Joseph Humire: Hezbollah’s operation in Latin America is layered

Joseph Humire, Executive Director of the Center for a Secure Free Society, describes Iran’s strategic penetration of Latin America on Secure Freedom Radio.

“The death of Soleimani lit up a lot of the attention worldwide on the Quds force and their connection to proxy networks, particularly Hezbollah. What we saw in the immediate aftermath of his death was a semblance of solidarity of many entities within Latin America- most prominently the governments of Cuba and Venezuela, but also non-state actors such as the FARC in Columbia and these Islamic centers Iran has propped up all over Latin America.”

Humire later explains how Soleimani had such a big presence in Latin America:

“One of Soleimani’s Latin legacies in many respects is establishing this trans-regional network, the cohesiveness of this network, and his ability to use the network as a weapon of asymmetric warfare. This was Soleimani’s mandate as the leader of the Quds force. Soleimani was important to the ayatollahs in Iran because their primary mission is to export the Iranian revolution worldwide and Soleimani was their guy.”

Humire continues to describe how these Hezbollah cells manifest themselves in Latin America:

“I don’t want to say this is the case for all of these communities, but Lebanese communities are really large in Latin American countries, particularly in Brazil, Paraguay, Argentina, parts pf central America, Ecuador etc. Now, this does not mean Hezbollah controls these communities. Nonetheless, they use these communities as a gateway as a way to infiltrate and get into Latin America. I think many people get confused when looking at Hezbollah in Latin America because their operation is layered. Hezbollah has a clandestine arm and their clandestine arm works much like any intelligence service.”

Listen to the full show here!