From IRGC to Russia: how Venezuela became a narco-terror hub for the West’s enemies

The Chavista regime has handed out hundreds (possibly thousands) of passports to Iranians, Syrians, and Lebanese aligned with Hezbollah to “transform” themselves into Venezuelans and thus travel without raising suspicion, either as tourists or as illegal immigrants in the various waves of migration to the United States and Latin American countries.

By facilitating the movement of extremists around the world under Venezuelan identities, the regime deliberately opened the West to Iran. Bilateral front contracts provided justification for millions of dollars in financial flows between Tehran and Caracas. So-called “joint projects” served as a smokescreen for the transit of cargo and materials – including minerals disguised as equipment – and even a regular flight was established to service a clandestine criminal network.

Open-source investigations and regional security reporting have repeatedly raised concerns that the IRGC and Hezbollah exploited these aviation channels for logistics and facilitation, to the extent that the route became known among security professionals as “Aeroterror”. The combination of uncontrolled flights connecting Iran, Syria and Venezuela, and the use of false identities issued by the Venezuelan regime, gave Hezbollah and IRGC operatives powerful tools to expand their presence and influence across the region. This enabled the establishment of actionable cells and the movement of terrorists, funds and prohibited or sanctioned materials.

In 2015, drawing on testimony from former senior members of the Venezuelan regime, I documented allegations that Hugo Chávez acted as an intermediary with Argentina to grant Iran access to sensitive nuclear knowledge, enabling it to complete a power plant regarded as essential to its nuclear programme at Bushehr. It has never been possible to prove conclusively that this triangulation succeeded. What is beyond dispute, however, is that only after the deepening of this clandestine axis between Chávez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad did Iran manage to complete a project that had stalled for nearly three decades.

The dismantling of Hezbollah in Lebanon, after the elimination of some of its main leaders, has increased the relative value of Latin American cells and networks as assets of the group. In such a scenario, these structures could be activated against Jewish or Israeli targets, as occurred in the 1994 attack on the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association (AMIA), a Jewish community centre, and against the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires two years earlier.

Iran is the strategic architect of the most relevant aspect of this nexus: drones and military-industrial cooperation. Washington has explicitly cited the proliferation of Iranian UAVs to Venezuela as a threat to US interests in the region. Drones are important not because Venezuela is going to start a conventional war, but because UAVs are the ideal tool for the grey zone: coercive presence, surveillance, intimidation, maritime harassment, and operator training in a permissive rear area.

Russia and China complete the architecture. Less as ideological partners and more as facilitators who strengthen the regime and expand its strategic menu. The Russian contribution is the most traditional: weapons, air defence, and military structure that increase the cost of external pressure and reinforce internal coercive confidence. Venezuela’s history of Russian arms purchases, which began in 2006, has been widely documented over the years. Even when the readiness and sustainability of these systems are uneven, the political function is clear: a message of deterrence abroad and assurance of the regime at home.

China’s contribution is more modern and, in many ways, more decisive for the regime’s durability. Beijing has provided massive financing through oil-backed agreements, incorporating itself as a creditor, contractor, and supplier of systems. China’s most strategic export to Venezuela may be surveillance technology and data-centric social control mechanisms that reinforce the capacity for political monitoring and oppression.

It can be said that Russia has helped Venezuela resist external pressure; China has helped the regime sustain itself internally; and Iran and Hezbollah have helped the state operate as a grey-zone platform with deniable reach. Together, they have transformed Venezuela not only into a criminalised state, but into an asymmetric base of operation for the West’s adversaries.

The political implication is uncomfortable but inevitable. Treating Venezuela solely as a human rights crisis, a democratic failure, or a giant oil reserve ignores its strategic danger to the US and its allies. Venezuela has become a bridgehead for a series of regional and hemispheric threats. The Trump administration seems to have understood this and is attempting to neutralise the problem without a conventional invasion or open warfare. On the other hand, in a move of tremendous pragmatism and realism, it is betting on an effort to co-opt remaining Chavistas. It is impossible to say whether this will work or for how long.​

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Leonardo Coutinho is executive director of the Center for a Secure Free Society