
investigators has stymied Iran’s advances. The end of the personal bond between
Chavez and Ahmadinejad was another blow, officials say.
“The death of … Chavez and the election
of a new president in Iran has changed the landscape of Iran’s relationship in
Venezuela and further weakened Iranian ties in the West,” said Rep. Bennie
Thompson, D-Miss., the ranking member of the Homeland Security Committee.
The
foreign policy of new Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro
is a work in progress. But as Duncan and others pointed out this week, Maduro was a point man for the alliance with Iran when he
led served as foreign minister from 2006 to 2012.
Correction: Due to an error in testimony by a congressional witness, this story initially misattributed a statement made by Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., to James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence. The story has been revised to correct the attribution and incorporate Clapper’s actual statement to a Senate committee.
