Argentina: The Airbridge Linking Tehran And Caracas

An Argentine court reportedly decided on January 8 to order a Boeing 747 plane—previously owned by the Islamic Republic’s state airline company Mahan Air—to be returned to U.S. jurisdiction. If the order takes effect, it will hinder cooperation between two anti-American regimes: Iran and Venezuela. This U.S.-origin cargo plane should not be in the hands of regimes using it to undermine U.S. national security interests.

Iran wants to establish a logistical airbridge connecting Tehran to Caracas that would be used for weapons proliferation, personnel deployments, money laundering, narcotics trafficking, cash and gold transfers, and even the shipment of parts and equipment for Venezuela’s derelict oil and gas infrastructure.

The Western Hemisphere is not immune from Iran’s signature export, Islamic Revolution, and its program of violence, subversion, and destabilization. In fact, in 1992 Hezbollah conducted devastating bombings against the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires, Argentina. In 1994, it blew up a Jewish community center in that same city. Both attacks were supported by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

U.S. and Argentine authorities must dismantle the IRGC’s logistical network that allows it to operate in the Western Hemisphere. Argentina’s President Javier Milei, who is known for his staunch positions against the Islamic Republic, could become a crucial ally to the U.S. in preventing Iranian illicit activities in the Western Hemisphere.

Argentine authorities have taken a step in that direction in seizing the cargo plane in June 2022. The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), in turn, made a request two months later for it to be returned to the U.S. because its transfer in 2021 to Emtrasur, a subsidiary of Venezuela’s “civilian” state airline company Conviasa, violated U.S. export controls prohibiting Mahan Air from transferring it. 

However, there may be more to this story than an export control violation. Argentine authorities acknowledged the suspicious circumstances surrounding the plane’s activities and crew. The pilot of the plane, Gholamreza Ghasemi Abbassi, was a former IRGC Aerospace Force general and is a shareholder and board member of Qeshm Fars Air, a cargo line owned by Mahan Air that has been tracked regularly flying to Russia since the war in Ukraine began in February 2022.

There were 14 Venezuelans and 5 Iranians traveling on board the Emtrasur plane when it was grounded. A federal judge in Argentina ordered that three Venezuelan and four Iranians of the crew be retained in the country to allow for an investigation. At least two of the crew are believed to have ties to the Quds Force, the extraterritorial branch of the U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization the IRGC. Whether the crew has returned to their home countries is unclear.

The plane was purportedly hired to deliver auto parts from Mexico to Argentina when it stopped in Caracas ostensibly to refuel. In the month before its grounding, the plane had landed in Paraguay, near the border with Argentina, where it loaded cigarettes intended to be delivered to Aruba.

Various theories about the nature of the operation have emerged in the media. They range from investigative reports that the cigarette company is tied to Hezbollah and controlled by Horacio Cartes, the former president of Paraguay, to an Argentine lawmaker’s accusations that the plane’s crew intended to attack human targets.

Recent history shows that Iran sees an airbridge linking Tehran to Caracas as an important initiative to undermine U.S. security interests in the Western Hemisphere. “Aero-terror” was the nickname a U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) task force gave to Conviasa’s weekly flights from Caracas to Tehran via Damascus between 2007 until they were abruptly closed in 2015. On these flights, Iranian and Iran-sponsored Hamas and Hezbollah operatives, as well as arms and explosives, streamed into Venezuela in exchange for narcotics and cash, netting Hezbollah billions of dollars. The Conviasa flights between Caracas and Tehran resumed in May 2022.

These are not hypothetical challenges to U.S. interests. According to a DOJ indictment issued in May 2020, Venezuelan national Adel El Zabayar went to the Middle East in the mid 2010s to recruit Hamas and Hezbollah operatives to train in Venezuela and establish terrorist cells in the Western Hemisphere and flood the U.S. with cocaine. In 2014, Zabayar received a Lebanese cargo plane full of rocket-propelled grenade launchers, AK-103s, and sniper rifles in Venezuela, after returning from the Middle East. The owner and operator of the Lebanese cargo plane and Hezbollah’s role in these operations were not clarified in the DOJ press release.

The U.S. must focus closely on the IRGC and Hezbollah’s actions which threaten the U.S. homeland from what has effectively become a forward operating base in Venezuela. These efforts should be given priority especially given recent U.S. intelligence reporting a heightened risk of Hezbollah attacks against U.S. interests, including on U.S. soil.

Jerry Canto is a research analyst at United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI). He is on Twitter @JerryCanto2.