Iran's Foray Into Latin America - Newsweek: International Editions - MSNBC.com

Iran's Foray Into Latin America - Newsweek: International Editions - MSNBC.com

Iran's Foray Into Latin America
Washington now worries Iran is helping Hizbullah set up shop in Central and South America, but local governments are unimpressed by the claims.
By Joseph Contreras
Newsweek International

Feb. 5, 2007 issue - When Iran's firebrand president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, chose to visit three Latin American capitals earlier this month, there's little doubt he meant his trip to irritate the Great Satan to the north. Sure enough, it had just that effect; "Iran's track record does not suggest it wishes to play a constructive role in the hemisphere," said Eric Watnik, a U.S. State Department spokesman. But U.S. officials are worried about more than just Tehran's diplomacy these days. They fear that Iran might one day help its terrorist proxy, Hizbullah, set up shop throughout the United States' backyard. Indeed, Latin America could be emerging as a quiet new front in the war on terror. So far, however, most regional governments remain unmoved by Washington's requests that they clamp down, and the controversy could further damage some already fragile relationships.

The lawless tri-border region, where Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay meet, has long been a suspected locus for Hizbullah fund-raising, although the State Department continues to rate the threat of terror strikes as low in most of these countries. Last month U.S. Treasury officials issued a statement describing in detail how an established Hizbullah network, based in Ciudad del Este in eastern Paraguay, has sent millions of dollars to the terrorist group over the past two years. The report also fingered nine Lebanese men—most of whom hold Paraguayan or Brazilian passports—it claimed were running the operation.

Latin America is home to between 3 million and 6 million Muslims, many of whose forefathers came from Syria and Lebanon in the 19th century. They settled largely in Brazil (which now has more than 1.5 million Muslims), Argentina (which has 700,000), Venezuela and Colombia. The region is no stranger to terror operations allegedly bearing Tehran's stamp.. In November, an Argentine judge issued arrest warrants for Iran's ex-president, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, and eight of his associates for complicity in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires that killed 85 people. An Argentine prosecutor has traced the planning for that operation to a 1993 meeting in the Iranian city of Mashhad. But Iran has denied the charges and said it would ignore any extradition requests from the government of President Néstor Kirchner. The case has yet to produce a single conviction and remains a sore point with Kirchner, who two weeks ago abruptly canceled plans to attend the Inauguration of Ecuador's new president, Rafael Correa, when he learned that Ahmadinejad would be there.

Sources in U.S. military intelligence have also identified Islamic radicals in the Brazilian cities of São Paulo and Curitiba, the Colombian town of Maicao, the Dutch Antilles island of Curaçao and the Chilean free port of Iquique, where one of Hizbullah's fund-raisers traveled frequently to raise cash. The mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, spent some time in Brazil in 1995, and another Qaeda operative named Adnan G. al-Shukrijumah visited Panama in 2001 while traveling on a passport issued by Trinidad and Tobago. Dozens of missionaries belonging to a Pakistani-based Islamic organization called Jamaat al-Tabligh are dispatched to the region each year in search of converts. "The bottom line is that there are Islamic radical groups throughout Latin America and the Caribbean and not just in the tri-border area," says a U.S. military intelligence official, who asked not to be named for security reasons. "Latin America is still an area where it's easy for people to move in and out of, and there are communities in which terrorists can hide." Now Iran's increased outreach may be making matters worse, say diplomats. Jaime Daremblum, a former Costa Rican ambassador to the United States, called Iran's new activism "a very explosive cocktail that's being mixed."

The State Department has credited Panama, El Salvador, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica and Mexico with stepping up their antiterror activities. Yet to Washington's dismay, other local governments seem less willing to address the threat. The Brazilian Foreign Ministry responded to Washington's charges last month by stating that Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay had found no evidence to corroborate the U.S. allegations about terrorist financing activity in the tri-border area. Brasília went on to complain that "unilateral declarations that point arbitrarily to the triple border cause undue damage to the region." Some regional governments have adopted a see-no-evil attitude, treating Hizbullah fund-raising, for example, as innocent cases of Arab immigrants' sending cash remittances back home. "It's difficult sometimes to get these countries to talk about the presence of terrorist organizations within their borders," says Patrick O'Brien, assistant Treasury secretary for terrorist financing. "But Hizbullah is a global organization, and we certainly think [their Latin operatives] are major figures in [this] activity."

If some local governments appear reluctant to crack down on Iranian-backed groups or sever ties with Tehran, it may be because Ahmadinejad has worked hard to make himself an attractive friend. On his recent tour of the region, he promised to open an embassy in Managua, build dams and housing, and improve Nicaragua's drinking-water supplies. Meanwhile, Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez has worked closely with Iran inside OPEC to boost oil prices and has defended Ahmadinejad's nuclear ambitions. During the Iranian president's latest visit to Caracas, Chávez announced that a $2 billion investment fund previously established by the two countries would be used to "liberate" other nations from what he called "the imperialist yoke."

It's no surprise, then, that U.S. concerns keep growing. The United States' porous border with Mexico has long loomed as a tempting entry route for terrorists, and Latin America itself has until recently been what one expert calls a virtual "blind spot" in Washington's war against terror. "Law-enforcement officials are very concerned about [South America's] becoming a transit point [for terrorists], and [governments in the region] have yet to demonstrate in any serious fashion their counterterrorism capacity," says Magnus Ranstorp, a specialist in militant Islamic movements at the Swedish National Defense College. "If I were a terrorist today, I'd be hiding out in South America." If Washington's claims are right, some Islamic radicals have done just that, and with an expanding Iranian presence in the region, others may soon follow in their footsteps.
© 2007 Newsweek, Inc.

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