ACHACACHI, BOLIVIA
The government of Iran is following the lead of new ally Venezuela by taking its anti-American message to Bolivia, an impoverished but strategically positioned country in the heart of South America.
A nemesis to U.S. interests in the Middle East for 30 years, Iran is now pouring millions of dollars of aid into Bolivia -- including construction of a milk factory in Achacachi. Its real motive, however, is joining Bolivia and Venezuela to counter U.S. interests in Latin America, analysts said.
"Is Iran in Bolivia a nuisance to the United States? Of course it is," said Abbas Milani, the co-director of the Iran Democracy Project at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. "Iran will try to shore up support for Bolivia's president and help the anti-American message of its regime. And being in Bolivia will give Iran more pawns to play in its dealings with the Europeans and the United States."
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a constant U.S. critic, brought Iran and Bolivia together, even though the two countries have little in common but natural gas, large stretches of desert and official antipathy toward the United States. Chavez's government flew Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to visit Bolivian President Evo Morales in September 2007. Morales traveled to Iran a year later.
Chavez has organized Ecuador, Nicaragua, Bolivia and Cuba into a trade and political alliance that regularly lambastes capitalism and U.S. influence in Latin America.
Iran also has begun to assist Ecuador and Nicaragua, and its Latin American activities have prompted worry from the Obama administration.
"I'm concerned about the level of, frankly, subversive activity that the Iranians are carrying on in a number of places in Latin America, particularly South America and Central America," Defense Secretary Robert Gates told a Senate committee Jan. 27. "They're opening a lot of offices and a lot of fronts, behind which they interfere in what is going on in some of these countries."
