Israel out to curb Iranian 'infiltration'

SAO PAULO, July 22 (UPI) -- Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman is touring South America in a bid to block Iranian "infiltration" of the continent that many U.S. officials fear is aimed at establishing a terrorist base in America's back yard.

So far, he doesn't seem to be making much headway. Valter Pomar, secretary of international relations of Brazil's ruling Workers Party, branded the ultra-right-wing Lieberman a "racist and a fascist" soon after the Israeli minister kicked off his 10-day tour in Brazil.

He is scheduled to visit Argentina, Peru and Colombia -- but is skipping the two regional states closest to Iran, Venezuela and Bolivia. Iran has also been seeking to bolster its influence in Nicaragua, which is closer to the Unites States' southern border.

Colombian newspaper El Tiempo quoted Dorit Shavit, a senior Israeli official in the Foreign Ministry's Latin American section, as saying Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Shiite movement in Lebanon, has cells operating in Venezuela's Margarita Island and along the Venezuela-Colombia border smuggling cocaine to fund its confrontation against Israel.

Hezbollah has also been accused of operating narcotics rings in Ecuador and in the lawless triborder zone between Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay.

In October 2008 Colombian authorities said they had arrested 36 members of a smuggling ring that shipped cocaine from Colombia and Brazil to West Africa, where there is a large community of Lebanese Shiite merchant families, to Europe and the Middle East.

The group's leader, a Lebanese named Chekri Harb, described as a "world-class money launderer," was among those arrested.

"The profits from the sale of drugs went to finance Hezbollah," Gladys Sanchez, the lead investigator in Bogota, told The Los Angeles Times.

Hezbollah's links with Latin American cocaine cartels is worrying because of the traffickers' time-tested capability of infiltrating the United States across the porous border with Mexico.

There have been no confirmed Hezbollah or Iranian attacks inside the United States, although jihadist cells sought to penetrate from Canada in the 2000 Millennium plot to blow up Los Angeles airport. But the Mexican border is seen as a potential danger when it comes to Hezbollah and Iran.

Hezbollah has been accused of involvement, with Iran, in two terrorist bombings in Buenos Aires in 1992 and 1994. The Israeli Embassy and the Argentine Jewish Mutual Aid Association were blown up, killing nearly 100 people and wounding 500.

Hezbollah and Tehran deny any involvement, but Argentina has indicted nine former Iranian officials and Hezbollah activists for the 1994 attack on the Jewish community center.

Top U.S. officials have in recent months voiced growing concern about Iran's spreading influence in Latin America, particularly states that are at odds with Washington, such as Venezuela, Colombia and Nicaragua.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates told the Senate Armed Services Committee in January that Tehran was stepping up subversive activities south of the border.

"I'm concerned about the level of, frankly, subversive activity that the Iranians are carrying out in a number of places in Latin America … They're opening a lot of offices and a lot of fronts, behind which they interfere in what is going on in some of those countries."

In April, Adm. James Stavridis, who heads the U.S. Southern Command, told the same committee that Iran and its proxy, Hezbollah, were expanding in South America.

He said Iran had opened six embassies since 2004 to establish an intelligence and operational network in the hemisphere.

"That is a concern principally because of the connections between the government of Iran, which is a state sponsor of terrorism, and Hezbollah," he declared.

Douglas Farah, a former Washington Post correspondent who tracked terrorist groups and is now a security consultant, noted: "What one has to ask oneself is, why is Iran so willing to spend precious resources in a region where it has no religious, cultural, historical or linguistic ties?

"The multiple promises of economic aid are seldom fulfilled, nor is there any accounting of the Iranian money that flows to these governments. Yet, their diplomatic missions grow exponentially, offering the perfect cover for the al-Quds Force (of Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps) and Hezbollah to move freely."