US Secretary of State Marco Rubio cast Venezuela as a regional platform for Iranian influence, describing Nicolás Maduro’s government as a narcotics transit hub that hosts Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah.
Rubio, speaking in a Fox News interview broadcast on Tuesday, said: “Iran, it’s IRGC, and even Hezbollah has a presence in South America, and one of their anchor presence – especially for the Iranians – is inside of Venezuela.”
He added: “Where they have planted their flag in our hemisphere is on Venezuelan territory, with the full and open cooperation of that regime.”
Washington is stepping up a counter-drug mission involving US naval assets in the Caribbean and nearby waters.
Rubio also said the administration used limited force to destroy Iranian nuclear sites earlier this year.
“The President conducted a precise campaign. It wasn’t a prolonged war. It was a 24-hour operation; B-2 bombers left the mainland of the United States, came over a defined target, dropped the payload – 14 missiles or 14 rockets right into the holes of this facility,” he said.
Framing the approach as narrowly tailored, Rubio said: “That’s a great example of the limited and strategic and focused use of American power to achieve something that’s in our national interest. It was in our national interest not to have Iran have a nuclear program that can be turned into a weapons program that could one day threaten the United States.”
Iran and radical Islamism
Rubio tied Iran to what he called a wider campaign by radical Islamist actors against the West.
“Radical Islam has designs, openly, on the West – on the United States, on Europe,” he said.
“And they are prepared to conduct acts of terrorism – in the case of Iran, nation-state actions, assassinations, murders, you name it.”
Rubio also said the administration remains open to diplomacy but skeptical of Maduro’s commitments.
“If you can work out a way where you can bring stability to the hemisphere, you can make Venezuela help be a country that isn’t the base for Iranian influence against and activities against the United States, that would be great,” he said.
The United States has accused figures close to Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro of involvement in trafficking into the US.
Uncertainty spiked over the weekend after President Donald Trump declared Venezuela’s surrounding airspace “closed in its entirety,” though he later cautioned reporters not to “read anything into it” regarding immediate military action.
For Tehran, Venezuela is not just an ally but a principal hemispheric partner.
Over two decades, this “Axis of Necessity” has evolved into a channel through which each side supplies what the other lacks: technology, crude oil and refined fuel, political backing abroad and trade routes safe from sanctions.
Logistical artery
The partnership now functions as a dual-use logistical route linking Tehran and Caracas.
When Venezuela’s refineries faltered, Iran sent technical teams and arranged barter-based energy swaps; when Tehran needed additional outlets for crude, Venezuelan shipments helped maintain cash flow and reservoir management.
Western sanctions authorities say financial intermediaries on both sides have facilitated transactions designed to bypass traditional banking scrutiny.
Gold-for-fuel exchanges emerged as a way to secure hard assets where access to formal channels was limited. Cooperation has also extended into areas with potential military relevance.
Iran International reporting—based on internal documents and informed sources—indicated Iranian involvement in aspects of drone development inside Venezuela.
These arrangements provided Iran a degree of strategic depth: a distant space where technology, training and covert finance could operate with reduced visibility.
That space is now tightening. With carriers, bombers and surveillance platforms operating near Venezuelan shores, the risk of disruption to sensitive shipments has grown.
The Hezbollah factor
Iran’s regional strategy depends heavily on non-state partners, especially Hezbollah.
Tehran’s adversaries accuse the group of fundraising in South America through smuggling routes, financial intermediaries and more recently, digital-currency channels.
Hezbollah is now confronting one of its most serious setbacks in years; the killing of senior commander Haytham Ali Tabatabai in November 2025 was the latest blow.
As the group absorbs battlefield losses and financial strain, its reliance on overseas networks becomes more consequential.
Analysts of proxy finance argue that the Western Hemisphere offers strategic redundancy: if Middle-Eastern channels are disrupted, South American ones can help sustain the organization.
But those networks are themselves under renewed pressure.
Expanded US deployments near Venezuela increase exposure for facilitators who once operated with relative obscurity.
What was envisioned as a fallback corridor is now monitored by carrier strike groups, sanctions investigators and intelligence-sharing partners.
Legal reckoning?
If the Caribbean illustrates military deterrence, Buenos Aires represents a different form of constraint.
Argentine courts and prosecutors have advanced proceedings linked to the 1994 AMIA bombing, issuing findings that senior Iranian officials bear responsibility and designating the attack a crime against humanity.
Warrants and arrest-related measures have followed, some now proceeding in absentia so that non-cooperation no longer halts the process.
Tehran disputes these conclusions, but the judicial record being assembled carries growing diplomatic implications.
This legal trajectory erodes the old perception of Latin America as a permissive periphery. It raises personal risk for senior Iranian figures travelling abroad and increases potential financial exposure for entities linked to designated individuals.
Even without immediate enforcement, these foundations strengthen the prospect of future repercussions.
A less hospitable hemisphere
Three structural trends now converge: tightening maritime surveillance, expanding legal accountability and increased financial scrutiny through sanctions enforcement.
None of this suggests an imminent rupture. Oil can change flags; networks can adapt; facilitators can adopt new identities and routes. But the cost curve has shifted.
Iran has long viewed Latin America as a distant flank—a place where ideology, trade and covert influence could be pursued with limited friction.
That assumption is weakening. A hemisphere once defined by permissiveness is becoming a contested theatre shaped by US presence, judicial persistence and financial vigilance.
The logistical link between Caracas and Tehran still functions. It continues to serve both countries in their shared struggle against sanctions and isolation. But it now faces unprecedented pressure.
And if current trajectory hold, what was once adopted as an avenue of survival may, over time, become an axis of vulnerability.
The ministry told Iran International that since the June 2025 Iran-Israel hostilities, the embassy has worked in a limited capacity, and both the embassy and its visa section “will, for the foreseeable future, have only a fraction of the personnel” they had before the temporary shutdown.
The reduction of operations “is due in particular to Iran’s restrictive policy on accrediting diplomatic personnel,” read the statement.
Despite the squeeze, Berlin said processing has been gradually expanded in recent weeks by outsourcing application intake to an external service provider and moving case handling to the Federal Office for Foreign Affairs.
“These steps have created additional processing capacity,” the ministry said, adding that the changes especially benefit student-visa applicants and Iranian physicians applying for visas to complete professional recognition procedures in Germany.
Appointment rules have also been adjusted “to ensure the largest possible number of applications can be accepted via the external provider,” the Foreign Office said.
It cautioned, however, that “despite these tangible improvements,” limitations at the Tehran post will remain for the time being.
Germany’s visa services in Tehran have operated at reduced capacity since the June 2025 Iran–Israel conflict, when the embassy temporarily closed, canceled appointments, and said new dates would be issued automatically as capacity allows.
Applicants report prolonged delays and uncertainty, staging weekly protests outside the embassy and TLScontact.
Iranian paper Shargh estimated more than 6,000 delayed cases, including about 4,000 family-reunification files, while IRNA previously put 3,000–4,000 Iranian passports as stuck in foreign missions after wartime closures.
