By Gram Slattery
WASHINGTON, Jan 24 (Reuters) – The United States is pushing Bolivia to kick suspected Iranian spies out of the South American country and designate Tehran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps as a terrorist group, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the matter.
Washington also wants the government in La Paz to designate Lebanese armed group Hezbollah and Palestinian militant organization Hamas – both of which the United States considers to be proxies of Tehran – as terrorist organizations, said the sources, who requested anonymity to discuss sensitive conversations.
The private diplomatic push comes amid a broader U.S. effort to deepen its geopolitical influence in Latin America and diminish that of its adversaries in the region.
Following an operation earlier in January to capture Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, U.S. officials quickly pushed the government of interim President Delcy Rodriguez to curtail economic and security cooperation between Caracas and Tehran, according to a separate source familiar with the matter. For years, Venezuela and Iran had been steadfast allies.
Asked for comment, the Bolivian foreign ministry said that “there is still no completely defined position regarding this matter.” The State Department did not respond to a request for comment, while the Iranian mission to the United Nations declined to comment.
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SPY GAMES IN SOUTH AMERICA
Bolivia, a landlocked country of 12 million people located in the heart of South America, would at first glance seem to be an unlikely venue for a proxy struggle between major world powers. Some current and former U.S. officials, however, said the nation has become an important base for Iran‘s diplomatic and intelligence operations throughout the continent.
In part, that is because of what U.S. officials have described as a permissive counterintelligence environment, as well as the nation’s central location bordering several other nations, some of which have allegedly been the victim of attempted Hezbollah plots in recent years.
Rick de la Torre, a retired senior CIA officer and former Caracas chief of station, said Iran‘s base of diplomatic and intelligence operations in Latin America was Venezuela. However, Bolivia and Nicaragua – where an authoritarian government has cool relations with Washington – have served as Tehran’s “secondary nodes” in the region in recent years.
“(Bolivia’s) value to Tehran was the permissive political climate, lighter scrutiny and central geography,” de la Torre said.
“In practice, the pattern you see across Latin America is Iran and Hezbollah using the most permissive jurisdictions as hubs, then projecting quietly into more capable or higher-value states nearby.”
CHANGING POLITICAL LANDSCAPE
Evo Morales, Bolivia’s leftist president from 2006 to 2019, deepened ties to Iran over the course of his presidency, including on defense and security-related matters, arguing both nations were united in the fight against U.S. imperialism.
Morales and leftist President Luis Arce, who governed from 2020 until late last year, were widely seen by U.S. officials as unreceptive to potential efforts to distance La Paz from Tehran. Now, however, U.S. officials believe they have a unique opportunity following the October election of centrist Rodrigo Paz, whose presidency marks an end to two decades of near-continuous rule by the leftist MAS party.
