By Grisha Vera
Three recent actions by Iran in Latin America evince the Persian country’s increasing interest in the region. A distant partner, not only based on geography but on its political and cultural model. The new plays? In June, the Iranian president visited his allies in the area (Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba); Iran signed a new security and defense agreement with Bolivia; and it is engaged in commercial negotiations to provide fertilizers to the Mercosur.
Reactions came quickly, especially due to the last two cases. Part of the Bolivian opposition rejected the agreement with Iran. Argentina, which holds officials of the Iranian government responsible for the terrorist attacks of 1992 and 1994 that took place in the South American country, also demanded explanations from the government of Luis Arce. In the meantime, John Kirby, Coordinator for Strategic Communications of the White House, said to La Voz de America: “We are concerned about any export of Iranian technology that can be destabilizing.”
Days later, the government of Argentina had something else to say. This time, the topic was the negotiations run by Luis D´Elía, candidate for governor in the province of Buenos Aires, between a Brazilian company and the government of Iran to export fertilizers to the Mercosur. “Sources close to the Minister of Economy Sergio Massa assured they unequivocally rejected the initial deal of D´Elía to authorize the transaction… ‘We met with them at the request of the president, but we didn’t agree to anything. The State doesn’t purchase fertilizers, and neither we nor the YPF entered into or will enter into any operation’,” La Nacion cited.
And there is more. In January of this year, two Iranian warships were prowling near the coasts of Latin America. Despite sanctions enforced against that country and diplomatic pressure by the United States, the government of Brazil allowed them to dock in Rio de Janeiro in late February.
Dos buques iraníes están varados en Brasil hace más de un mes por las sanciones de EEUU https://t.co/beWylNCAla pic.twitter.com/vO7GHKjdG3
— Infobae América (@infobaeamerica) July 18, 2019
Iran’s political and commercial relationships with several countries in Latin America are not new, and are not limited to the authoritarian regimes in the region. Brazil is its most significant commercial partner in the area. Bolivia also exchanges goods and services since the days of Evo Morales’s government. Meanwhile, Argentina, one of its oldest partners in the continent, has preserved their commercial relationship, albeit with some variations in the years of greatest diplomatic tension between both nations.
After analyzing the data on foreign trade by UN Comtrade, it is clear that in the last 11 years, 28 of the 33 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean have also reached commercial agreements with Iran. And in 2022, those intercontinental businesses rose by 6%, a record number for the annual average of the prior decade (2011-2021).
“Journalistic and academic analyses helped build the myth that Iran was connected only with Venezuela and the countries that are part of the ALBA. However, that intense political and ideological relationship with the axis of Venezuela was only the first stage of the analyzed period. In 2009 said relationship expanded and was strengthened with the visit of the president of Iran to Brazil, with the opening of several embassies, and with the intensification of commercial connections outside of the ALBA,” concludes an academic study published Isabel Rodriguez Aranda, PhD in political sciences and sociology.
Ariel Gelblung, Director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC) in Latin America, explains that Iran’s penetration in the region became noticeable in the late 80s, but it became visible with the three terrorist attacks of the 90s (two in Argentina and one in Panama) that were attributed to the Hezbollah, a Lebanese Shia Islamist political organization allied with Iran, and whose armed wing is regarded as a terrorist group by the United States, the European Union and other countries.
Several academic studies have marked 2005 as the year in which a greater influence from Iran began in Latin America, when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad became president in Tehran and when leftist leaders came to power in different governments in the south of the continent. Both parties have had very distant interests and realities, but are united by a common adversary: the United States.
The Harvest
The Persian country has reaped important benefits. First, its penetration in Latin America has allowed it to expand its commercial activities (largely limited by sanctions). And for its Latin American partners, Iran is an attractive export market of more than 80 million people.
Second, it has managed to exercise strong influence in the foreign policy of some of its Latin American partners. CONNECTAS analyzed the votes of the United Nations Human Rights Council in the last 11 years, and it found that Cuba, Bolivia, Venezuela and Ecuador (in two occasions) have voted in defense of Iran against measures taken by the Council regarding the violation of human rights in that country. These decisions concur with the political and ideological alignment of the countries of the ALBA, led by Venezuela.
Jose Manuel Ormachea, Bolivian representative of the opposition party Comunidad Ciudadana, underscores: “This group of countries that claim to represent alternative interests to the western axis, that claim to represent an allegedly subdued, enslaved world, practically dominated by western superpowers, by NATO… Well, it’s actually them dominating, colonizing and enslaving their own people.”
The analysis of the votes also reveals a neutral position (of abstention) of two business partners: Brazil and Uruguay, with which Iran has had a historical business relationship. “Uruguay is perhaps among the Latin American countries that has sustained one of the longest relationships with the Republic of Iran, it has been mostly based on an intense and complementary reciprocal commercial bond. This stable commercial bond has been supported by Uruguay’s abstention in voting the convictions held by the United Nations Human Rights Council regarding the violation of human rights in Iran since 1976,” Rodriguez’s study found in 2018.
Nevertheless, the Iranian influence on these countries’ foreign policy is not easy to explain from the commercial point of view: the exchange with Latin America barely represents 2.4% of the total foreign trade of the Persian country. Likewise, that exchange doesn’t represent even 1% of the total exports of its Latin American partners. From 2011 to 2021, the exports of Brazil and Argentina to Iran exceed that figure in some cases, according to The Atlas of Economic Complexity of Harvard University.
The third benefit for Iran is the cultural exchange deriving from these bilateral relationships. According to an article published by Jean-Jacques Kourliandsky, Research Fellow specializing in Iberian issues at the The French Institute for International and Strategic Affairs, since 2007, Iran and several of its Latin American partners have created spaces in the political and academic fields to encourage cultural and commercial exchanges. “Additionally, these initiatives reflect a will shared by the governments to build bridges between distant peoples, not only in their social, but in their religious and cultural definitions. In 2006, the theater of the Islamic Azad University in Tehran presented a play on Rafael Urdaneta, one of the heroes of independence of Venezuela. A year later, Tehran hosted a congress on Latin American literature, for the first time ever. In return, lectures on Persian language and literature emerged in Latin America; finally, a cooperation agreement was executed between Telesur and HispanTV, the open Iranian official news channel in Spanish, in 2010.”
Ormachea digs deeper into that cultural penetration in Bolivia. He explains that part of the donations Iran has made to his country have been subject to the will of the Ayatollahs and to the benefit of the ruling party. For instance, the representative recalls that in the government of Evo Morales, Iran gifted a television set to a foundation named after the president. An organization, he adds, that is still at the command of Morales and with a biased content that leaves no room for dissenting voices. He says that, in that government as well, Iran donated a hospital to Bolivia, which was named “Republica Islamica de Iran”. And that its inauguration caused turmoil in the country because the women working in the health center were wearing the Islamic veil.
However, he warns: “They have the greatest influence in the political and ideological standpoint, in the sense that Iran helps the ruling party with its intelligence, military and ideological cooptation techniques. It is working on how to turn Bolivia into an authoritarian state (regardless of how many Bolivian become Muslims – it appears that this is not a top priority). Let’s say that if they can try it and they achieve it, it’s fine. But the most crucial thing is the mechanisms that Iran has in place to turn Bolivia into an authoritarian state, that is their main goal. With that, business will run smoothly, and they will be able to influence the region and irradiate their ideology in America. That is basically their spearhead.”
In Venezuela, the cultural exchange and penetration resulting from the agreements between both nations are evident as well. In May, the Venezuelan Ministry of Culture Ernesto Villegas officially visited Iran to “hoist the level of cultural exchange between both nations,” as per a press release of the Ministry. Three weeks later, the first ladies of Venezuela and Iran held a meeting in Caracas aimed at “the cultural and political exchange with influential women.”
Desde la calle Simón Bolívar de Teherán nos despedimos de la República Islámica de Irán, agradecidos por la hospitalidad de sus autoridades y el interés en elevar al maximo nivel el intercambio cultural entre la nación persa y nuestra Patria. A través de nuestro embajador, José… pic.twitter.com/5aWfFw7iDM
— Ernesto Villegas Poljak (@VillegasPoljak) May 21, 2023
“We are naively watching as someone can be controlled through international policy. This is a non-democratic government we are talking about, one that wants to export the Islamic revolution, it is extremist, intolerant and promotes terrorism. The truth is that I don’t know if it is the credible commercial partner we want to have. Its idiosyncrasy is very different. They will tell you ‘they are good,’ but they are looking for other things. It’s a win-win situation for them, mostly because they are breaking into a sector that is geopolitically associated with its top enemy,” Gelblung concludes.
