What political and commercial ties will have Iran with Latin America (and how USA seeks to reduce them with the current crisis)

A woman waves the flag of Iran during a demonstration against Israel's attacks to that country in Caracas — Photo foot, The Iranian flag has acquired a special weight in some places in Latin America.

- Author, Gerardo Lissardy
- Author's title, BBC News World
4 hours

The United States has given a clear sign that it aspires to the expansive wave of its recent bombings to Iran Sanda also the relations of the Islamic Republic with Latin America.

A senior official of the US Department of State said this week that “each country (of the region) has to make a decision on whether it will support a regime that is a state sponsor of terrorism.”

The comment arose at a virtual conference with journalists, in the face of a specific question about the attitude that Washington would assume in the organization of American States with the countries that rejected the attack on Iran last weekend.

But the fact that the American official said the same phrase almost identically three times during that dialogue suggests that it was a premeditated message.

“It is, today, a great opportunity for countries in the region to realize which side they will be,” he said.

The US considers Iran as a “sponsoring state of terrorism” since 1984 and its president, Donald Trump, affirms that the bombings he ordered in three Iranian nuclear facilities sought to prevent that country from developing an atomic weapon, although Tehran denies that it had such a goal.

The crisis seems to be seen as a conducive situation to draw lines in the Western hemisphere by Washington, which has long worried the Iranian presence in Latin America.

The question is then what ties Tehran has with the region … and how Trump's government could seek to reduce them.

“Alliance for convenience”

Daniel Ortega, Hugo Chávez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad look together in the same direction during a match in Nicaragua in 2012 — Photo foot, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (on the right) traveled to Latin America while he was an Iranian president.

Latin America has traditionally been far from Iran's priorities, but began to be seen with interest in the theocracy of this country after the change of millennium.

Between 2005 and 2013, the then Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visited the region once a year on average, in order to alleviate the isolation caused by international sanctions for his domestic nuclear program.

Ahmadinejad opened embassies in the subcontinent, promoted agreements in different areas and cultivated special links with leftist rulers such as Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, the Castro brothers in Cuba or Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua.

The proximity to these three countries remained over time: another Iranian president, Ebrahim Raisi, visited them in 2023 (the year before his death in a helicopter accident) and spoke of increasing cooperation in energy, science, technology and other areas.

Farid Kahhat, a professor at the Diplomatic Academy of Peru and an expert in international and middle security issues, argues that this “is not an issue of ideological affinities: the Ayatolas regime shot the communists in the 1980s.”

“It is simply an alliance for convenience: in a multipolar world, they look for countries that share enemies,” Kahhat tells BBC Mundo. “They are countries that have American sanctions” and “that places them from the same side in international alignments.”

But he warns that beyond rhetoric and some agreements that prospered, there are “very few economic interests in common” and “Iranian investment promises such as those of Nicaragua never materialize.”

Ebrahim Raisi and Nicolás Maduro greet during a meeting in Venezuela in 2023 — Photo foot, When visiting Caracas in 2023, the then Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi said that his country's relations with Venezuela were “strategic.”

Venezuela seems to be the most connected Latin American country with Iran, which in recent years sent fuel to Caracas in exchange for crude oil to alleviate US sanctions to Chavism.

The broad agreements with Tehran have helped Venezuela, for example, to reactivate an oil refinery or become, according to experts, the first country in the region with armed drones.

Raisi held during his time in Caracas in 2023 that bilateral economic and commercial cooperation reached US $ 3,000 million, and proposed to increase it to US $ 10,000 million in the medium term.

“The relations between Iran and Venezuela are not normal diplomatic relations; they are strategic,” defined the then Iranian president with his host, Nicolás Maduro.

Various positions

Lula with the presidents of Iran, China, South Africa and other countries during a BRICS summit in 2023 — Photo foot, Lula supported the entrance to the BRICS of Iran, a country with which Brazil has a commercial exchange of US $ 3,000 million annually.

Iran has also managed to expand businesses in Latin America beyond political affinities, although with several countries in the region its trade is scarce or almost non -existent.

Brazil is a key trade partner of Tehran and appeared as the main destination of Iranian exports to the subcontinent last year, when the bilateral exchange reached US $ 3,000 million (with a large surplus in favor of the South American country).

The trade between the two nations remained regardless of whether Brazil was governed by an ultra -rightist and ally of Israel such as Jair Bolsonaro or by the current leftist president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

Lula supported Iran's entrance together with other countries to the BRICS, the cooperation block that Brazil originally integrates with Russia, India, China and South Africa.

Kahhat doubts that Brasilia has “greater interest in strengthening political ties with the Iranian regime (because) there is not much to win, but it would also attract the animated by the United States.”

However, the Brazilian government pointed out last Sunday that “vehemence condemns” US military attacks and Israel against Iran nuclear facilities, which in their opinion represented a “flagrant transgression of the United Nations Charter.”

The governments of Bolivia, Chile and Colombia, in addition to Venezuela and Cuba, issued similar statements of condemnation or rejection of attacks in Iran, while others like Mexico or Peru limited themselves to calling a broken down and diplomatic dialogue.

Punishments?

A man walks on the rubble left by the attack against AMIA in Buenos Aires in 1994 — Photo foot, Iranian officials have been accused of linking with the attack in the AMIA that killed 85 people in Buenos Aires in 1994.

The clearest alignment signal with Washington in the region after the bombings to Iran came from Argentina.

President Javier Milei replied on the social network X a message from his defense minister on Sunday who claimed that “guaranteeing peace in the world is to fight, always and everywhere, against terrorism and nuclear weapons.”

Milei had defined Iran as “an enemy of Argentina”, where former officials of the Islamic Republic have been accused before justice for their alleged link with the attack against the Mutual Israelite Amia in 1994, which left 85 dead in Buenos Aires.

Although until the last decade Argentina was a commercial partner of Iran highlighted in the region, there are reports that their sales to that country have fallen significantly.

In Washington, Trump's secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said when his concern was a senator for the presence in Latin America of Iran and Hezbollah, the Chiita Lebanese group supported by that country.

Cynthia Arnson, an attached professor at the International Relations School of the Johns Hopkins University in Washington, argues that “the threat of terrorism backed by Iran in the Western hemisphere should not be exaggerated or discarded.”

But with the crisis in the Middle East and what many perceive as a moment of weakness of Tehran, it expects that the US could take measures to achieve more support in the south of the Bravo River.

Donald Trump speaks in front of his secretary of state, Marco Rubio, in the White House — Photo foot, Trump and his Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, have defended the US military attack against nuclear facilities in Iran.

“There is a strong possibility that the Administration (Trump) tries to punish, diplomatic or economically, to Latin American countries that have criticized the US military action in Iran, regardless of whether or not they sympathize with the Iranian regime,” Arnson tells BBC Mundo.

According to this expert in Latin America, perhaps some governments in the region consider convenient to align with the Trump position “or at least silence their criticisms” to avoid reprisals.

“But in the long term,” he adds, “Hard hand tactics will engendered bad will and will contribute to reducing the influence of the US in the hemisphere.”