A new book written by Emilio Blasco, Washington correspondent for the newspaper ABC Spain, confirms many points about Iran’s penetration into the Western Hemisphere. The book is written is Spanish but its title in English would be translated as “Boomerang Chavez.”
Among other things Blasco points out the existence of fraud in the elections via electronic manipulation. Likewise, the author also stresses the fact that 95 percent of the Colombian drugs bound for Europe and the U.S. depart from Venezuela. Diosdado Cabello, currently the president of the National Assembly and the second most powerful individual in the government, directed these drug operations.
Cabello has worked in close cooperation with Hugo Carvajal, a top military officer and former director of military intelligence whose extradition to the U.S. from Aruba was recently denied by the Dutch government. Likewise, Tareck Al Assami, a former Venezuelan Minister of Interior and current governor of the state of Aragua, was part of this nefarious drug operation.
More worrisome is the information the author obtained from Rafael Isea, a former deputy minister of Finance and president of the Bank of Economic and Social Development. According to Mr. Isea, it was Maduro, then Venezuela’s foreign minister, who travelled to Damascus in 2007 to meet with Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, in order to negotiate the installation of Hezbollah cells in Venezuela.
This agreement protected Hezbollah’s drug trafficking and money-laundering activities as well as their arms supplies and provision of passports. These passports and visas were prepared by Ghazi Nassereddine, a counselor in the Venezuelan embassy in Syria (he was born in Lebanon and became a Venezuelan citizen), and later was blacklisted by the FBI.
Furthermore, Isea affirms that more than 300 Hezbollah members, among them about a dozen listed terrorists were included on those flights.
Hezbollah’s very presence in Latin America is, in itself, a security problem. Let us remember that a Hezbollah member stationed in Guyana went to New York in 2007 to carry out a terrorist attack at the JFK airport.
Likewise, Hezbollah establish contacts with Mexican drug cartels to gain access to the border with the U.S as it is confirmed by the assassination attempt against the Saudi ambassador in October 2011 carried out by Iran with the help of the “Zetas,” a notoriously violent Mexican drug cartel.
Likewise, it has been reported that the sophisticated tunnels built on the U.S./Mexican border have been built exactly in the image of the tunnels built by Hezbollah on the Israeli/Lebanese border. These actions can place the U.S. at the mercy of terrorist attacks not just by Hezbollah but by any other terrorist group that establishes an alliance with Iran.
Iran could make an alliance with any other entity, including ISIS, in the same way it had cooperated with al-Qaida in the past.
As the Venezuelan government is being currently investigated by U.S authorities, an indictment should be expected sometime in the near future.
As soon as the U.S authorities issue such indictment it will be imperative upon President Obama to take some immediate punitive measures against Venezuela. By the same token, if evidence is provided, Congress should quickly move to declare Venezuela a state sponsor of terrorism and/or narco-state. Proper sanctions must ensue.
The status quo is unsustainable. Venezuela continues to be hell for its citizens (massive demonstrations against the government economic failures and highly repressive nature took place last week) and a threat to regional and U.S. security.
Luis Fleischman has worked as adviser for the Menges Hemispheric Security Project at the Center for Security Policy on issues related to Latin America, hemispheric security, democracy, and U.S policy in Latin America. He is the author of "Latin America in the Post-Chavez Era: The Threat to U.S. Security." Fleischman is an adjunct professor of sociology and political science at Florida Atlantic University Honors College and FAU Lifelong Learning Society. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.
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