Iran’s Army Commander Major General Ataollah Salehi has announced plans to deploy warships and destroyers in Central American and Latin American waters, Iran’s semi-official FARS News Agency said on Saturday.

The commander said that Iran plans to increase ties and cooperation with Latin American states including Nicaragua, Venezuela, Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, Cuba, Mexico and Colombia.

Salehi also said that outfitting the Iranian Navy with more state-of-the-art weapons is among the Army’s priorities in the Iranian New Year, which began on March 20^th.

“Iran’s strong and rapidly growing ties with Latin America have raised eyebrows in the US and its western allies since Tehran and Latin nations have forged an alliance against the imperialist and colonialist powers and are striving hard to reinvigorate their relations with the other independent countries which pursue a line of policy independent from the US,” the semi-official FARS News Agency said.

 

Concerns over Iranian influence, terrorism

Iran has managed to establish close relations with several leftist Latin America states that oppose U.S. “imperialism” over recent years, especially Costa Rica’s northern neighbor, Nicaragua and the hardline leftist government of Venezuela.

Then-Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was even the guest of honor during the 2012 inauguration of re-elected Nicaraguan president, Daniel Ortega.

But critics have argued that Iran’s growing influence in the region is a clear and present danger.

In December 2013, Israel’s defense minister accused Iran of using its diplomatic personnel and embassies to create ‘terrorist bases’ in Nicaragua and other Latin American countries.

“We know there are states in South America, like Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Bolivia, where the Iranians have terror bases,” then Israeli defense minister, Moshe Yaalon said at the time.

Yaalon said at the time that the alleged bases could be used to attack Jewish or Israeli interests in the region, or to stage attacks inside of the U.S.

“They [Iran] are taking advantage of the drug smuggling routes from South America into the United States in order to move weapons there,” he said. “[The Iranians] are building a terror infrastructure in South America to attack Jews and Israeli interests,” he said, “but they are also using these bases that they have built in places like Cuba, Bolivia, Nicaragua and Venezuela to act against the United States.”

And Yaalon has not been alone in his claims. Israeli media reports in September 2012 claimed that Lebanon’s Hezbollah – sponsored by Iran – was training terrorists in a secret location in northern Nicaragua, near the Honduran border.

“Approximately 30 members of the terrorist organization reside inside the area, which is closed to locals,” the Times of Israel reported at the time.

“The cozy relationships these governments have with Iran facilitate the free movement of Hezbollah members throughout the region, allowing them to transport drugs and counterfeit products,” that are used to finance terrorism, Rachel Ehrenfeld, the director of the U.S.-based NGO American Center for Democracy, warned in 2013.

Israeli and Argentine authorities have also long suspected Iranian involvement in the bombings of a Jewish center and the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires in the 1990s that killed scores of people, charges denied by Iran.