Iran in Our Backyard: Trouble on the Horizon in Latin America (Commentary, Text and Context) (Reprint‪)‬

Thirty years ago, with his rise to power and inception of a new radical Shiite Islamic government in oil-rich Iran, the country's new leader, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, proclaimed aspirations of exporting his Islamic revolution, and expanding Iran's power to the four corners of the world. A few weeks ago, a major step was taken in the realization of Khomeini's dream, when the regime's President Mahmud Ahmadi-nejad received the red-carpet treatment in an official visit to Brazil. Ahmadi-nejad's arrival in South America's largest country is the latest development in Tehran's growing push into Latin America that began nearly 20 years ago. While recent U.S. administrations have been focused on the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran to the stability of the Middle East, officials seem to have overlooked the even more pressing threat from Iran to our national security brewing in our own backyard. Perhaps the most visible signs of Iran's nefarious activities in Central and South America come directly from its fully funded proxy, Hezbollah, a Lebanese-based group listed as a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department. Hezbollah, through funding and orders from Iran, has been targeting Americans since the early 1980s, and was directly responsible for carrying out the bombing of U.S. Marines barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, in October 1983 that claimed the lives of 241 U.S. servicemen. Since the early 1990s, Hezbollah has expanded its tentacles beyond the Middle East, creating a South American stronghold in the remote and lawless region known as the Tri-border, which consists of the area connecting the borders of Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina. With the help of sympathetic Shiite Muslim Lebanese immigrants living in the region, Hezbollah has used the Tri-border for terrorist training camps, a base to launch terrorist bombing attacks in South America and a safe haven to funnel millions of dollars from their narco-trafficing and illegal smuggling activities to their headquarters in the Middle East.