Iran’s Strategy in the Western Hemisphere

Aug. 13 2024

Relations between Caracas and Tehran must be seen as part of a larger picture of Iranian influence in Latin America. Danny Citrinowicz explains:

Tehran has identified countries where left-wing parties have been voted into power as countries it can work with to limit the influence of the United States and undermine Israeli efforts to expand its political and military sway in the region. This fact squares with Iran’s broader approach, whereby it is willing to cooperate with anyone who is open to joining forces in opposition to Western influence anywhere in the world.

In concrete terms, Iran is investing diplomatic and military efforts in a number of key countries in Latin America, primarily Venezuela, which Tehran views as the hub of its activities on the continent. In addition to diplomatic activity, relations between Tehran and Caracas also include widespread security cooperation, based on the substantial military aid—drones and warships—that Iran provides to Venezuela.

Against the backdrop of this worrying pattern, which comes at a time when China and Russia are also trying to take advantage of the vacuum and tighten their footholds in Latin America, the West’s lack of response—including the United States—is glaring. It appears that the U.S. administration is preoccupied . . . in efforts to prevent the outbreak of an all-out war in the Middle East and is far less attentive to what is happening in its own backyard.

Read more at Institute for National Security Studies

More about: Iran, Latin America, Venezuela

A Letter to the Liberal Jews of 2024

One of the phenomena Wertheimer discusses in that essay is the people who call themselves “October 8 Jews” to describe “their transition from slumbering complacency to vigilant activism.” But there is no small number of American Jews who slumber on, or remain half-awake, unable to process fully events that run deeply contrary to their assumptions about the world. John Podhoretz addresses this group:

[I]n the year since October 7, you have taken odd solace at odd moments, as when Israel comes under criticism for the supposedly indiscriminate tactics it’s using in Gaza. That wouldn’t seem to be a good thing, but it does allow you to express that wondrous complexity, according to which, yes, of course, Israel must be allowed to defend itself—but within limits, within reason, and certainly not with this brute at its helm. Gazans must eat! Israeli soldiers must be put at greater risk of harm to lower the death toll!

Does it matter that Hamas has rejected fourteen separate cease-fire proposals designed with that very purpose? It doesn’t. Because the harsh reality—that Hamas and the Iran axis are evildoers who seek the mass murder of Jews and the elimination of the Jewish state—is just not very complicated at all. [This truth] compels you to accept that the blessed gift of being an American Jew over the past century has lulled you and people like you into an entirely false sense of safety and security. From your privileged perch, you have spent decades viewing with withering contempt others who take in the span and arc of Jewish history and say, as on Passover, “In every generation, they stand against us to destroy us.”

So simplistic, you thought. So vulgar. And yet, so true.

Read more at Commentary

More about: American Jewry, Gaza War 2023, Liberalism