Special to WorldTribune.com

By Fariborz Saremi, FreePressers.com

Iran has been working covertly not only in Canada and the United States but has also been fostering strong ties with an anti-U.S. set of countries in South America: Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua.

The USA has largely failed to take proper note Iran’s well-funded ambitions in these countries. Rather, it has sought to counter Iran’s influence in the Middle East and its attempts to acquire nuclear weapons.

Iran has meanwhile has been forging multiple alliances worldwide. The government of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in particular, has employed diplomatic, economic and military strategies to gain a long-term foothold in Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua.

Iran has had a long tradition of influence in South America, though with less emphasis on diplomacy and business than now. Iran has been charged with masterminding two Hizbullah bomb attack in Argentina in 1992 and 1994.

Ahmadinejad’s Latin America’s policy has been met with open arms, especially by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez who has been a thorn in Washington’s side for the last twelve years. Chavez has made several visits to Teheran, whilst Ahmadinejad has made return visits to Caracas and has also met up with Chavez in Havana for the non-aligned movement conference in September 2006. They have gone so far as to form an “Axis of Unity” against the United States.

As both countries are oil rich they can assist and support each from an equal standing and with relative confidence. Chavez would seem to support Iran in its efforts to resist UN Security Council sanctions of Iran’s nuclear program. In addition he has supplied Iran with an Airbus A-340-200 at a time when western countries were attempting to keep valuable aircraft know-how out of Iran’s hands.

The two presidents have also done as much as they can to bolster each others’ positions in their own countries by making speeches either praising their economic leadership or by condemning American interference, thus stirring up more anti-American sentiment.

Venturing beyond mere rhetoric the two countries have made moves to cement their economic ties. A joint Iran-Venezuela oil production project in east-central Venezuela worth $4 billion was announced by the Venezuelan state oil firm PDVSA. The level of bilateral ties is unclear but has clearly grown in recent years as evidenced by the considerable number of Iranians staying in Venezuelan Hotels.

The comparative economic strength of Venezuela and Iran has enabled them to draw on other less well-situated countries antipathetic to the United States. The government of Cuba has set up a joint shipping line with the powers in Caracas and Tehran. This provides an easy and convenient means of bypassing sanctions.

Iran’s embassy is now the largest diplomatic presence in Managua, capital of Nicaragua. Only a number of days after Daniel Ortega returned to power Ahmadinejad made it clear how pleased Iran was to welcome a leader whose prime enemy was the United States. Ortega for his part confirmed the two countries had “common interests”. Ortega later visited Teheran, where he and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei talked of their common antipathy towards the United States.

Iranian Revolutionary Guard operatives have been moving in and out of Nicaragua in unusual ways that assured secrecy, sources tell us. It is known, for example, that 21 Iranian men were allowed to enter Nicaragua without passport processing. This was exactly the kind of activity that preceded the Argentina bombings in 1992 and 1994. It’s the same kind of secretive movement going on in and out of Venezuela that gives current and former U.S. counter-terrorism officials and Jewish communities in the region sleepless nights.

As with Venezuela, Iran has solidified relations by signing trade agreements: for example, the financing a Nicaraguan port for $350 million. In return it seems Nicaragua is required to frequently cite its support of Teheran and by denouncing the USA as a terrorist country. Iran has duplicated this trade off of industrial cooperation in the amount of $1.1 billion towards Bolivia. As Nicaraguan had done, Bolivia voiced its view that Iran was within its legitimate rights to pursue a nuclear program.

There has also been intense activity by radical Islamist groups in the Tri-border Area (TBA) of Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay, to the benefit of terrorist networks such as Islamyya al Gamaat (IG), the Egyptian Al-Jihad, Hizbullah, Hamas and Al Qaida. While Muslims in the region are mostly Sunnis, in line with the proportion worldwide, the Shias represent almost half of all Muslims in Foz de Iguaza, which is the Brazilian city in the TBA with the biggest Muslim community. Indeed, a number of terrorists who have planned or conducted operations in the Middle East and the United States have spent time in the TBA.

The Lebanese Hizbullah has devoted considerable energy and resources to establishing an extensive network of operations throughout the Americas. Today its web of activity in our hemisphere stretches from Canada to Argentina, and encompasses a wide range of illicit activities and criminal enterprises.

Islamist radical group supporters from the TBA, from Margarita Island in Venezuela, and from the Caribbean Basin have been funnelling hundreds of millions of dollars back to their parent organizations in the Middle East.

In the United States, law enforcement authorities estimate active Hizbullah cells in 15 metropolitan centers, from New York to Los Angeles.

All of these efforts would seem to be just the beginning of a campaign to win the hearts and minds of South Americans to the cause of resisting all U.S. influence. The Islamic Republic’s state broadcasting authority has now established joint operations with the Nicaraguan and Bolivian broadcasting authorities in order to spread its message across South America.

Iran tried and failed to get Venezuela onto the UN Security Council, where it could veto sanctions.

The risks for the U.S. in Iran’s expansion into South America may at first sight seem slight but should not be underestimated. Of course, support for Iran may wane in the countries we have mentioned as their regimes change and ideology changes with it. Some countries are willing to play along with Iran for economic gain. However, Iran can use these countries to outsource suspect weapons, circumnavigate sanctions and embargoes; destabilize neighboring countries such as Columbia which are allied to U.S., use these countries as bases for terrorist attacks by proxies as it did in Buenos Aires in 1994.

  Al Qaida, Ali Khamenei, Hugo Chavez, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, overlooking Iran’s moves in this hemispshere, The U.S. is overlooking Iran’s moves in South America, Tri-border Area, U.S. focusing on nuke threat