This July 18th marked the 30th anniversary of the suicide bombing of the AMIA Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires, killing 85 Jews and injuring over 300, while scarring the large Argentine Jewish community forever. In April this year, the Argentine highest criminal court confirmed that the bombing had been carried out by the Islamic Republic of Iran and Hezbollah, a Lebanese Islamist terrorist group with close ties with the Iranian regime.
The decision came after years of pleas from the Jewish community and Israeli intelligence, and a cover-up from the Argentine government which saw the case’s prosecutor, Alberto Nismán, found dead in his apartment.
Sadly, the AMIA bombing was far from the extent of Iran’s nefarious influence in Latin America. After the barbarous October 7th terrorist attacks by Hamas — with reported Iranian and Hezbollah support — on Israeli civilians, Iran seems to only be emboldened to act against the interests of the Jewish people and the Jewish state, and global security and order.
Israel, the U.S., allied Latin American governments, and the local Jewish community must take decisive actions against Iran’s aggression.
Since the arrival of the Islamist regime in Tehran, Iran has been the leading state supporter of terrorism in the world, including in Latin America. There have been hundreds of attacks against Jews in the region since then.
Iran has reportedly been running increased intelligence and sabotage operations within the region, which is filled with ungoverned spaces like the Amazon, remote parts of the Andes, and the Darién Gap — spaces where the state does not operate, allowing criminal elements to enter.
In November 2023, the Brazilian security services, along with the help of the Mossad, arrested Iranian-backed Hezbollah terrorists planning attacks against Jews in the country. According to reporting from various intelligence agencies in the region, Hamas and Hezbollah agents, backed by Iran, have also been running operations in the region since October 7th.
These include propaganda operations, which are meant to spread Iranian and Islamist thought, and antisemitic and anti-Israel propaganda. Iran reportedly provides support to large media agencies in the region, including Russia Today (RT) and Venezuela’s TeleSur, both state media agencies with millions of followers. Iranian bots and propagandists have also flooded social media platforms in the last few months, ramping up sympathy for Hamas and Hezbollah, and spreading antisemitic and anti-Israel lies.
These accounts, for example, post stories about prominent Latin American politicians being connected to Israel (or Jews), and Israel manipulating geopolitics and policy in the region, all stories which have no basis in reality. Though Iran denies participating in these operations, credible information from the international intelligence community and media and think tank reporting traces them back to the regime.
Iran has also been conducting more front-facing security campaigns to advance its own interests. In winter of 2023, Iranian warships were circulating in Latin America, breaking international sanctions to project power and destabilize the region’s alliances. The ships were allowed by the Lula government to berth in Rio de Janeiro, to the dismay of the United States and Israel. Iranian diplomatic, military, and political leaders have also held numerous high-level meetings with officials in Latin America, particularly its closest allies: Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba, and now Bolivia.
Last year, Iranian former President Ebrahim Raisi also met with a number of Latin American leaders, including Maduro in Venezuela, Ortega in Nicaragua, and Díaz-Canel in Cuba. Soon after, Iran went on to sign a security deal with Bolivia, exchanging drone technology, surveillance equipment, and valued intelligence. The governing socialist party in Bolivia has been one of the harshest purveyors of anti-Israel and anti-semitic sentiment since October 7th. Bolivian President Luis Arce has since cut all diplomatic ties with Israel.
Iran’s largest clients, Hamas and Hezbollah, have also had meetings of their own in the region in recent years. Reportedly, leaders from both groups have had a close relationship with the leadership in Havana, Managua, and Caracas. Hezbollah and Hamas also collaborate with Latin American terrorist groups, including the FARC dissidents, the ELN, the Brazilian Primeiro Comando da Capital and Mexican cartels.
The nexus of terror, however, does not stop there. Prominent politicians from both the far-left and the far-right in the region have been repeating Iran’s talking points. On the left, Gustavo Petro, the former guerrilla now first leftist President of Colombia, has been parroting anti-semitic and anti-Israel stories all over his social media and in his public speeches, even cutting all diplomatic relations with Israel. Petro, along with Arce, outgoing Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and Brazilian President Luis Inácio Lula da Silva, have all outrageously compared Israel to Hitler and the SS.
Prominent members of the Chilean left, including Recoleta Mayor Daniel Jadue, have been affiliated with Iranian-backed terrorist groups, including the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The Peronist left in Argentina was also the largest force behind preventing the investigation of the AMIA bombing, due to the movement’s financial ties to Iran.
On the Latin American right, support for Israel is often overshadowed by open antisemitism. José Antonio Kast, vocal supporter of Israel due to his evangelical faith, is the son of a Nazi SS lieutenant. Javier Milei, the firebrand Argentine president who visited Israel as his first diplomatic visit and has been close to the Chabad Movement in Brooklyn, appointed a neo-Nazi terrorist as his Attorney General.
Iran’s nefarious efforts in the region, backed by a nexus of terrorist groups and useful idiots, have damaging consequences. Since October 7th, antisemitic attitudes and attacks have risen by enormous margins in all Latin American countries, in some by as much as 1,000 percent. The groups Iran emboldens and supports in the region have carried out attacks against Jews and Israelis in the region, further destabilizing the region and disrupting regional order.
The support Iran provides to terrorist groups and rogue regimes also leads to more violence, hate, criminality, and chaos in the region, providing a lifeline to some of the most heinous criminal elements on Earth. In the case of Iran’s support for drug cartels, it also ensures the continuity of drug flow in and out of the region, destroying public health all over the world including the Middle East.
To face the threat posed by Iran, Israel, the U.S., allied Latin American governments, and the local Jewish community must show their resolve and take bold measures. More monitoring and operations should be pursued within the region’s ungoverned spaces, to clamp down on Iranian-backed criminal activities. Latin American governments need to continue collaborating with American and Israeli intelligence to root out Iranian influence.
Iran’s activities must be condemned and rejected in the strongest terms by leaders in the region. Israeli diplomacy and support for the Latin American Jewish community are key to securing these policy victories and reducing the malignant force of Iran in the region.