There was a time not long ago when a massive military attack against Iran by the United States and Israel would have kicked up a ferocious response in Latin America. Those were the days when the Islamic Republic had cultivated close ties with countries across the region, finding in their leftist leaders not a deep ideological affinity but instead a shared hatred of U.S. power and the U.S.-led global order.
Now, however, Iran is hearing scant declarations of support from countries with which it had enjoyed close diplomatic, economic and security ties. The war is highlighting just how thoroughly Iran’s strategic relations with Latin America have unraveled.
There’s much that divides the worldview of an Islamist theocracy from Latin American socialism. But in the early 2000s, after the leftist firebrand Hugo Chavez rose to power in oil-rich Venezuela and started using his country’s petrochemical wealth to boost ideological soulmates and lambast what he called the U.S. “empire,” Tehran’s leaders saw an opening. Before long, Iran had constructed a network of close alliances, particularly in South America, aided by the fortuitous timing of the powerful Pink Tide that was propelling leftist leaders to power there.