It’s time to designate Venezuela as a state that sponsors terrorism

Under the authoritarian rule of President Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela has become a hub for illegal drug trafficking and a haven for terrorist organizations. The Maduro regime has built mutually beneficial relationships with armed groups such as Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Colombia’s Marxist rebel group the ELN, allowing them to exploit Venezuela’s lawless environment for their own sinister purposes. The Maduro regime’s connections to terrorist criminal elements and drug cartels have transformed the country into a destabilizing force in the Western Hemisphere with far-reaching implications for U.S. national security. Moreover, it is time for the U.S. to designate the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela as a state sponsor of terrorism after Maduro failed to secure open and free elections in July 2024.

Iran and Venezuela

In this context, Venezuela’s role as an increasingly close partner of Iran, which the US administration has labeled “the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism,” deserves attention. The leadership in Tehran has consistently promoted its so-called “axis of resistance” as a unified global anti-imperialist project. Ideologically, the regimes in Venezuela and Iran both harbor fervent anti-American sentiments and preside over authoritarian systems of government. Venezuela and Iran have both openly supported Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and opposed the US-led international rules-based order. These shared political positions have brought the two countries closer together, effectively creating a quasi-alliance between Caracas and Tehran. As the world’s attention focuses on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, one should not forget that the long arm of the Iranian state, with Venezuela as its Latin American spearhead, extends into the Western Hemisphere.

This ideological affinity has enabled deepening ties between Caracas and Tehran, allowing them to work together to undermine U.S. national interests and further entrench their respective illiberal models of governance. In a propaganda poster produced by the office of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Maduro is depicted alongside other prominent pro-Iranian leaders, including Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. During a trip to Tehran in June 2022, during which the two sides signed a 20-year cooperation agreement, Maduro told his Iranian counterparts (and was repeated in Iranian state media) that Venezuela was part of this axis and that it “exists everywhere in the world; it exists in Africa, in Asia, in the Middle East, in Latin America, and in the Caribbean.”

Officers from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Iran’s elite paramilitary force that is designated a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department, have also been active in Venezuela. The June 2022 capture of a Venezuelan cargo plane in Argentina carrying five Iranian crew members, including a former IRGC commander and IRGC Quds Force members, underscored the deepening ties between the IRGC and Caracas. In addition, Maduro has allowed Iran to set up production facilities for its military drones within its borders and is also purchasing Iranian-made armed drones. Venezuela also recently purchased Iranian-made Peykaap speedboats armed with anti-ship missiles. Tehran has turned Venezuela into its Latin American arms depot and arms trading hub. Given recent revanchist claims by Venezuelan lawmakers on Guyanese soil, these Iranian weapons systems pose a legitimate threat to maritime security in the Caribbean region.

In 2021, the FBI indicted four Iranian intelligence agents in absentia for their alleged involvement in a plot to kidnap an Iranian dissident living in the US. The plan reportedly involved transporting the human rights activist to Venezuela by speedboat and then forcibly returning her to Iran. It is clear that Tehran views Venezuela as a base for its subversive anti-democratic operations in the Western Hemisphere and that Maduro openly allows Iran to use his country’s territory for this type of terrorism.

Relations between Iran and Venezuela go beyond shared anti-American rhetoric and military-intelligence ties. The two governments have recently sought closer economic ties as they seek to avoid U.S. sanctions and avoid international isolation. Over the past two years, Iran has invested heavily in repairing Venezuela’s oil refineries and helping Maduro’s regime revive the country’s struggling oil industry. In 2019, amid fuel shortages in Venezuela, Iran sent five oil tankers to the Latin American country to bolster its gasoline supplies.

Hezbollah and Venezuela

In the wake of the recent Iranian missile attack on Israel, it is imperative to consider the global reach of Iranian proxies and allies, most notably the well-funded Lebanese terrorist organization Hezbollah. With Caracas as a base for its subversive activities in Latin America, Hezbollah operates a criminal-terrorist network in the tri-border area of ​​Brazil, Paraguay, and Argentina that generates significant revenue for the terrorist organization. Hezbollah operatives are largely fueled by drug trafficking and are able to move largely discreetly in and out of Venezuela. Many have roots in Venezuela’s sizeable Lebanese community. Embedded in Maduro’s security apparatus and intelligence network, Hezbollah-linked operatives and agents launder money for the Iranian-backed terrorist organization and its sponsors in Tehran.

This covert foothold in Venezuela provides Iran and Hezbollah with closer access to the U.S. homeland and potential soft military targets in the Western Hemisphere. In 1992, Hezbollah, with Iranian support, bombed the Israeli embassy in Argentina, and two years later, Hezbollah terrorists attacked a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires. These two incidents demonstrated that Iranian-sponsored terrorism extends far beyond the Middle East and can devastate vulnerable Jewish communities in the Western Hemisphere.

FARC dissidents, the ELN and the Venezuelan government

In 2016, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), a Colombian Marxist rebel group and U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization, reached a historic peace deal with the Colombian government to end their decades-long armed conflict. Despite this historic agreement, not all FARC members laid down their arms in 2017. Various FARC splinter factions continued their armed struggle against the Colombian government and maintained their lucrative drug trafficking and illegal mining businesses.

The Bolivarian Republic forged strategic alliances with some of these FARC dissident groups, most notably the “Eastern Joint Command” faction led by former FARC guerrilla commander Gentil Duarte and the “Second Marquetalia” group led by former FARC leader Ivan Marquez. By exploiting shared ideological beliefs of revolutionary socialism and opposition to Colombia’s “bourgeois” state, Maduro’s security services provided safe haven and drug transit routes for these FARC dissident fronts. Venezuela’s porous border areas served as vital bases for FARC dissidents fleeing the Colombian military.

On March 26, 2020, the U.S. Department of Justice unveiled a wide range of criminal charges against Maduro and 14 other current and former senior Venezuelan government officials. The charges include narcoterrorism offenses that link top regime officials to FARC rebels and the drug cartel “Cartel of the Suns” (Cartel de los Soles). According to the indictment, senior officials in the Bolivarian Republic, including Maduro himself, worked with FARC and the Cartel of the Suns to “flood” the United States with cocaine. In order to exploit illegal criminal activities and receive bribes from the drug trade, Maduro loyalists in the government and military were given preferential positions in FARC sanctuaries and regional cartel strongholds.

In the last decade, the Maduro regime has strengthened ties with another Colombian Marxist rebel group and U.S.-designated terrorist organization, the ELN (National Liberation Army). Historically, the ELN was much smaller than the FARC, with about 2,500 members, and more closely tied to the Cuban revolutionary model of focus theory. However, after the 2016 peace talks between FARC and Bogota, the ELN nearly doubled in number and Caracas increased its ties to the Cuban-inspired insurgency. The ELN sees the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela as an ideological kin and the type of Marxist revolutionary state it seeks to establish in Colombia. Unlike its rivals in the now-defunct FARC, the ELN operates in a more decentralized and horizontal control and command structure.

In 2022, the battle-hardened ELN launched ambushes and military strikes against dissident factions of the FARC along the largely unguarded Colombian-Venezuelan border. Venezuelan security forces reportedly participated in joint military operations with ELN guerrillas. With oil profits dwindling, Maduro has become increasingly dependent on cash flows from illegal mining, drug trafficking, and smuggling operations facilitated by ELN guerrillas. The Bolivarian Republic provides the ELN with much-needed sanctuary, viewing the Colombian communist guerrillas as a key buffer against foreign military intervention and domestic political rivals seeking regime change in Caracas. With significant experience in guerrilla warfare, the ELN essentially operates as the Praetorian Guard for Maduro’s regime and serves as a key source of tactical know-how.

Conclusion

Under Maduro’s leadership, Venezuela has effectively become a narco-state. Under the veneer of anti-imperialism and Bolivarian socialism, Maduro and his associates operate a variety of criminal enterprises, most prominently drug trafficking and illegal mining. By actively supporting guerrilla insurgencies in neighboring Colombia, the Venezuelan government reaps both military and economic benefits from this violence. Moreover, the Iranian regime sees Maduro’s regime as a useful partner in its global struggle against US-Israeli interests.

In light of the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict, this strengthened Tehran-Hezbollah-Caracas axis now poses a major security threat to the Latin American and Caribbean region. The US administration should designate Venezuela as a state sponsor of terrorism and crack down on the Bolivarian Republic’s blatant violation of international law. Given the Venezuelan leadership’s pervasive corruption, electoral theft, and self-enrichment through alliances with US-designated foreign terrorist organizations and transnational criminal syndicates, the Maduro regime deserves to be designated alongside other pariah states, such as Syria and Iran, that sponsor international terrorism and promote global instability.