Iran's Deadly Ambition (16 page)

North Korean foreign conduct has also worsened. An accelerating staccato of provocations has defined the younger Kim’s attempts to demonstrate his political bona fides on the world stage.
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As a result, it is reasonable to expect that Pyongyang’s relationships with a slew of nefarious international actors will intensify.

That, in turn, could be a boon to Pyongyang’s allies in Tehran. In his October 2014 testimony before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper made note of “North Korea’s export of ballistic missiles and associated materials to several countries, including Iran and Syria.”
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That continuing commerce, experts caution, could provide Iran with an alternative pathway to the atomic bomb—one that could allow the Islamic Republic to go nuclear even if a diplomatic deal with the West is concluded.
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A COVERT THEATER

In April 2014, police in Bangkok swooped down on two men: a French-Lebanese national named Daoud Farhat, and Youssef Ayad, a Lebanese citizen of the Philippines. The two men had arrived in the Thai capital a week earlier, and their presence was flagged by Thai authorities, who had been
alerted by the Israeli government that the pair, both members of Lebanon’s Hezbollah militia, were heading to the South Asian state. During interrogation, Ayad confessed to Thai police that “his group entered Thailand to carry out a bomb attack against Israeli tourists and other Israeli groups” during the Jewish holiday of Passover.
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The foiled plot was far from unique. Two years earlier, a suspected member of Hezbollah was apprehended by Thai police on a tip from the Israeli embassy in Bangkok.
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Israeli officials in the Thai capital, as elsewhere, were on high alert because Iran had blamed the Jewish state and the United States of jointly masterminding the assassination of a nuclear scientist, Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, in Tehran, on January 11, 2012.
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A month later, in February 2012, terrorists linked to both Iran and Hezbollah successfully bombed an Israeli diplomatic vehicle in New Delhi, injuring a member of the Israeli embassy.
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That attack coincided with the fourth anniversary of the death of Hezbollah military leader Imad Mughniyeh, who was killed in Beirut, Lebanon, in 2009, in an assassination widely attributed to Israel. It was also unexpected. B. Raman, a leading Indian security specialist, said that “Hezbollah has neither operated in New Delhi in the past nor is it known to have sleeper cells in India.”
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Hezbollah’s Asian penetration has gradually taken shape over the past two decades. In his definitive book on Hezbollah’s global activities, counterterrorism specialist Matthew Levitt notes that the militia’s presence in Asia was a practical outgrowth of Iran’s desire to “export its version of Shia Islam beyond its natural borders.”
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That initiative entailed, in part, recruiting and training Asian militants, creating active cells throughout Southeast and South Asia, and orchestrating repeated acts of terror throughout the Pacific Rim.
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Hezbollah is not the only sign of Iran’s presence in Asia,
however. The Iranian regime itself relies heavily upon the region as a significant hub for procurement and logistical support relating to the country’s strategic programs. Over the past five years, a slew of Iranian companies and corporate entities were blacklisted by the U.S. government for their role in procuring WMD-related materiel to assist Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile efforts.
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A great many of those actors, it turns out, were active in Asia, where vast territorial expanses, lax regulatory environments, and thriving black markets made such illicit purchases easy.

This activity continues, despite ongoing nuclear talks between Iran and the P5+1 powers. A May 2014 report by the U.N. Panel of Experts reported “a decrease in the number of detected attempts by Iran to procure items for prohibited programs, and related seizures, since mid-2013.” Yet the U.N. study was quick to point out that this trend “may be a function of more sophisticated procurement strategies on the part of Iran, which has developed methods of concealing procurement, while expanding prohibited activities.”
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Indeed, just four months later, the Institute for Science and International Security, a Washington-based think tank, published an analysis focusing on the pervasive and ongoing nature of Iran’s “illicit procurements” relating to its nuclear program and counseled that any nuclear deal struck with the Islamic Republic will need to include “an architecture that prevents Iran from importing goods for banned or covert nuclear programs.”
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Asia has also emerged as a significant financial hub for Iran’s clerical army. In May 2014, details of the IRGC’s illicit economic activities in the region began to emerge when Asian news sources disclosed a web of suspicious financial activity, encompassing more than $1 billion of funds squirreled away in a major South Korean bank by Petro Sina Arya, an IRGC-linked company, and active accounts for branches of
Khatam al-Anbiya, the IRGC’s construction headquarters, in Malaysia.
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The financial activity, news reports concluded, was a systematic effort by the Iranian regime aimed at “dodging internationally coordinated economic sanctions.”
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These machinations highlight just how much the Islamic Republic has come to exploit Asia as a covert theater for clandestine and illegal activities. But Iran’s ayatollahs are thinking bigger still.

FUELING ASIA’S FUTURE?

In late January 2013, the government of Asif Ali Zardari in Pakistan unveiled an unusual new initiative: the creation of a 1,300-kilometer natural gas pipeline stretching from eastern Iran through Afghanistan and into western Pakistan. The idea was one that had been discussed for some time, and a framework deal for the project had even been signed by Zardari and Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad back in May 2009. But worries in Islamabad over an unfavorable American response had so far prevented Pakistani officials from going through with the project. That was no longer the case, it seemed. As one Pakistani official told the
Financial Times
, “A decision has been made that we can’t delay this project for any longer. This is Pakistan’s essential lifeline. We are going ahead with this project.”
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However, those plans remain mostly unrealized. In December 2013, the Islamic Republic cancelled its plans to loan Islamabad $500 million to build the Pakistani portion of the pipeline, leaving the future of the project in limbo.
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Yet the project is far from stillborn. Iran is estimated to have already sunk more than $2 billion of its own money into the “peace pipeline,” making its continuation—finances permitting—a major priority for the Iranian government.
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Moreover, Tehran can rely on a compliant partner in Islamabad, because of Pakistan’s massive debt to the Islamic Republic.
As of September 2014, Pakistan owed Iran on the order of $100 million in unpaid electricity bills, but still relies heavily on Iranian energy to power its western provinces.
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All this gives the Islamic Republic significant leverage by which to bring Pakistan in line with its regional vision.

If it does, it could be a game changer for both Iran and Asia. As energy expert Gal Luft noted, the pipeline is not a “standard energy project” or simply a way to avoid international isolation in the face of Western economic pressure. Rather, it is a potential conduit for the Iranian regime to make itself an indispensable strategic player in Asia. For Iran, the energy route constitutes “an opportunity, should the pipeline be extended to either India or China, to create an unbreakable long term political and economic dependence of billions of Chinese and Indian customers on its gas.”
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In the meantime, Iran is busy making other plans. Slackening international pressure on the Islamic Republic has allowed it to revive energy diplomacy in the region, and the Iranian regime now actively talks to both India and Afghanistan. The objective is the creation of an alternative energy route stretching into Asia that would link Afghanistan with India via Pakistan and make Iran a major player in South Asia.
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These plans, and many others being explored by Iranian officials, are a testament to the inroads Iran has successfully made into Asia in recent years. But Iran’s foothold there pales in comparison with the systematic way in which it has penetrated America’s own geopolitical backyard over the past decade.

CHAPTER

VII

A Foothold in Latin America

S
anta Cruz de la Sierra is a bustling city of some 1.1 million people situated in Bolivia’s eastern lowlands. As the country’s industrial capital, it holds national pride of place as a hub for business, investment, energy, and industry—and as a harbor for pockets of political opposition to Bolivia’s wildly popular leftist strongman, Evo Morales.

But Santa Cruz is also something more. For just a few kilometers away from the city, set back on the side of a dusty highway, lies one of the most dangerous places in the Western Hemisphere. That place is the regional defense school of the Bolivarian Alliance of the Americas, the radical leftist political and economic bloc established by Cuba’s Fidel Castro and Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez in the early 2000s.

Inaugurated in Havana in 2004, the alliance—known as ALBA—has grown exponentially in both size and political influence over the past decade. “ALBA currently has close to 70 million members, an economy of almost $700 billion and a territory of 2.5 million square kilometers,” notes Latin America expert Joel Hirst. “If Argentina is included in this mix, ALBA becomes larger than Mexico.”
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And Iran has been involved in ALBA’s activities almost from its inception.

A formal observer nation of the bloc, the Islamic Republic is believed to have provided nearly $2 million in seed money for the establishment of the academy, and no less senior a figure than Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi presided over the facility’s formal inauguration in May 2011.
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Today, the facility remains shrouded in mystery, but at least some facts have come to light. Covering over 5,500 square meters and with the capacity to garrison over 200 students at once, the school states that its goal is to “shape civilian and military leadership that will define the role of the armed forces for the study of defense, security and development in Latin America.”
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Its curriculum stresses what is commonly known as fourth-generation warfare—asymmetric tactics and ideological indoctrination.
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Iran’s involvement in the ALBA school serves as a microcosm of its activities in the Americas. Over the past decade, the Islamic Republic’s presence in the region has expanded dramatically, and it is still growing. So, too, is the potential threat that Iran poses to the U.S. homeland.

IRAN AND VENEZUELA: BIRDS OF A FEATHER

Understanding Iran’s presence in Latin America today begins with Venezuela. Since the Islamic Republic first exhibited activity in the Western Hemisphere in the mid-1980s, when it helped its chief terrorist proxy, Hezbollah, become entrenched in the lawless Tri-Border Area at the intersection of Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay, the Iranian regime’s formal outreach to the region has grown significantly. Its roots lie in December 1998, when Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías was elected president of Venezuela.

Chávez’s ascent to power was a long-sought-after political victory for Venezuela’s radical left. In 1992, Chávez—at that time, a military officer—attempted to orchestrate a coup to unseat the country’s president, Carlos Andrés Pérez Rodríguez.
The attempt failed, and Chávez was imprisoned, even as Venezuela descended into a protracted period of political upheaval. Upon his release a little over a year later, Chávez rose to lead the country’s leftist political opposition, ultimately running for—and securing—the presidency in Venezuela’s 1998 elections.

Once installed in office, Chávez commenced a dramatic change in Venezuela’s political direction. Between April and July of 1999, he stage-managed the passage of a referendum authorizing the drafting of a new national constitution—one encapsulating the radical, revolutionary worldview the new strongman had come to embrace.
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That vision was built upon the nineteenth-century Spanish explorer Simón de Bolívar’s concept for “Gran Colombia”: a united Latin American federation of states free of external influence. In Chávez’s hands, however, Bolívar’s ideas took on a distinctly anti-American, antiestablishment bent. They also launched Venezuela’s new leader on a quest for allies who shared his radical vision.

Iran, with its long pedigree of revolutionary fervor, emerged as a natural potential partner. Accordingly, Chávez took his first trip to the Islamic Republic in the spring of 2001, hoping to jump-start a fraternal anti-American alliance.
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His goal was a high-minded one: in his words, it was to “prepare the road for peace, justice, stability, and progress in the 21st century.”
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But the reception Chávez received was chilly; the Iranian regime, preoccupied with the coalition presence in neighboring Afghanistan and Iraq and in the throes of significant domestic ferment, was hesitant to forge ties to Venezuela, at least initially.
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All this changed, however, with the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the Iranian presidency in 2005. From the start, the firebrand former mayor of Tehran shared a warm personal rapport with the Venezuelan president. There was also a common vision: despite the tactical differences,
Chávez’s dream of an anti-American axis in the Western Hemisphere jibed well with Iran’s brand of insurgent, revolutionary political Islam.