IRAN IN THE AMERICAS – AT 9:29 A.M. ET:   For years there have been reports of Iranian military activity in Venezuela.  The reports often centered on an Iranian airliner that flew to Caracas once a week...with no tickets available to the public.  Strange way to run an airline.  A report from the Washington Times provides a fascinating look into what military "cooperation" between Iran and Venezuela means today.

The death of 22-year-old Venezuelan student Genesis Carmona at the hands of armed pro-government civilian militias, called “colectivos,” bears a striking resemblance to the death of Neda Agha-Soltan, the Iranian student who was shot and killed in a similar fashion on the streets of Tehran during the Green Revolution of 2009.

This has led many analysts to begin comparing the colectivos’ tactics to those used by Iran’s Basij paramilitary force.

The similarity, however, is more than speculation.

In April 2009, the current Iranian commander of the Basij paramilitary force, Brig. Gen. Mohammad Reza Naqdi, accompanied then-Iranian Defense Minister Gen. Mostafa Mohammad-Najjar on a high-level visit to Caracas at the invitation by then-Venezuelan President Hugo Chvez and his foreign minister (now President) Nicolas Maduro.

Several defense agreements followed, but one in particular is relevant to what is transpiring on the streets of Venezuela today.

According to sources within the Venezuelan military, Gen. Naqdi’s role in these high-level meetings was to serve as an adviser to Venezuela’s Ministries of Defense and Interior to aid in training their civilian militias, the now-infamous colectivos.

A first glimpse of this advisory support came during the 2012 presidential election in Venezuela, as government documents were leaked to the foreign press about the Chavista plans to stir up civil unrest if their leader, Hugo Chavez, were to lose the elections on Oct. 7 of that year.

According to the leaked government documents, the Chavistas planned to mobilize the colectivos as a quick-reaction force called Redes de Movilizacion Inmediata, to quell opposition rallies and gain territorial control.

Modeled after those of the Iranian Basij units, the force’s tactics and functions included setting alphanumeric short codes for clandestine communication and infiltrating universities to gain intelligence.

COMMENT:  Extend it further.  What is to prevent Iranian operatives from infiltrating across the southern border of the United States, perhaps with the aim of getting a weapon of mass destruction into the United States?  Our border is porous, the Obama administration doesn't show much interest in hardening it, and Mexico's law enforcement is chaotic and unreliable.  It's a prescription for possible disaster, but I don't see too many people sweating the problem.

March 18, 2014