Two sources having first-hand information about the matter reveal that the United States is pressuring Bolivia to expel the suspected Iranian spies in the South American nation and declare the Iranian elite Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps a terrorist organisation.

Washington is also urging the government in La Paz to declare Lebanese armed group Hezbollah and Palestinian militant organisation Hamas – both of which the government deems to be proxies of Tehran – terrorist groups, said the sources who wanted to remain anonymous when discussing sensitive dialogues.

The covert diplomatic pressure follows a larger American initiative of extending geopolitical reach in Latin America and reducing the influence of its foes in the area.

After an earlier operation in January to seize the Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, U.S. officials hastened the government of interim President Delcy Rodriguez to reduce economic and security collaboration between Caracas and Tehran, as another source conversant with the affair revealed. Venezuela and Iran were long-time allies.

The Bolivian foreign ministry, when asked to comment, stated that “no fully defined stance on the same issue yet existed.” The State Department failed to respond to a request for comment, and the Iranian mission to the United Nations refused to comment.

SPY GAMES IN SOUTH AMERICA

Bolivia is a landlocked nation of 12 million inhabitants in the very middle of South America that would traditionally appear to be a very unlikely location where a proxy war between the world powers would take place. Certain single and retired officials of the United States, however, claimed that the country has now emerged as a significant point of diplomatic and intelligence activities by the Iranians all over the continent.

Partly, that has been because of what the U.S. officials have characterised as a lax counterintelligence environment, the fact that the country is centrally located along with multiple other countries, some of which seem to have been the victim of the alleged Hezbollah plots over recent years.

According to Rick de la Torre, a retired high-ranking CIA officer who served as the head of the Latin American office in Caracas, Venezuela, the base of the Iranian diplomatic and intelligence activities in Latin America was in Caracas. But Bolivia and Nicaragua – whose authoritarian regime is on poor terms with Washington – have recently become the secondary nodes of Tehran in the region.

“The value of Bolivia to Tehran,” as de la Torre said, “was the sense of a permissive political climate, the light scrutiny and the central location.”

“As a rule, the tendencies that you observe throughout Latin America are Iran and Hezbollah establishing bases in the most liberal jurisdictions and then throwing almost silent tentacles to more able or higher-value states in their strategic vicinity.”

TRANSFORMING THE POLITICAL LANDSCAPE

Under his tenure as president of the Republic of Bolivia, from 2006 to 2019, Evo Morales strengthened his relations with Iran, extending the relationship between the two countries to defence and security issues, among other things, and claimed that both countries were fighting U.S. imperialism.

The U.S. officials had a strong perception that Morales and leftist President Luis Arce, who ruled until the end of 2020, were unresponsive to possible measures to separate La Paz and Tehran. But now U.S officials think that they have a rare chance in the wake of the October election of centrist Rodrigo Paz, whose presidency will put an end to two decades of almost uninterrupted rule by the left-wing MAS party.

The government of Paz, which has inherited gross economic instability and a disjointed legislative body, has been trying to mend its relationship with Washington, in addition to promoting private investment. The U.S. officials have publicly rejoiced with the election of Paz, and the U.S. has offered Bolivia the facility of grant funding that is administered by the Millennium Challenge Corporation, which is an independent agency based in the U.S.

THE DRIVE TO COUNTER IRAN IS INCREASING

The sources reported that the push in Bolivia, which is related to Iran, is just one of a larger U.S. campaign in the area. In September, a U.S. ally, Ecuador, declared the IRGC, Hamas and Hezbollah as terrorist groups and Argentina declared the Quds Force in Iran as a terrorist organisation last week. The sources said that the U.S. championed both moves.

Since the Iranian Revolution of 1979, the IRGC has been an elite military group that is loyal to the Supreme Leader, and the Quds Force is a branch of the IRGC, which undertakes overseas missions.

Although the push to create a geopolitical divide between Iran and Latin America is not new, it is possible to note that the effort is intensifying. In part, the sources said, a delegation of State Department and intelligence officials flew to La Paz this month to talk about the possible terrorist designations.

Rather, the U.S. officials have also talked about advocating terrorist designations in Chile, Peru and Panama, the officials added, but have not indicated how they have addressed counterparts in the respective nations. Hezbollah members have been operating in all those countries, U.S officials have alleged, and all of them have U.S.-aligned presidents or presidents-elect.

The Panamanian foreign ministry claimed that it has not talked about the matter with the U.S officials. The foreign ministry of Chile responded by saying that they do not comment on the possibility of negotiations with other countries, but that Chile is on the list of state-sponsored terror groups which is provided by the United Nations. The Peruvian foreign ministry failed to comment on a request.

IRGC LONG ACTIVE IN LATIN AMERICA HEZBOLLAH

One of the latest high-profile IRGC operations in the area was an alleged assassination attempt on the Israeli ambassador to Mexico, which was thwarted by Mexican security agencies last year. Part of the plot was plotted by an undercover Quds Force officer who was in Caracas in November, one of the sources reported it in November as reported by Axios.

Allied with Tehran, Lebanon-based Hezbollah has always been operating in Latin America, also earning money to fund its activities worldwide through illegal smuggling networks and sometimes also by organising terrorist attacks.

Nevertheless, even though officials in the United States are generally of the opinion that Hezbollah has had a long-standing presence in Latin America, there is much disagreement among the intelligence community on the extent to which it has been strong.

There have been proposals that the fundraising operations of the group in the area are organised and structured up the line; others state that certain financial activities attributed to Hezbollah are actually a byproduct of donations and remittances sent by the large Lebanese diaspora in Latin America that find their way into Hezbollah supporters by coincidence.

“In my opinion, Hezbollah leadership does not micromanage all criminal plans, but it does license and enjoy a global facilitating infrastructure which involves Latin America,” said de la Torre, the retired CIA officer.