Quick explainer: Venezuela's Iran link
Since 2007, Iran and Venezuela have backed each other in undermining security around the world. Despite recent events, no one seems to be talking about it.
Venezuela and Iran are part of the same story but no one is reporting the connection.
Let me explain why:
Caracas may be 7000 miles away from Tehran but is an essential component of the Islamic Republic’s logistics of terror.
They have provided services from shadow banking and financial support, to Venezuelan diplomatic passports for Iranians and their terror proxies.
The truth is, Iran could never have spread fear and murder as widely without the support of Venezuela.
That makes the charge of narco-terrorist only one that could have been brought against Nicolás Maduro.
As the heir to Hugo Chavez, Maduro helped the Iranian Revolutionary Guards to fund groups like Hezbollah by enabling their transatlantic drugs trade.
That’s why President Trump’s actions in removing him are much more than an updated Monroe Doctrine in the Caribbean.
In changing the leadership of Venezuela, the US is supporting the Iranian people to overthrow their leadership and warning others, very clearly, of the consequences of supporting Tehran’s murderous agenda.
Clearly there are more details to come from the US and the intervention in a sovereign state should never be taken lightly, but let’s be clear, whatever the legality of this action, it is undermining an Iran who have committed atrocities towards their own people and across the world.
This is much more than a hard arrest, it’s a game changer for those who have been trying to harm us.
Great comment Tom:
Supporting your point, can i highly recommend listening to this podcast. Fascinating as it is about Iran, and was being recorded during the Delta force invasion. In the closing seconds of the podcast, you can hear this terrific Iran expert, Aimen Dean, getting the Truth Social post, saying that Madura has been taken out of the country. I have not heard such a clear linkage of Venezuela and Iran explained anywhere else. Here is an transcript extract from 40mins in:
[Aimen] ”Chávez, and after that Maduro, this failed socialist bus driver, he took the relationship between Venezuela and the Islamic Republic into a very, very, very different level. Since 2013, since he came to power, Maduro has provided Iran and Hezbollah with these facilities and assistance.
• Firstly, he allowed them full use of Venezuela’s heavy industries, so they can produce ballistic missiles, they can produce engines for drones, long-range drones, explosives.
• A second thing, he allowed the entirety of the Venezuelan banking system to be used to help Hezbollah and the IRGC to launder between six and up to $14 billion a year through the use of the banking and SWIFT system within Venezuela.
• Three, he provided them with complete monopoly on the narcotics trade within Venezuela to the rest of the world, either to the Caribbean and then to America, or across the Atlantic to Sierra Leone, Liberia, and West Africa generally, where Hezbollah has a strong presence there, and from there into Europe through Morocco, Libya, Tunisia, and these places across the Sahel.
• Fourth is the use of Venezuelan diplomatic passports in order to freely go around in North America, Europe, and Africa.
[Thomas Small]: It’s amazing, amazing, I mean none of this is coming up in any of the discussion about the Trump administration’s approach to Venezuela in recent months. No one is making the links between the Venezuela brief and the Middle East.
[Aimen] Yeah, but they are linked. The Trump administration, when they came to power first in 2016, they saw this, and they were absolutely upset with President Obama blocking even the federal authorities in the U.S. from investigating Hezbollah’s links in Venezuela, because he didn’t want to upset Iran over the nuclear talks that he wanted to achieve with them. So a failure of leadership from Obama, as usual.
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/conflicted/id1443491069?i=1000743920706
But lets look at the humanitarian situation. Venezuela has had more economic refugees than Syria, Sudan, or Ukraine. People are literally starving there. Ninety-four percent of the population lacks sufficient income to cover even the most basic food and services, with 53% in extreme poverty. There is an estimated 85% shortage of essential medicines. For the liberals that are obsessed with the deprivation of the Palestinains, infant mortality in Venezuela is far worse than in the West Bank (22 versus 12 deaths per 1,000). Maternal mortality is, 227 deaths per 100,000 versus 27 in the West Bank.
All I see is liberal outrage at an intervention that has been massively welcomed by both the educated and the working class in Venezuela, and this just feels completely irrational and inconsistent to me. Why do the same people care so much about freeing Gazans but seem uninterested in freeing Venezuelans who have been held hostage, as a country, by a truly barbaric leader? The UN reports that Maduro frequently entered poor neighborhoods and executed thousands of young men without trial, 6,800 men is the UN number quoted, and frequently “planted” guns or drugs next to bodies to justify the killings. I don’t believe much of what the UN says, but the same liberals seem to believe the UN on Gaza but not on Venezuela.
I’m not seeing that we HAVE changed regimes. Delcy Rodriguez is just as bad as Maduro, so what have we really gained?