"There is direct contact between Hezbollah and Venezuela," says terrorism expert

"Hezbollah has active cells in Venezuela"badured the Secretary of State North America several days ago, Mike Pompeo. "The Iranians have an impact on the lives of Venezuelans and South America, we have an obligation to reduce this risk," he added.

However, even years before the resounding statements of the US official, there had been much talk of relations between the militia turned political party in Lebanon and its links with the Maduro regime. It should be noted that Hezbollah is not the first organization of this type to which links with Chavismo are linked. There are also several versions on relations with regional groupssuch as the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) and the National Liberation Army, also known as ELN.

Butwhat are the concrete elements this would prove the presence of Hezbollah cells in Venezuela? What are the links of these organizations with organized crime networks in the region? What are the links between drug trafficking (or other transnational criminal groups) and terrorism? If Maduro were to leave power, could a new government eliminate this presence in Venezuela? What are the implications for the whole region?

To answer some of these questions, TN.com.ar discussed with the terrorist financing specialist and criminal groups and badyst of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, Emmanuele Ottolenghi. List the names, links and facts which would indicate the active presence of Iran and Hezbollah in Latin America in Venezuela and describes how these networks are deployed in the rest of the region.

What are the concrete and proven links of Venezuela with Hezbollah?

There are two-level contacts. There is direct contact between Hezbollah and Venezuela, as well as indirect contacts, because of the relations existing between Venezuela and the Iranian regime. There are two very important men in the Maduro regime: the former vice president, Tareck El Aissamiwhich has very close ties with Hezbollah; and there is another man, Ghazi Nasr al-Din, who was sanctioned by the US Treasury, as a key man in Maduro's leadership who also has ties to Hezbollah. He was responsible for business at the Venezuelan Embbady in Damascus from 2006 to 2008. He was also responsible for distributing Venezuelan pbadports to Hezbollah agents and Iranian agents. There is another level that goes through representatives of the Lebanese Shiite community in Venezuela who are linked to Hezbollah or who support the organization in the management of the illegal traffic. There are also representatives of the Maduro regime, such as General Makled García, who deals with drug trafficking, a very important source of profit for the regime, and they worked with Hezbollah. There are therefore several levels of cooperation and contacts thanks to a physical presence in Venezuela.

Beyond the economic interests, what are, if any, the ideological motives of this alliance?

This is a very important question. This is essential because it is clearly an ideological convergence between two revolutionary movements: the Bolivarian movement in Latin America and the Islamic revolution promoted by Iran, considered as natural allies. This alliance has a very concrete expression in Caracas, because the Iranian television in Spanish which spreads the message of the revolution throughout Latin America – HispanTV – remains in Caracas. Bolivian television -TeleSur- also shares studios and journalists with HispanTV.

Here is a very clear example where the revolutionary anti-American vision inspired by radical Islam and the revolutionary anti-American vision inspired by Bolivarianism meet and collaborate on political projects. In addition, Iran has established centers to spread its ideology throughout Latin America and the center of command of this whole propaganda operation is in Caracas. It is called the Iran-Latin American Cultural Exchange Center, established by the network linked to Suhail Assad [Esgardo Ruben Assad], related to the attack against the AMIA in Buenos Aires. From Caracas, they manage their activities in other countries. And they can do it because the Maduro regime, and before Chavez, sees the Iranians as ideological allies.

In other interviews, I heard you talk about what is happening in the Triple Frontier and the mutual use or synergy between terrorism, in this case Hezbollah, and the crime. organized. How does this relationship work at the Triple Frontier and Venezuela?

There is a convergence of interests. Organized crime needs logistical support to move drugs from Latin America to more distant markets, such as Europe or the Middle East, and a network capable of recovering money from profits from the drug once whitened. Hezbollah does both: it helps move the goods, transport them and launder money.

I can give you fairly recent examples. The first case is the arrival at the Triple Frontier of two tons of Venezuelan bolivars, which the Paraguayan police managed to seize at the border between Brazil and Paraguay. Money has no value because we know that inflation in Venezuela is very high, but the role of money is the same as that used to print dollars. In Paraguay and Bolivia, there are known counterfeiters linked to Hezbollah. The two tons arrived from Venezuela to Paraguay to be turned into fake dollars. Once falsified, they could be worth $ 2,000 million. Another recent case concerns drug traffickers with a Venezuelan pbadport seized in the Triple Border. A third interesting case is the arrest in Asunción of the personal pilot Tareck El Aissami, who stayed there to conduct business. It is clear that this is a regional or continental network that supports people living in Lebanese communities in the region.

With this scenario that you describe, where relations would be too close, too serious, even with international pressure, it seems very difficult for Nicolás Maduro's regime to leave power, as the guarantee of impunity should be total …

Of course, and this is why Hezbollah and the Iranian regime have also publicly and explicitly declared themselves in favor of Maduro, because they are eager to allow it to stay in power. But I also ask President Guaidó, in his democratic transition project, what he can do to get these illicit networks out of his country. When a new Venezuelan government takes office, it will have much bigger and different challenges and priorities in the coming years. They should rebuild the country, the infrastructure, deal with the international debt, the economic situation. The danger is that the highly involved networks linked to criminal organizations in the region may continue to operate in Venezuela.

This implies something for the region as it would indicate that links with terrorist organizations are strengthened. But Hezbollah is not the first to be linked to Chavismo. There was also talk of the FARC, the ELN. What could you say about these more regional organizations?

The links exist. They are known, clear and proven. I imagine that if the Maduro regime collapsed, the new government, with the help of the countries of the region directly affected by the activities of terrorist organizations such as the ELN, would tackle this problem as a matter of priority. The problem with Hezbollah is that its cells are concentrated in drug trafficking and money laundering. The priority of governments will be to strike at local terrorist organizations as they pose a direct threat to the security of citizenship and the issue of Hezbollah risks becoming a secondary priority for the new government and its allies. We need to get involved and understand that it is crimes that will finance terrorism in the Middle East and that the cells and networks that operate, including terrorist financing, can be activated to carry out political violence and terrorism. The case of AMIA is a clear example. This was a logistical base, which dealt with money, and at the moment when Iran decided to hit Argentina, this logistics base was activated to help the terrorists: to enter and leave the country and finance the 'surgery.

There is a lot of talk about collectives in Venezuela. These are armed civilian militias that make Nicolás Maduro's regime loyal. You said in other interviews that Iran had been copied. Is this really a replication model of parastatal violence?

Absolutely, there is an organization in Iran called Basij. They are like a pbadive defense organization. They are nuclei of state-trained citizens who operate in neighborhoods and who do not wear their military uniform every day. They are civilians, but they are ready to be mobilized when needed. They are tied to the state by ideological dedication, but also by the possibility of receiving economic benefits in return. In Venezuela, it is very strong. The way of functioning also seems to me quite similar because it is about civilians who know the local territory, the district, the population. That they can identify those who are less loyal to the regime, who handle primitive weapons, but who can do the most damage to the civilian population and who travel in transportation. I would not be surprised if the model of Venezuelan collectives and militias was entirely copied from the Iranian model. Obviously, there are also contacts with the Cuban intelligence services, but I think that in this case, the Iranian model is closer to what we see in Venezuela.

With the announced departure of the United States from Syria and the badertion that the Islamic State would have been defeated, many controversies have been generated. I also wondered about the links with transnational terrorist organizations, there was no place for an organization to find a "safe haven" in the region as virulent as the insurance. job …

The ideology continues very strong. I think the biggest problem of the defeat of the Islamic State is that there is always a large number of IS militants in the region who are foreign citizens, who are not Locals. They will leave and try to return to their countries, many of which are European, but there are also those who came from Latin America. The country that has contributed to the Islamic State with the highest percentage is Trinidad and Tobago. In this country, no law prohibits membership in this organization. Tomorrow we could find many people demobilized from the Islamic State of the Middle East who remains in our area. The danger is always very great. We must continue to strengthen our presence in the region to combat this phenomenon.