The United States has pressured Bolivian authorities to expel suspected Iranian spies from the South American country, according to a January 24 report by Reuters. The United States also wants Bolivia to designate the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization, in addition to the Lebanon-based armed group Hezbollah and the Palestinian militant organization Hamas, which are thought to be regional proxies for Tehran.
In a comment to Reuters, Bolivia’s foreign ministry stated that “there is still no completely defined position regarding this matter.” Alongside Nicaragua, the South American country – the poorest in the region – has become a “secondary node” for Iranian counterintelligence in recent years, according to retired CIA officer Rick de la Torre. Current and former US officials cited permissive political conditions as factors contributing to the presence of Iran and its allies. The benefit of such presence, according to de la Torre, was that it allowed for Tehran to quietly conduct operations in neighboring states with more capable and less friendly states nearby, as Hezbollah is alleged to have done in recent years. In 2016, Bolivian authorities seized several tons of explosives from a Hezbollah-affiliated warehouse, and operations such as narcotic trafficking and money laundering in the Americas more broadly serve as a significant source of revenue for the group. However, how robust this presence actually is is significantly debated by the intelligence community.
The current U.S. pressure is part of a larger push in the Americas to counter Iran’s influence, which so far has resulted in similar designations in Ecuador and Argentina, as well as pressure to do so in Chile, Peru, and Panama, Reuters’ sources said. It also comes in the wake of the January 3 military intervention that led to the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. With de facto U.S. control of Venezuela, which had previously served as Tehran’s principle ally in the Americas, Bolivia’s status as a “secondary node” assumed increased salience for the embattled Middle Eastern regime, which has seen its official and proxy capacities eroded over the past year by highly destructive conflicts with the United States and Israel, as well as a crackdown on recent domestic protests which have generated intense international scrutiny.
While the thwarting of terrorist attacks is undoubtedly beneficial, the degree to which U.S. pressure in Bolivia – as well as the Americas more broadly – actually increases security is debatable. Pressure on the issue of Iranian influence must be contextualized within the trend of escalating attempts by the United States to more forcefully assert its influence over sovereign states in the Americas, including the Venezuelan intervention and politically motivated economic policy directed at countries such as Argentina. If such actions effectively limit the abilities of states throughout the Americas to independently set their own foreign policies, then these U.S. actions could actually reduce security, both by limiting South American states’ abilities to negotiate relatively more peaceful relations with Tehran, as well as trigger backlash against the United States, given longstanding perceptions within the region of the United States as a neocolonial power.
Ultimately, U.S. pressure in Bolivia represents a relatively minor development in the trajectory of geopolitical relations between the United States and the rest of the Americas. This development is enmeshed in the complexity of Iran’s relationship with the West, and comprehensive solutions to ensure peace should focus on addressing the war in Palestine and allowing the Iranian people to hold their leaders accountable. In Bolivia, the United States should make sure not to impede on Bolivia’s sovereignty, while promoting economic development and enhancing state capacity to ensure that the country is capable of subduing potential terrorist threats autonomously, without the need for significant external control or dependence on the United States.
