Iran’s foothold in Venezuela requires a tougher response

In April, President Biden wisely chose to revoke temporary sanctions relief against Venezuela’s energy sector. But in the six months while sanctions were waived, Washington discovered that Nicolás Maduro’s regime was allowing Iranian agents to use Venezuela as a staging ground to plan attacks on U.S. soil.

So far, the Biden administration has failed to warn Venezuela that sanctions will be maintained, sharpened and fully enforced until this unacceptable risk to U.S. national security ends.

In February, the FBI issued an alert for an Iranian spy who had plotted assassinations against U.S. government officials and worked to gather intelligence on domestic targets. The FBI noted that the Iranian intelligence operative “has ties to or may visit Iran and Venezuela,” and was recruiting individuals to kill current and former American officials as revenge for the U.S. killing Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Quds Force Commander Qasem Soleimani, and for “surveillance activities focused on religious sites, businesses, and other facilities in the United States.”

The disturbing and dangerous ties between Iran and Venezuela aren’t new. The IRGC, a U.S.-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization, has become increasingly intertwined in Venezuela’s security and intelligence apparatus since 2010, when Quds Force operatives were already increasing their presence in the country under Hugo Chavez.

That year, Quds Force members were reportedly transported to Venezuela on so-called “Aeroterror” flights, which also facilitated the transfer of explosives, weapons, Iranian intelligence operatives, and members of Hezbollah and Hamas between Caracas, Damascus and Tehran.

More recently, Iran’s foreign minister offered an IRGC unit to the Maduro regime to help maintain the legitimacy of the socialist dictator domestically, with the Quds Force assisting Venezuela’s National Guard to keep opposition at bay.

As Iran and Venezuela have further integrated their intelligence and espionage operations, so too have the regimes integrated their energy and financial assets, in defiance of U.S. sanctions.

Since 2008, the U.S. Treasury has identified Venezuela-based Banco Internacional de Desarrollo and the Iran-Venezuela Bi-National Bank as supplying financial services for Iran’s Ministry of Defense and Armed Forces Logistics, with sanctions fully reimposed as recently as 2018. The latter is responsible for supporting logistics for not only the IRGC but also Iran’s missile and nuclear programs.

After the U.S. sanctioned Venezuela’s state-run oil company Petroleos de Venezuela in 2019, the Maduro regime bypassed use of the U.S. dollar by shipping gold bars to Tehran as payment for Iran’s ongoing assistance in restoring Venezuela’s gas refineries. This helped establish an ecosystem through which the National Iranian Tanker Company shipped more than 12 million barrels of crude and gas condensate to Venezuela for refining, with roughly the same amount of Venezuelan fuel oil shipped back to Iran.

In light of enhanced threats to the U.S. homeland emanating from the Iran-Venezuela alliance, the Biden administration needs to crack down more thoroughly on all actors aiding the illicit transfer of Iranian oil and Venezuelan gas that funds Iran’s terror apparatus. The Treasury Department should do so by broadening the definition of which activities constitute “significant support” to Iran’s shipping sector to include owners and operators, port authorities, importing agents, management firms, insurance companies and classification societies. This would impose real costs on companies or entities that provide services to support the Iran-Venezuela barter system.

Likewise, Treasury must apply further pressure on global financial institutions. In accordance with the Office of Foreign Assets Control regulations issued in 2010, it must restrict from the U.S. financial system companies discovered to engage in transactions with sanctioned entities such as the Venezuelan banks mentioned above.

In his national address during the Cuban Missile Crisis, President John F. Kennedy called the Soviet Union’s decision to position strategic weapons on America’s doorstep “a deliberately provocative and unjustified change in the status quo which cannot be accepted by this country, if our courage and our commitments are ever to be trusted again by either friend or foe.”

The principle that Kennedy put forward — that the foundation of the United States’s credibility around the world is our ability to defend ourselves in our own hemisphere — is instructive. Just as Cuba served Soviet interests during the Cold War by projecting power and ideology into the Americas, Venezuela now plays a similar role for Iran, challenging U.S. supremacy and serving as a beachhead for operations that undermine or threaten our national security.

Biden should take Kennedy’s words to heart and make clear that Venezuela will be held economically, diplomatically and militarily accountable for any Iranian attacks against Americans planned or carried out with support from Maduro’s regime in Venezuela.

Jeb Bush served as governor of Florida from 1998 to 2006. He and Norm Roule are senior advisers at United Against Nuclear Iran.