Pompeo
Attempts to Link
Iran, Hezbollah to Crisis in
Venezuela
“People
don’t recognize that Hezbollah has active cells — the Iranians
are impacting the people of Venezuela and throughout South America.
We have an obligation to take down that risk for America and [what
we’ll talk about is] how we do that in South America and all across
the globe.” — Mike Pompeo
by
Whitney Webb
8
February, 2019
WASHINGTON — During a Wednesday night interview with FOX Business host Trish Regan, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made several statements that raised eyebrows, such as claiming that Cuba had invaded Venezuela and “taken control” of the Venezuela’s “security apparatus” and that U.S. sanctions illegally imposed on Venezuela “aren’t aimed at the Venezuelan people.”
However, the most surprising claim Pompeo made in the interview was that Hezbollah and Iran were “active” in Venezuela, presenting a national security “risk for America.”
After accusing China, Cuba and Russia of interfering with U.S. efforts to install U.S.-funded opposition figure Juan Guaidó and oust current Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, Pompeo made the following assertion:People don’t recognize that Hezbollah has active cells — the Iranians are impacting the people of Venezuela and throughout South America. We have an obligation to take down that risk for America and part of what we will talk about next week in Warsaw is certainly how we do that in South America and all across the globe.”
Watch
| Mike Pompeo Interviewed by Fox Business’ Trish Regan on
Venezuela
Pompeo’s
mention of Hezbollah — a political party that has wide
support in
Lebanon’s democracy — has
been noted by many
outlets for
seemingly providing a
justification for
the U.S.’ “obligation” to intervene in Venezuela, potentially
with military force, by attempting to link the Venezuelan government
to the U.S.’ Middle Eastern enemies. What has been entirely
overlooked, however, is the fact that Pompeo also signaled a promise
of military intervention “all across the globe.”
Indeed,
if the U.S. intervenes in Venezuela with Hezbollah as the pretext, it
sets a precedent for going to war where Hezbollah is actually located
— Lebanon — as well as against Hezbollah’s most powerful
regional ally and favorite Trump-era boogeyman, Iran.
A whole doctrine out of whole cloth
Pompeo’s
suggestion that Hezbollah is “active” in Venezuela has slowly
become a Trump administration talking point over the course of the
past two years, largely due to the influence of Pompeo — who
publicly made the claim in August
2017 —
himself and National Security Adviser John Bolton.
Bolton
helped to bolster the claim that Venezuela’s government is
connected to Hezbollah, through his connections to the Gatestone
Institute, which Bolton chaired from
2013 to 2018 and used
to heavily promote the
alleged Hezbollah-Venezuela link over that time frame. Bolton, as
recently as last January, argued
that “Hezbollah,
exploiting the long history of expatriate Middle Eastern trading
networks in Latin America, remains a murky but continuing threat”
in Venezuela, providing no evidence to back up his claim beyond
suggesting that Middle Eastern immigrants to Venezuela are indicative
of a Hezbollah presence.
Claims
of Hezbollah’s links to Venezuela largely revolve around one man,
former Venezuelan Vice President Tarek Al Aissami, who is of
Lebanon-Syrian ancestry. The claims have been promoted as fact –
despite an absence of concrete evidence – by a mix of
neoconservative think tanks, such as the Center
for a Secure Free Society,
and former Bush officials, such as Roger
Noriega,
along with the Bolton and AIPAC-linked Gatestone
Institute.
Similarly,
many of these same groups, particularly John Bolton, have been
instrumental in asserting that Iran – a strategic ally of Chavista
Venezuela –is not in Venezuela for any “normal” alliance but in
order to provide cover for alleged illicit activities, including its
alleged ambitions to build a nuclear bomb. Bolton has accused
Venezuela of harboring and collaborating with Iranian criminals and
“smugglers;” and, during a
2013 hearing,
Bolton claimed that Iran was operating in Venezuela in order to avoid
international scrutiny:
These are expert smugglers with — the largest Iranian diplomatic facility in the world is in Caracas, Venezuela […] they are laundering their money through the Venezuelan banks.”
Bolton
has also
asserted that
Iran uses Venezuela “to retain access to the country’s extensive
uranium reserves,” suggesting that Venezuela is connected to Iran’s
alleged desire to acquire and develop nuclear weapons. However,
independent scientists have
long countered that
Venezuelan uranium deposits are minimal and likely impractical to
extract.
Yet,
that didn’t stop the usual pro-intervention think tanks — such as
the Center for a Secure Free Society and the Center for Strategic and
International Studies, whose board
of trustees includes
Henry Kissinger, ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods and notorious
neoconservative Richard Armitage — from promoting the
claim.
Notably,
no concrete evidence of either an illicit Hezbollah-Venezuela or an
Iran-Venezuela connection has ever emerged beyond innuendo made by
individuals and organizations with a vested interest in demonizing
anti-imperialist governments in Latin America and beyond.
Terror here, terror there, terror everywhere
While
the lack of evidence should be enough to write off this claim, it is
still regurgitated by Trump officials and pro-interventionists
because it offers a “terror threat” justification for U.S.
meddling and potentially U.S. military intervention in Venezuela, as
Hezbollah is considered a terror group by the United States.
Indeed,
the potential for U.S. military intervention in Venezuela in order to
“support” the parallel government of the U.S.-backed Juan Guaidó
has been repeatedly mentioned by top
Trump officials,
including Trump
himself in
recent days. With Hezbollah and Iran thrown into the mix, the Trump
administration is seeking to link its aggressive Middle East policy
with its aggressive Venezuela policy in order to justify intervention
in Venezuela because it is in “our hemisphere,” as Pompeo stated
during his recent interview.
However,
given the attempt to establish this link between Venezuela and
Hezbollah/Iran, it must be understood that this is a connection that
the Trump administration will seek to use in both directions. Indeed,
if the U.S. succeeds in deposing the current Venezuelan government by
using the alleged threat of Iran and Hezbollah as pretext, it could
then link that intervention in Venezuela to the need to intervene at
the source of those pretexts: Lebanon and Iran.
Indeed,
the U.S.-backed regime-change efforts targeting Iran are already well
underway and
the same Trump officials now promoting the alleged link between Iran,
Hezbollah and Venezuela are those who have long
pushed for a
preemptive war with
Iran.
In
Lebanon’s case, U.S. threats towards Lebanon have failed to derail
Hezbollah’s popularity in the country, as evidenced by Lebanon’s
most recent elections. However, Israel — whose influence over the
Trump administration’s foreign policy has been the subject of
numerous MintPress reports
— has been actively
preparing for war with
Lebanon for over a year, with Hezbollah and Hezbollah-supporting
civilians as
the targets.
As MintPress previously
reported,
these war preparations have the full
support of
the United States and top U.S. military commanders have openly stated
that — when the war starts — U.S. troops are “prepared to die”
for Israel and Israel’s military will have final say over whether
or not Americans are deployed to fight and die in this war.
With
Pompeo’s recent statement that America is “obligated to take
down” the risk of Hezbollah and Iran in Venezuela and beyond, his
comments must be seen for what they are: a promise that U.S.
intervention and potentially a military invasion in Venezuela will be
just the beginning for the new neoconservatives who hold complete
control over Trump administration foreign policy.
Top
Photo | U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo speaks during a media
conference after a meeting of NATO foreign ministers at NATO
headquarters in Brussels, Dec. 4, 2018. Francisco Seco | AP
Whitney
Webb is
a staff writer for MintPress News and has contributed to several
other independent, alternative outlets. Her work has appeared on
sites such as Global Research, the Ron Paul Institute, and 21st
Century Wire among others. She also makes guest appearances to
discuss politics on radio and television. She currently lives with
her family in southern Chile.
Hal
Turner hates the “communists” as much as he loves the truth.
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shown on the scalable map below:
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