Caracas Chronicles

When el comandante died in 2013, then Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claimed that Hugo Chávez would one-day return to Earth alongside Jesus Christ and the Hidden Imam (a sacred prophet of Shia Islam) to spread peace, justice and perfection for all of us. In that grand funeral in Caracas, a tearful Ahmadinejad flouted Iran’s absolute ban on physical contact between unrelated men and women. He hugged Elena Frías de Chávez, the late president’s beloved mother, which brought Ahmadinejad scolds by clerics and conservative figures at home.

But the hug was not unwarranted, at least in state-to-state terms. The Hugo-Mahmoud bromance had gone great lengths since the latter took office in 2005, one that prompted some Western bureaucrats and observers to view it as a threat to the Americas, or a clear indication that Venezuela’s new nomenklatura was cozying up with Islamic fanaticism and state-sponsored terrorism from the Middle East. It was rooted in Chávez’s impetus—then enjoying an oil bonanza that fueled his foreign policy ambitions—to befriend Washington’s far-away enemies and spread their influence in the region. And although observers and commentators may exaggerate the scope of this relationship, the most staunchly anti-Yankee and anti-Semitic president in Venezuela’s history—who floated ideas like Bush orchestrated 9/11—did become an asset to the Iranian regime.

Re-embracing under pressure

Venezuelan and Iranian rulers turned to each other to soften the blow of international sanctions as both countries became global pariahs in recent years. Iran stepped in in 2020, with Tareck El Aissami—a central figure in this story—in command of the Oil Ministry and Venezuela’s energy sector under siege from Trump’s maximum pressure campaign. It sent fuel, diluents, and technical personnel to help Caracas navigate PDVSA’s deepening crisis in gasoline supply and oil production.

Cooperation around energy served other fronts of the Iran-Venezuela partnership, which underwent a renewal since Chávez died and Caracas ran out of cash. The Caracas-Tehran route was relaunched in June 2022, having been discontinued 12 years prior, and continues to operate twice a month with a single airplane. Conviasa, another entity under U.S. sanctions, also collaborated with an Iranian airline linked with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) for an obscure venture: Emtrasur (Empresa de Transporte Aerocargo del Sur), whose single aircraft was owned by Mahan Air.

In June 2022, that very aircraft was seized by the Milei government in Buenos Aires and its 19-member crew detained. Five of them were Iranian including the plane’s pilot, who the FBI accuses of being a member of the IRGC’s special Quds Forces and the man heading a commercial airline that supplies Iran’s Middle East proxies.

Chávez fueled a Jewish exodus from Venezuela and showed his new friends in the Middle East that his anti-imperialist instincts were serious.

On a military dimension, the idea that Iran is a supplier of drones to the Maduro regime (and thus a guarantor of Venezuela’s status as a security threat to its neighbors) is misleading. In this decade, Iran has provided technology and maintenance to Venezuelan national companies CAVIM and EANSA (another Conviasa subsidiary) for the assembly of three military drone models derived from the Iran-produced Mohajer 6 and Shahed models, which have been instrumental throughout the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The drones at Maduro’s disposal, still in limited numbers, can be used in domestic operations like counter-insurgency attacks and border reconnaissance, as noted by Venezuelan intelligence analyst Daniel Blanco.

But going back two decades, the evolution of the relationship since Chávez came to power reveals multiple layers that have fueled both speculation and disinformation. Some elements are visible and openly celebrated by both governments—like sanctions evasion and failed joint ventures that siphoned off Venezuela’s oil wealth. Others remain hidden and harder to trace after so many years, yet the signs of illicit and criminal ties are there.

This piece attempts to balance the historical context and unpack a relationship in which Chávez became a gateway for unprecedented Iranian influence in the region—an influence that extended through his Pink Tide allies and still lingers today. Iran remains a supplier of arms, military equipment and technology to Bolivia, whose current president was among the two elected Latin American leaders that supported Maduro after the 2024 election fraud. And just this week, Brazil defended its fellow BRICS partner after the U.S. bombed three of its nuclear facilities.

The sound of anti-Semitism and doomed businesses

Venezuela and Iran have maintained diplomatic relations since 1950, with Tehran opening its embassy in Caracas in 1972—a time when the relationship was largely confined to coordination within OPEC. But as Middle East expert Paulo Botta points out in his writings on Iran’s endeavors  in Latin America, it was Mohammad Khatami who became the first Iranian president to visit the region since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. He traveled to Caracas three times between 2000 and 2005 for OPEC and Non-Aligned Movement summits.

From Miraflores, Chávez’s conspiratorial rhetoric intensified amid the Second Intifada and following the failed 2002 coup in Venezuela. His verbal attacks on Israel became a convenient way to deflect growing criticism of authoritarianism and repression in both Venezuela and Cuba. Chávez’s position aligned with the traditional Latin American Left’s fascination with revolutionary Muslim regimes—such as Gaddafi’s Libya and, increasingly, the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Anti-Semitic rhetoric quickly turned into action against the country’s long standing Jewish community, which hadn’t suffered hostilities in 150 years. In December 2004, DISIP (SEBIN’s predecessor) raided Colegio Hebraica, the heart of Jewish education and social life in Caracas, with the pretext that the state was searching for weapons linked to the assassination of prosecutor Danilo Anderson.

Hebraica was again raided—this time without excuse—on December 2, 2007, the same day when chavismo lost its first vote over Chávez’s wishes to amend the constitution. And with Israel’s offensive in the First Gaza War, Chavez broke diplomatic relations with Tel Aviv and expelled the Israeli ambassador. Armed men attacked and desecrated the Tiferet Israel Synagogue in Caracas just days later, during Shabbat, leaving slurs and a crystal-clear message in the site’s walls: “Zionists, out of our country.” In the year that followed, the president famously cursed the state of Israel on live television and accused Tel Aviv of committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. Chávez had fueled a Jewish exodus from Venezuela and showed his new friends that his anti-imperialist instincts were serious. And in the Middle East, Chávez earned a reputation as a champion of anti-colonialism and Palestinian rights that persists to this day.

El Aissami oversaw Venezuela’s police apparatus between 2008 and 2010, a period when Syrio-Venezuelan businessman Walid Makled was at the height of his power as the country’s most notorious drug trafficker.

While doing so, Chávez gushed at the prospect of turning Iran into a regional player, introducing Ahmadinejad to the likes of Evo Morales, Daniel Ortega, and Cristina Kirchner—all of which sympathized, ended up doing business or came to scandalous arrangements with Tehran, as the particular case of Argentina (and the death of prosecutor Alberto Nisman) suggests. 

In Venezuela, Botta notes that the Chávez and Ahmadinejad governments committed to more than a hundred joint cooperation projects, the majority of which never existed or underperformed, such as the Venezuelan Iran Oil & Gas Company, meant to launch a refinery in Syria and crude storage facilities in Africa and Asia. There was also Venirauto, for example—you’ll remember the Centauro and Turpial car models—a binational company destined to “transform the Venezuelan car industry” that collapsed after seven years. The Iranian Embassy also unveiled a Persian supermarket, Megasis, in an eastern Caracas neighborhood three years ago. And more recently, the sale of Iranian vehicles resumed—though it was Venezuela that imported them, rather than produce as Chávez promised.

Trade relations between Venezuela and Iran, Botta writes, have been artificially constructed through political ties with little regard for quality or pricing. Unless, of course, Venezuelans genuinely preferred Iranian vehicles over American, Japanese, or German ones. And beyond the grandiose headlines featuring Ahmadinejad, Chávez, and Ortega, it was actually Brazil that became Iran’s main trading partner in the region.

Making sense of the sinister nexus

The conversation around Tehran’s involvement with chavismo and their dubious dealings has restarted as the war between Iran and Israel escalates. And yes, there are more than reasonable grounds to believe that figures in the chavista government have fostered relations with criminal interests and networks from Iran, Lebanon and Syria since the Chávez-Ahmadinejad era. But accusations like Margarita being a safe haven for Hezbollah militants or terrorist camps being set up in the Guajira Peninsula and the Alto Caroní are overblown and lack evidence.

Much of that came from Roger Noriega, a former U.S. diplomat that lobbied the Obama administration to “confront the Tehran-Caracas axis” after being sacked during the Bush II presidency. Noriega argued, to quote a few examples, that an asymmetrical struggle was being waged against Washington as Iran provided weapons to Venezuela capable of targeting the U.S. and its allies (Venezuela does not have ballistic missiles), and conducting mining operations in uranium-rich areas of Venezuela.

Beyond sinister yet unfounded claims, traces of the secret relationship between Iran and Venezuela do abound, starting with the bimonthly Caracas-Tehran route, with a stopover in Damascus, that Iran Air launched in 2007. The costs and commercial losses of that operation were so great that Conviasa took control within months, and the route closed after three years. But the seemingly intended goal of moving illicit networks in and out of Venezuela should have been achieved by then.

Colonel Vladimir Medrano Rengifo was appointed chief of Venezuela’s old passport authority in May 2008, ONIDEX, at a time when a Cuban contractor was overhauling the country’ document issuance system. Once the revamp was completed, ONIDEX transitioned into SAIME in 2009—a body that has since operated as a de facto mafia, extorting Venezuelan citizens across the world and distributing passports in exchange for kickbacks and favours. In 2017, Rengifo told the Miami Herald that during his tenure (2008–2009), SAIME issued thousands of passports to individuals from Syria, Iran, and other Middle Eastern countries, in a scheme overseen by then–Interior Minister Tareck El Aissami—an allegation that frankly isn’t hard to believe.

If Tehran ends up falling, Maduro would lose a seasoned ally in the art of sanctions evasion and oil triangulation to Asia, skills that remain critical given the economy’s dire condition.

El Aissami oversaw Venezuela’s police apparatus between 2008 and 2010, a period when Syrio-Venezuelan businessman Walid Makled was at the height of his power as the country’s most notorious drug trafficker, controlling Venezuela’s largest port. Two years after the U.S. designated El Aissami as a narcotics kingpin, The New York Times obtained a dossier from Venezuelan intelligence agents accusing him and his father, Zaidan El Aissami, of facilitating the entry of Hezbollah militants into the country.

Open sources allow us to trace some of the nodes in this shadowy network connecting Tehran, Caracas, Lebanese criminals, and the Assad regime—with Chávez seemingly at the forefront and El Aissami working behind the scenes. In 2012, the Obama administration sanctioned three Lebanese-Venezuelans and a Colombian-Lebanese citizen, Ayman Joumaa, for trafficking cocaine to the U.S. and laundering the profits. Joumaa is accused of laundering money for Hezbollah, Mexican cartel Los Zetas, and cocaine suppliers from Venezuela and Colombia.

And there’s the case of Ghazi Nasr Al-Din—or Ghazi Nassereddine—a Lebanese-born Venezuelan national who served as a diplomat at Venezuela’s embassies in Damascus and Beirut. He has been accused of acting as a liaison between chavismo and Hezbollah, allegedly facilitating the movement of Lebanese militants into Venezuela. In 2019, former intelligence chief Hugo Carvajal claimed that Nassereddine arranged a 2009 meeting in Damascus between himself, Tareck El Aissami, and a Hezbollah representative. The representative was reportedly offered an introduction to then–Foreign Minister Nicolás Maduro and with ties to FARC guerrillas.

Tracking the state of these networks is no easy task, especially after El Aissami’s power structure was dismantled and Mossad decimated Hezbollah last year (Armando Info appears to have uncovered recent activity by Nassereddine in Venezuela, tied to low-cost pharmacies and the distribution of Chinese and Iranian medicines). But crucially, many now wonder what might happen if the Islamic regime collapses under Israeli and U.S. pressure. Caracas has been seeking to rekindle ties with Tehran amid renewed sanctions that also halted Chevron’s diluent supplies to PDVSA. In April, the head of Iran’s legislature visited Miraflores.

If Tehran ends up falling, Maduro would lose a seasoned ally in the art of sanctions evasion and oil triangulation to Asia, skills that remain critical given the economy’s dire condition. Chavismo knows this well. As Trump struggles to make Israel and Iran agree to a ceasefire, Maduro has called for a meeting of non-aligned regional blocs to touch base and seek new strategies with Global South actors. Whether that effort gains traction in today’s climate of growing isolationism remains to be seen.