The Network Contagion Research Institute accused the Democratic Socialists of America, in a report released in late January, of activities that may run afoul of the Foreign Agents Registration Act — alleging that the far-left group may be acting as an unregistered agent of various U.S. adversaries.

The report points to foreign trips by DSA members to Venezuela, Cuba and China which have included access to top level officials and, the report alleges, lodging, transportation and other services provided by the host governments “that may constitute in-kind benefits from foreign government-linked entities” and “participation in quasi-official functions.”

The report claims that the DSA’s foreign engagements are followed by brief upticks in the group’s promotion of U.S. adversaries’ priority issues, such as removing sanctions on Cuba and Venezuela, “consistent with campaign-style political activity rather than incidental commentary.”

The NCRI alleges that the DSA’s “pattern of conduct across multiple countries raises material questions as to whether certain political activities were undertaken with foreign support, facilitation, or expectations of continued engagement.”

Noting that the DSA itself has stated its desire to create formal partnerships with foreign governments, the report suggests that a FARA investigation could look into “whether these stated partnership goals remained aspirational or were operationalized through material coordination, facilitation, or support, and whether any resulting activities required registration or remedial compliance.”

The report acknowledges that none of the activities described “conclusively establish that DSA or its members acted as agents of a foreign principal” but argues that the “pattern of conduct,” taken in sum, “meets the threshold for a good-faith FARA compliance inquiry.”

Adam Sohn, the co-founder of NCRI, is set to testify at a House Ways and Means Committee hearing on Tuesday on foreign influence in U.S. nonprofit organizations.

When Valerie Stramwasser woke up on Saturday, Jan. 3, she glanced at her phone and saw hundreds of WhatsApp messages. 

“I’m like, ‘Oh my god, something happened.’ I first thought that it was something in the family, and then I opened up and I hear, ‘We’re free.’ We’re free. It happened,” Stramwasser told Jewish Insider on Thursday. “Literally tears of joy.” 

Stramwasser, 37, lives in Hollywood, Fla., with her husband and two children, but she grew up in Caracas, Venezuela. She was forced to flee the country as a teenager after a failed kidnapping attempt against her. She hasn’t been back in years, not even for the funerals of her grandparents. 

The tears of joy began when she saw the news that the U.S. military had captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, and flown them to New York to stand trial on narco-terrorism charges. Stramwasser and her husband, who is also Venezuelan, couldn’t wait to tell their 8- and 11-year-old children the news.

“As a mom, you tell the stories to your kids, and they know how much I miss my country. But I’ve never been able to go back,” Stramwasser recounted. Then they drove to her brother’s house to celebrate and watch President Donald Trump discuss the operation. “This is one of the most important things that, as a Venezuelan, you can hear in the past 30 years.”

“Growing up there, it was a community of about 28,000 Jews that were living there. It was a vibrant community, a very successful and respected community,” said Paul Kruss, a city commissioner in Aventura, Fla., who also owns a popular local bagel shop. “Now there’s maybe 4,500 that live there, which should tell you all you need to know about the kind of brain drain that they had. It wasn’t only the Jewish community that fled.” 

An economic crisis that began under the country’s socialist president, Hugo Chávez, who was elected in 1999, grew exponentially worse when Maduro came to power in 2013 after Chávez’s death. The resulting poverty, starvation and crime have led to a massive refugee crisis of roughly 8 million people who have left the South American country. Amid the global diaspora of Venezuelans, many are cheering the removal of Maduro, whom they view as responsible for deteriorating standards of living, repression and political dysfunction plaguing the country. 

Stramwasser is one of hundreds of thousands of those Venezuelans who now call Florida home, including several thousand Venezuelan Jews who have developed outposts of their once-strong Caracas community centers in Miami. 

“Growing up there, it was a community of about 28,000 Jews that were living there. It was a vibrant community, a very successful and respected community,” said Paul Kruss, a city commissioner in Aventura, Fla., who also owns a popular local bagel shop. His mother, who was from Warsaw, Poland, moved to Caracas after surviving the Holocaust. “Now there’s maybe 4,500 that live there, which should tell you all you need to know about the kind of brain drain that they had. It wasn’t only the Jewish community that fled.” 

The surprise operation has largely garnered support from Republicans, while Democrats are more skeptical, including many who are outspoken critics of Maduro, igniting a debate in Congress about presidential war powers. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said Trump should not have acted without congressional approval.

“Maduro is a horrible, horrible person, but you don’t treat lawlessness with other lawlessness, and that’s what’s happened here,” Schumer said over the weekend. 

In Florida, even among Democrats, the reaction was more celebratory. 

“The capture of the brutal, illegitimate ruler of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, who oppressed Venezuela’s people is welcome news for my friends and neighbors who fled his violent, lawless, and disastrous rule,” Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) said in a statement. “However, cutting off the head of a snake is fruitless if it just regrows. Venezuelans deserve the promise of democracy and the rule of law, not a state of endless violence and spiraling disorder.”

The question of what comes next for Venezuela remains unanswered. The country’s interim president is Delcy Rodríguez, the vice president and oil minister, who was close to Maduro. 

“The good thing about what just happened is that sometimes bad people in the world need a message to be sent. If they know that they can do bad things, and no one will come for them, well, they will just keep doing bad things,” said Brian Fincheltub. “ We want to go back, so we are very happy with this.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio laid out a three-step process for Washington’s plans in Venezuela: stabilizing the country, followed by allowing American companies access to the Venezuelan market and, finally, a transition of power. But the U.S. has not laid out plans for a new political regime in Venezuela. 

The Venezuelans cheering on the ouster of Maduro are content to wait a bit longer.

“She’s been part of the problem, no question,” Kruss said of Rodríguez. “I’m hopeful that the United States will be guiding them and letting the Venezuelan people decide who they want to be their leader, and I think this is just a transition period.”

Brian Fincheltub grew up in the Caracas Jewish community, which he called “one of the best in the world.” He was a social activist working in the slums of Caracas, but due to his ties to the opposition party, he fled the country in 2018 to avoid being jailed. Venezuela’s National Assembly named opposition leader Juan Guaidó acting president of Venezuela in 2019, setting up a showdown with Maduro, who never ceded power. Fincheltub moved to Washington to serve as Venezuela’s consul general under Guaidó’s opposition rule. Now Fincheltub works at the World Bank.

Fincheltub supports Trump’s actions, which he said is not about politics — that he would have supported the move had President Joe Biden done the same thing.

“The good thing about what just happened is that sometimes bad people in the world need a message to be sent. If they know that they can do bad things, and no one will come for them, well, they will just keep doing bad things,” said Fincheltub, 38. “ We want to go back, so we are very happy with this.”

Some Venezuelan Jews see similarities in the response of far-left activists to Trump’s capture of Maduro and their criticism of Israel’s actions in Gaza.

“People who are not Venezuelan, who did not grow up under Chávez or Maduro, who did not lose their country, their safety, their future, feel entitled to explain Venezuela to us,” said Valerie Stramwasser, who has said Florida will remain her home even if Venezuela elects a new government. “The same goes for people who are not Jewish, who have never lived the history, the wars, the constant existential threat, feel entitled to explain the Israel-Palestine conflict to us.”

“The same ones that were attacking Israel and the Jewish people are the same ones, or many of them, that are attacking President Trump, or that are attacking what happened in Venezuela,” Fincheltub said. “This is not about President Trump or President Biden. This is about the liberation of Venezuela.”

Stramwasser posted a video making a similar point on Instagram, where her posts usually get a couple thousand views. This one has been viewed more than 500,000 times.

“People who are not Venezuelan, who did not grow up under Chávez or Maduro, who did not lose their country, their safety, their future, feel entitled to explain Venezuela to us,” said Stramwasser, who has said Florida will remain her home even if Venezuela elects a new government. “The same goes for people who are not Jewish, who have never lived the history, the wars, the constant existential threat, feel entitled to explain the Israel-Palestine conflict to us.”

History, she added, will be on her side.

“History is very clear about this,” Stramwasser said in the video. “Those who confuse aggressors with victims don’t end up on the right side of history.”

At the conclusion of the 12-day war in June of last year, both Israel and Iran suspected that the ceasefire brokered by the U.S. would be a pause, not a final cessation of hostilities. That truce has lasted for more than six months, with both sides wary of entering another military conflict — one likely to be more deadly and destructive than the first. 

But now, amid destabilizing world events from Venezuela to the Middle East — compounded by growing domestic pressure on the Islamic Republic amid nationwide protests — that ceasefire is even more tenuous, with officials in Tehran and Jerusalem closely watching the other’s every move, careful not to make a potentially disastrous miscalculation — even as both sides make overtures at de-escalation.

Speaking at the Knesset on Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, “President [Donald] Trump and I have expressed a firm stance — we won’t allow Iran to rebuild its ballistic missile industry or to renew the nuclear program, which we damaged severely in Operation Rising Lion.”

In response, Iran’s newly formed Defense Council warned on Tuesday that the country could act preemptively if it detects clear signs of a threat. “The long-standing enemies of this land … are pursuing a targeted approach by repeating and intensifying threatening language and interventionist statements in clear conflict with the accepted principles of international law, which is aimed at dismembering our beloved Iran and harming the country’s identity,” the council said.

Recent reports suggest that Israel, in an attempt to de-escalate tensions, has used Moscow as an intermediary, communicating through Russian President Vladimir Putin that it has no intention of launching a preemptive strike on Iranian soil. Iranian leaders, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, are unconvinced. 

In a post on X, Khamenei accused Israel of deception: “What makes the enemy first request a ceasefire during [12-day] war with the Iranian nation, then send messages saying he doesn’t want to fight us?” 

“Now if he doesn’t believe the messaging and thinks that Israel is about to attack then you can understand why Israel is worried Iran is about to miscalculate and attack. Very tense days/weeks ahead of us,” Nadav Pollak, a lecturer on the Middle East at Reichman University, commented on Khamenei’s post.

Pollak told Jewish Insider that he sees the perception gaps between Israel and Iran as the “No. 1 risk for miscalculation. As we’ve seen from Khamenei’s tweet, he doesn’t believe the messages that came from Jerusalem about Israel not planning to attack. In his mind, Bibi just came back from Washington with Trump supporting action against Iran if some red lines are crossed. Bibi also continues to talk about the Iranian ballistic missile threat every week and that Israel will need to do something.”

Israeli commentator Nadav Eyal noted on Dan Senor’s “Call Me Back” podcast that “Israeli security officials are extremely worried about what’s happening vis-a-vis Iran, first and foremost because the Iranians are so tense and they are constantly fearing an Israeli attack themselves. So their first worry is miscalculation … If Iran senses that Israel might attack, it wants to preempt that. If Israel thinks that Iran is going to do that, it would want to preempt that.”

Tehran is also facing trouble at home, amid protests that have spread across the country over the last two weeks. The growing unrest, coupled with the Islamic Republic’s economic and climate woes, has put added pressure on the ayatollahs.

Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told JI that due to the Iranian regime’s vulnerable position amid nationwide protests over a severe economic crisis, “hardliners” within the IRGC could be weighing using a strike to “divert the public” and create national unity. However, he expressed that the decision would be a “strategic mistake,” suggesting that an Iranian strike this year is “highly unlikely.”

“It’s hard to see what the Iranians would gain,” said Miller. “A strike is simply going to wreak additional havoc on what the vast majority of the Iranian public is protesting against, which is inflation, a devaluation of the Iranian currency.”

Blaise Misztal, vice president for policy at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, echoed those sentiments, adding that any Iranian strike now while the regime in Tehran is “on the ropes” would be “suicidal.” 

“It seems unlikely that Iran would choose this moment to attack Israel,” said Misztal. “While it certainly might be looking for some way to distract its citizens from their grievances, all the evidence suggests that external aggression would have the opposite effect.”

Misztal said the Iranian regime is facing skyrocketing inflation and crumbling infrastructure “because it has chosen guns over butter and Iranians know it.” 

“To once again pick up guns would only further inflame Iranians’ rightful anger,” said Misztal. “Not to mention that a direct Iranian attack against Israel would surely invite a devastating Israeli, if not also American, response.”

The lingering question is whether the fear of miscalculation will push either side toward action.

In the aftermath of U.S. strikes in Venezuela and the capture of leader Nicolás Maduro, uncertainty remains over whether the South American country’s ties to key U.S. adversaries and hostile posture toward Israel will change under interim President Delcy Rodríguez. 

During his time in power, Maduro’s Venezuela had been deeply embedded in a broader network of U.S. adversaries, particularly Iran, Russia and China. 

Dana Stroul, research director at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, explained that Venezuela “is a key supplier of cheap oil to China and has provided fertile ground for Iran’s terrorist network abroad.”

“Venezuela under Maduro was firmly part of the anti-American bloc of countries seeking to upend the post-WWII order,” said Michael Koplow, chief policy officer at Israel Policy Forum. “Venezuela has particularly tight financial links with Iran and Hezbollah involving drugs and money laundering.”

The U.S. operation to oust Maduro was condemned by both China and Iran, who called it a violation of international law and demanded the illegitimate leader be freed. Experts have told Jewish Insider that the move potentially weakens Tehran’s hold in Latin America. 

“It’s no surprise that the key enablers of the Maduro regime have all rejected the U.S. actions in Venezuela,” said Stroul. “They are now faced with the challenge of filling the Western Hemisphere gap in their network of anti-U.S. stakeholders.” 

Jonathan Ruhe, a fellow at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, said China and Iran will “miss having a Venezuelan partner to poke America in the eye from close range, launder their money, run their drugs and buy their weapons.”

Maduro also positioned himself as a consistent adversary of Israel, severing diplomatic relations in 2009 and repeatedly aligning Caracas with Palestinian causes and with Iran. After Venezuela’s disputed election in July 2024, Maduro accused “international Zionism” of orchestrating unrest in the country, claiming in a televised address that “all the communication power of Zionism, which controls all the social networks, the satellites and all the power, is behind this coup d’état.”

But despite Maduro’s capture and vows from Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado to return to the country and reject the authority of the interim president, the U.S. appears to be backing Rodríguez, who is closely aligned with Maduro and has shown a similar posture when it comes to Israel and U.S. adversaries, creating concerns over whether the direction of Venezuela’s foreign policy will change. 

Brad Bowman, a senior director at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told JI that the Trump administration’s apparent backing of Rodríguez is a “mistake” and that he doesn’t see “any reason to believe” she would depart from Maduro’s approach to U.S. adversaries. 

“I have concern that we still have most of the problematic elements of the regime in Venezuela remaining in place,” said Bowman. “[Rodríguez] has been part of a regime that has been hostile to the United States and cozy with the Islamic Republic of Iran and its terror proxies. If one were a betting person, you would say at a minimum that [Rodríguez] is going to continue to harbor those problematic views toward China, Russia and Iran, if not manifest them in policy.”

At a swearing-in ceremony on Monday, the new leader appeared to embrace the ambassadors of Iran, China and Russia. In an address to the nation on Sunday, Rodríguez claimed the U.S. operation to capture the illegitimate dictator had “Zionist undertones,” echoing the sentiments of her predecessor. 

“Rodríguez wasted little time before blaming Jews — or Zionists — for Maduro’s capture,” said David May, a senior research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “A junior partner of Iran, China, and Russia’s axis of aggressors and host of the Hezbollah terrorist group, the regime of [former Venezuelan dictator Hugo] Chávez and Maduro will continue to be hostile to Israel and the West.”

Koplow said Venezuela’s tight bonds with Iran and Hezbollah create an “anti-Israel narrative that is wrapped up in any action regarding Venezuela.”

“The close U.S.-Israel relationship has created a decades-long anti-American and anti-Israel front that links opposition to one as part and parcel of opposition to the other in a larger anti-imperialist position that takes an anti-Western and anti-Zionist stance, and we are seeing that play out in the Venezuela situation as well,” said Koplow. 

Ruhe said Rodríguez’s claims were “sadly unsurprising,” and that “the Venezuelan government needs a perpetual enemy to justify its own rule.”

“The United States is the most obvious target, but leaders in Caracas scapegoat Jews and Israel, too,” said Ruhe, who added that the interim president’s initial statements “indicate key continuities with Maduro and Hugo Chavez before him.”

Bowman added that it is “not impossible” to change Rodríguez’s course of action away from Maduro’s past policy if it benefits her “personal political interests,” noting that it may take “an extraordinary set of incentives to get her to change course.” 

As protests continue to spread throughout Iran and the geopolitical repercussions of the Trump administration’s capture of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro ripple across world capitals, the sentiment around the Middle East and in Washington is that renewed conflict with the Islamic Republic may well be on the horizon.

While smaller than previous nationwide protests in 2019 and 2022, the newest demonstrations come as Iran is facing economic instability, crushing international sanctions and record droughts. The protests that have spread across the country in recent days are the first major demonstrations since the 12-day war between Iran and Israel, with an assist from the U.S., last June that damaged the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program and further destabilized Iran.

The protests in Iran were already gaining steam at the time a Delta Force team apprehended Maduro and his wife on Saturday and brought them to the U.S. to stand trial on drug trafficking charges. But the Trump administration’s decision to send elite forces into Caracas and forcibly remove Maduro signals to Tehran — as well as Moscow and Beijing — that Washington is taking a tougher approach to regimes it sees as destabilizing and threatening to U.S. interests.

The world is watching this geopolitical high-wire act with uncertainty. In Israel, officials are closely monitoring the instability in Iran, concerned that the regime in Tehran could move to strike Israel in an effort to consolidate domestic support and quell the protests; Israel could also see a window of opportunity to strike Iran at a weak moment, either of which could reignite warfare between Jerusalem and Tehran. It was less than a week ago that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with President Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida and discussed the threat posed by Iran’s ballistic missile program.

In his weekly Cabinet meeting yesterday, Netanyahu addressed Iran in the context of his Palm Beach meeting last week, saying that Israel “reiterated our joint position of zero enrichment on one hand, and the need to remove the 400 kilograms of enriched material from Iran and oversee the sites with tight and genuine supervision.” 

Noting that his sit-down with Trump was taking place as anti-government protests broke out in Iran, Netanyahu added, “The Government of Israel, the State of Israel, and my policy, we identify with the struggle of the Iranian people, with their aspirations for freedom, liberty, and justice. It is very possible that we are standing at the moment when the Iranian people are taking their fate into their own hands.”

With an eye toward Washington, the question is whether Trump will back future military action in Iran, after his success ousting Maduro in Caracas. Despite the widespread protests in Iran, there is no consolidated opposition, where the regime’s opponents are, as The Atlantic’s Arash Azizi writes, “hopelessly disorganized and disunited.” 

Speaking to reporters on Air Force One last night, Trump reiterated his recent comments that the U.S. would intervene if Iranian officials were to kill protesters, having said on his Truth Social site on Friday that “If Iran shoots and violently kills peaceful protesters, which is their custom, the United States of America will come to their rescue.” 

The Associated Press, citing human rights activists, reported that 15 people had been killed as of Saturday, the same day that Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei made his first public comments since the outbreak of protests, saying that “rioters must be put in their place.”

Iran’s political leadership appears at an impasse in its efforts to contain the demonstrations — or improve the conditions that led to them — with the hands of President Masoud Pezeshkian and other senior officials largely tied by the supreme leader. That could push the regime to act out of desperation — or to collapse entirely. 

An increasingly unlikely scenario is that the protests fizzle out and Khamenei reasserts control — a move that would likely need to occur alongside an economic upturn to pull the rial up from record lows.

The first days of 2026 have seen tens of thousands of protesters taking to the streets across Iran and an administration in Washington flexing its military power, setting the stage for a potential power realignment in the Middle East and around the world. 

The U.S.’ capture of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on Saturday is expected to weaken Iran’s terrorism efforts, weapons production and economic activity in Latin America, experts say.

With Vice President Delcy Rodriguez taking power — and the Trump administration expressing willingness to work with her — it remains unclear whether Maduro’s regime will largely remain intact with American supervision or if the government will ultimately be replaced by the democratic opposition, led by Nobel Peace Prize recipient Maria Corina Machado, or someone else.  

While Venezuela’s future remains unclear, Israel’s leaders applauded what they saw as a pro-American turn, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressing support for the Trump administration’s “determined decision and action of the United States to restore freedom and justice to that part of the world.”

“Across Latin America right now, we are seeing a transformation,” Netanyahu said. “Several countries are returning to the American axis and, not surprisingly, to a connection with the State of Israel. We welcome this.”

Emmanuele Ottolenghi, senior research fellow at the Center for Research on Terror Financing, told Jewish Insider that “if the regime remains in place [under Washington’s supervision], there will have to be adjustments in its regional posture and foreign policy. That means, of course, the role that nefarious foreign actors such as China, Russia, Cuba and Iran played in Venezuela will change.”

Danny Citrinowicz, a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University, told JI that “the Iranians turned Venezuela into a strategic hub, and now that has disappeared.”

“Iran built a very deep operative and strategic relationship with [Maduro’s predecessor Hugo] Chavez, and it uses Venezuela … as its jumping-off point for influence in Latin America,” he said.

Ottolenghi said that Maduro’s government allowed Iran to operate freely in Venezuela, which Tehran took advantage of in a variety of arenas, including propaganda, terrorism and arms manufacturing.

Tehran established a drone factory in Venezuela, in which Venezuelans produced Iranian drones, Ottolenghi said.

The recently foiled terrorist plot to assassinate Israel’s ambassador to Mexico was planned by Iranian operatives in Caracas, Ottolenghi added.

“The Iranians made Caracas the hub of all their propaganda and soft power operations in the region, including their Spanish-language 24/7 news network,” Ottolenghi said. “They established a permanent presence in Caracas for their missionary network, under the umbrella of the sanctioned Al-Mustafa International University.”

After former Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi visited Caracas in 2023, scientific and academic exchanges between the countries grew, and Iran was granted greater access to Venezuela’s economy.

The economic relationship with Venezuela has been important for Iran, Ottolenghi said.

“Venezuela assisted Iran in evading sanctions prior to the JCPOA [2015 Iranian nuclear deal], but since 2019-2020, when the Venezuelan economy sharply deteriorated, Iran gained the upper hand in the relationship,” he said. “Maduro essentially joined the ‘axis of resistance.’”

The country with the largest proven oil reserves in the world needed to buy refined gasoline from Iran because of “the dramatic deterioration in quality in the oil industry in Venezuela after years of cronyism, brain drain, corruption and mismanagement purging the national oil company,” Ottolenghi explained. “The Iranians stepped in to stop Venezuela from collapsing for lack of refined [oil] products, providing technicians, technology, refined gasoline shipped from Iran in exchange for gold. That gave [Iran] even more leverage inside Venezuela, including the ability to operate one of the refineries for their own needs.” 

As for Hezbollah, Citrinowicz noted that the Lebanese terrorist organization is “very important to [Iran], in that it connects the Shi’ite communities in Latin America.” 

Ottolenghi said that Hezbollah “benefitted from both the protection of the regime and the large expat community of Lebanese immigrants and their descendants … who are sympathetic to the movement and enabled them to become involved in money laundering and other financial activities … including crypto and reportedly illegal gold mining in the southeast of the country.” 

Though Hezbollah is an Iranian proxy, it has independent sources of income, including the Latin American drug trade.

Maduro’s fall “will make it hard [for Hezbollah] to keep up those ties,” Citrinowicz said.

Ottolenghi said that “traditionally, [Hezbollah] has played mainly the role of intermediary for drug cartels, providing services in logistics, distribution and financial channels to move the money in complex translational transactions.”

However, he noted that, as opposed to Tehran, Hezbollah’s operations in Latin America have not been primarily based in Venezuela, and that until recently, the terrorist group’s senior official in Latin America was based in São Paolo, Brazil. 

“Insofar as Maduro’s removal may curb Iran’s influence and its proxies in Venezuela, it does not address necessarily what Hezbollah is doing in other countries,” Ottolenghi said.

Maduro’s fall is one of “a series of blows” to Iran in recent years, Citrinowicz said, with the governments of Bolivia, Chile and Argentina turning more pro-American, and the same is likely to happen in Colombia in its upcoming presidential election.

“Iran likes working with socialist regimes that counter the West,” Citrinowicz said. “They can’t leave Latin America entirely. … They will need to work with what’s left and emphasize Cuba and Nicaragua.” 

Citrinowicz said that Iran will likely pivot its investments of time and money to Africa. 

The first congressional hearing on Hezbollah’s malign activities in the Western hemisphere in a decade took place this week, highlighting Venezuela’s embrace of Iran as a geopolitical partner and the Maduro regime’s efforts to transform the country into a regional hub for narcoterrorism. 

The bipartisan Senate International Narcotics Control Caucus convened the hearing, titled “Global Gangsters: Hezbollah’s Latin American Drug Trafficking Operations,” on Tuesday, to explore how Hezbollah’s influence in the region had expanded and determine the most effective ways for the U.S. to respond. Witnesses included Amb. Nathan Sales, who served as the State Department’s counterterrorism coordinator in the first Trump administration; Marshall Billingslea, the special envoy for arms control and a former Treasury official during President Donald Trump’s first term; Matthew Levitt, the director of the Reinhard Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy; and Robert Clifford, a former FBI official who worked in the counterterrorism space.

Senators and counterterrorism experts warned that Venezuela had established itself as the narcoterrorism epicenter of Latin America, and predicted that Hezbollah would deepen financial ties with Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro as a result. Senators on both sides of the aisle and hearing witnesses urged a hawkish approach to quell Venezuela’s behavior.

“We have long known that Hezbollah is one of Iran’s tools to destabilize and terrorize the Middle East. Until 2023, about 70% of Hezbollah’s finances came from Iran. Hezbollah held up its side of the transaction,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), the top Democrat in the caucus, said. “Over the last two years, both Iran and Hezbollah have suffered significant setbacks. Iran is now looking more inward and Hezbollah is cash starved. If we target Hezbollah’s financing, we can deny them the opportunity to rebuild.”

“Where will Hezbollah look for money? Hezbollah has operated in Latin America for almost 50 years, cultivating ties with drug traffickers and developing illicit finance and trade networks. Modern drug cartels and terrorist groups run more like Fortune 500 conglomerates than street gangs,” he continued. “If we want to be serious about fighting the drug traffickers behind American deaths, we must strike their financial networks.”

Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-OH), the newest member of the caucus, asked witnesses for their take on the U.S. potentially declaring Venezuela as a state sponsor of terrorism, to which Billingslea and Sales both responded that the South American country’s behavior met the legal standard.

“Maduro should know his days are numbered,” Moreno, who was born in Colombia, said. 

Sales also suggested that more Latin American countries should “designate Hezbollah in its entirety as a terrorist organization. Not just its so-called military wing, all of it.”

“During the first Trump administration, five Latin American countries did exactly that. Argentina, Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras and Paraguay,” Sales said. “According to a recent RAND study, the Latin American countries that sanctioned Hezbollah during the first [Trump] term have generally seen a drop in activity by the terror group. By contrast, Hezbollah has been more active in the countries in the region that haven’t designated it.”

Levitt noted that narcotics trafficking had become a key source of income for Hezbollah as Iran’s other financing wells dried up. 

“Hezbollah has a long history of turning to its diaspora networks when it’s facing financial stress. Iran is still believed to provide Hezbollah with about the same amount of money today that it did before the Oct. 7 attacks, but that is not enough money to do what it needs to do today. And Iran is having a much harder time getting that money to Hezbollah in a timely manner,” Levitt explained. 

“When Hezbollah is under stress, they traditionally reach out to their illicit financial networks around the world. We can expect that they will do the same today,” he continued. “If you need big money real fast, you turn to illicit activities and especially to narcotics trafficking. Hezbollah has demonstrated its ability to play an important and lucrative, niche role in laundering the proceeds of narcotics trafficking for a wide array of cartels.”