[Breitbart] Iran is using Venezuela as a launching point in the Western Hemisphere to embed its drone pipeline closer to U.S. territory, the Center for a Secure Free Society (SFS) warned this week.
On Tuesday, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned a group of individuals and entities for their role in the weapons trade between Iran and Venezuela on grounds that it constitutes a threat to U.S. interests in the Western Hemisphere.
The broader list of sanctioned individuals include Empresa Aeronautica Nacional SA (EANSA) and its chairman, Jose Jesus Urdaneta Gonzalez. EANSA is a Venezuelan company that maintains and oversees the assembly of Iran’s Qods Aviation Industries’ (QAI) Mohajer-series UAVs in Venezuela. OFAC detailed that EANSA’s operations contributed to QAI’s sale of millions of dollars’ worth of Mohajer-6 drones to Venezuela, with Urdatena serving as a coordinator between Venezuelan and Iranian military officials for the production of the Iranian drones in Venezuela.
OFAC noted that the sanctions are in line with the terms of President Donald Trump’s February 2025 National Security Memorandum directing the U.S. government to impose maximum pressure on Iran’s Islamic regime, deny it all paths to a nuclear weapon, and countering its malign influence.
This week, SFS released a new report titled, “Venezuela as Bridgehead: Treasury Sanctions Expose Iran’s Drone Capability Moving Closer to the United States,” in which the organization applauded the administration of President Donald Trump for the sanctions as it targets the chain of transfer and support of drone capabilities between both anti-U.S. regimes. SFS emphasized the significance of the measure as it marks the first time that the U.S. government has acknowledged that Iran has been using Venezuela as a proxy to wage war against the U.S. in the hemisphere — something that, SFS stressed, is an argument “spearheaded” by the organization over the past five years.
“The announcement is not just ‘economic pressure;’ it signals that the Tehran–Caracas relationship now operates as an industrial and logistical architecture with assembly, maintenance, negotiation, payments, and, above all, military capacity installed in the Western Hemisphere,” SFS said.
OFAC detailed in its announcement that Venezuela and Iran maintain active drone cooperation since 2006 for the Mohajer series of drones produced by Iran’s QAI and renamed in Venezuela as the ANSU series. The ANSU-100, OFAC explained, is capable of launching Iranian-designed Qaem guided bombs.
In addition to EANSA and Urdaneta, Tuesday’s round of sanctions targeted a group of Iran-based individuals for their efforts to procure chemicals used for ballistic missiles for Parchin Chemical Industries (PCI), an element of Iran’s Defense Industries Organization.
SFS explained in its report that the sanctions align its documented strategic diagnosis that “Iran’s posture in Latin America is deliberate, cumulative, and conflict-oriented, and Venezuela remains the central axis of that projection.” SFS referred to a June 2025 report in which it described how Venezuela is “the central axis of this projection in the hemisphere.”
“The report described how strategic alliances, proxy networks, and criminal convergence create a western platform for operations and sanctions evasion and already accurately pointed to the deployment of military capabilities that the U.S. Treasury is now turning into sanctions,” SFS said.
SFS explained that this week’s Iranian drone-related announcements are a “long-term chapter” that began during the rule of late socialist dictator Hugo Chávez, when Venezuela ceased to be “merely an ideological ally” of Iran and began to function as the Islamic regime’s “operational hemispheric platform.”
“Several analyses document that it was under Chávez that Tehran gained regional depth through Caracas — which opened channels, expanded Iran’s diplomatic presence, and served as a ‘shepherd’ for Iran’s advance in the Western Hemisphere,” SFS’s report read.
The report continued:
Formally, the partnership took the form of a multiplicity of “bilateral agreements” and memoranda, often presented as economic, industrial, and technological cooperation — a volume of instruments that, over time, created political and administrative cover for the flow of people, equipment, and resources. It was in this context that the Caracas–(via) Damascus–Tehran air corridor, nicknamed “aeroterror” in security circles, gained notoriety.
At the same time, SFS detailed, both regimes saw advancements in documentary and identity cooperation through the issuance and sale of passports and visas by Venezuelan state structures.
SFS encouraged the Trump administration to “go further” by “expanding the list of individuals and entities working in both countries and broadening it to China and Russia which are also working with Iran to prop up the Maduro regime and weaken the U.S. in the region.”
“This historical interpretation fits precisely with the paradigm that SFS has been developing for years within the VRIC Transregional Threats Program, which maps how Venezuela, Russia, Iran, and China operate through hybrid warfare, criminal convergence, and geostrategic pressure on critical routes and infrastructure,” SFS said.
The organization described OFAC’s sanctions as “necessary” but stressed that it should not be the “end point.” To that end, it presented a list of suggestions, which include — but are not limited to — the blocking of dual-use components, maritime and air routes, commercial facilitates, the reorganization of deterrence, robust customs controls, and frame Iran-Venezuela as not an “anomaly,” but as a “model” that has been pursued elsewhere in the region through political alignment, institutional capture, and the use of “cooperation” as cover for capability transfer.
“The central lesson is that Tehran’s presence is not only ideological. It is infrastructural, and increasingly kinetic,” SFS concluded.
#3
That's great but that isn't striking at the head of the snake: IRAN.
As long as Iran exists it's a threat to the security of the US, its allies and the entire Middle East region.
US airstrikes followed by IDF ground troops would do it, but nobody has the guts to do the needful.
#9
^ Well, Cuba is gonna be in a world of hurt, Iran isn't much better and she doesn't like dehydration, China just (possibly) gave up Nick's location, and Hezb's head is hiding in Iran. Russia seems like a "safer" bet for refuge.
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/03/2026 18:32 Comments ||
Top||
#10
Russia could import Venezuela's Maduro loyalist thugs and send them to the Ukraine front where they will freeze and then die from drones.
Posted by: Lord Garth ||
01/03/2026 21:53 Comments ||
Top||
[IsraelTimes] Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli offers Israel’s help to train Australian counterterrorism forces, in a letter to Australia’s Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke.
The offer comes after last month’s deadly antisemitic terror attack on a seaside Hanukkah festival on Bondi Beach, in which terrorists killed 15 people. The Israeli government accused the Australian government of failing to address the growing antisemitism in the country that led to the attack.
In the New Year’s letter, Chikli says Israel is “ready and willing to assist Australia at this critical juncture.”
“We bring extensive experience in combating radical Islamic terrorism and antisemitism, threats that have regrettably become increasingly common, overt and dangerous, not only in Australia but across the world,” he writes to the Australian minister.
“Accordingly, we would welcome the opportunity to host and train senior Australian police officers and security personnel in Israel, sharing our expertise and best practices in countering terrorism and antisemitism,” the letter reads.
Chikli says Australia’s acknowledgement of extremism in the aftermath of the massacre “stops short of directly identifying radical Islam as the driving ideology behind this attack.”
“Similarly, the fact that Prime Minister Albanese and Minister for Foreign Affairs Penny Wong have failed to clearly name the source of this violence – radical Islam – undermines the ability to confront it.”
[IsraelTimes] Ban on products and services from the West Bank, Golan and East Jerusalem, enforceable since December 30, may be the largest state-level embargo since the Arab League boycott
Competitive evil is a thing.
When Spain began blocking Israeli products imported from the West Bank, Golan Heights and East Jerusalem this week, it officially kicked off what may be the largest state-level embargo of products and services from the Jewish state since the Arab League ...an organization of Arabic-speaking states with 22 member countries and four observers. The League tries to achieve Arab consensus on issues, which usually leaves them doing nothing but a bit of grimacing and mustache cursing... boycott launched around the time of Israel’s inception.
While the ban on those products, and other measures that took effect on December 30, are not expected to significantly impact Israel’s economy or its $850 million in annual exports to Spain, they give a "symbolic message" that may encourage other countries to pursue similar trade boycotts with the Jewish state in the future, according to Maya Sion-Tzidkiyahu, director of the Israel — Europa ...the land mass occupying the space between the English Channel and the Urals, also known as Moslem Lebensraum... Relations Program at the Mitvim Institute and a lecturer at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s European Forum.
"When a country of considerable size like Spain advances a move like this, it gives backing to smaller states to follow," she said.
December 30 marked the deadline in Spain for formal enforcement of Royal Decree-Law 10/2025 (Spanish link), a law passed in September providing for "urgent measures against the genocide in Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with a rusty iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response... and support for the Paleostinian population."
That day, Spain’s Finance Ministry began officially enforcing a ban on products originating "from Israeli settlements in the Occupied Paleostinian Territory." It published on its website a list of hundreds of localities and postal codes, including those in the Golan and East Jerusalem, from which imports would be forbidden. Products from these areas — primarily agricultural products, wine and cosmetics — likely comprise just a tiny fraction of Israel’s exports to Spain.
The law also states that all imports from Israel must now state clearly their place of origin and postal code.
Also on that day, Spain’s Social Rights, Consumer Affairs and Agenda Ministry contacted seven websites promoting vacation rentals and told them to immediately remove or block 138 different ads for apartments in "Israeli settlements in occupied Paleostinian territory."
Article 4 of the law establishes that advertising the sale of goods from those settlements, or services provided in them, is now illegal, it explained.
Failure to remove these ads could result in further actions, the ministry warned, without specifying a penalty.
Also on December 30, Spain announced an exception to a total ban that went into effect in September on the export and import to Israel of defense technologies, including "dual-use" technologies. That law had allowed for exceptions to be made for reasons of "national interest," and on Tuesday, the government announced that aviation giant Airbus would be allowed to continue importing from Israel.
Airbus uses Israeli technologies for several programs based in Spain that employ thousands of people and comprise as much as 60 percent of Spain’s total air and defense exports.
"The inability to maintain this trade with Israel would seriously jeopardize the continuity of these projects in Spain, which would have an industrial, economic, employment and technological impact of such magnitude that it would affect strategic autonomy and general national interests," the government stated in a Council of Ministers meeting.
The exception for Airbus may be seen as a small victory for Israeli technologies. However,
a poor excuse is better than no excuse at all... the fact that Spain issued the exception on that day made it clear that the new laws regarding arms sales are now being actively enforced, analysts said.
Its restrictions are likely to generate legal uncertainty and create supply chain disruptions for numerous companies, commercial advisers say.
Since the October 7, 2023, Hamas ..the braying voice of Islamic Resistance®,... onslaught, Spain has emerged as one of Europe’s most aggressive critics of Israel, systematically dismantling decades of diplomatic and economic cooperation and instead pushing harsh sanctions that have taken a bite out of once-thriving ties.
Under the leadership of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, Madrid has used some of the most severe rhetoric of any G20 nation, frequently labeling Israel’s military operations as "extermination" and "genocide."
In June 2024, it was the first European country to formally apply to join South Africa’s case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ). A month earlier, it formally recognized a Paleostinian state in a coordinated effort with Norway and Ireland in an attempt to increase diplomatic pressure on Jerusalem to end its war with Hamas.
TRADE WARS
Spain is now the second European country to implement a ban on products from Israeli settlements and any weapons trade, after Slovenia launched similar boycotts in August, but its impact is expected to be much more significant.
The European Union ...the successor to the Holy Roman Empire, only without the Hapsburgs and the nifty uniforms and the dancing... has had a longstanding policy that Israel’s presence in the West Bank and other territories conquered during the 1967 war is illegal, but has generally refrained from enforcing that position with trade sanctions beyond labeling guidelines, due largely to disagreements between member states.
Slovenia’s measures, which it said at the time were designed to ratchet up diplomatic pressure over the war in Gaza, were mostly symbolic. Trade in weapons and products made in the settlements was virtually zero before the ban, and Slovenia’s Foreign Minister Tanja Fajon conceded at the time that the measure was chiefly about messaging to the country’s partners in the European Union.
"While symbolic," the ban "is a necessary response to the ongoing humanitarian and security situation in Gaza," she said at the time.
Other countries have limited state-level restrictions on trade with Israel, such as Colombia’s ban on coal sales to Israel. Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom, Italia and Belgium are among those that have restrictions on arms trade with Israel, but Spain’s is the most comprehensive, with a two-way embargo that bans both the export and the import of defense material, as well as bans on "dual-use" products that also affect its tech sector.
To counter the effects of such boycotts, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently unveiled a massive NIS 350 billion ($108 billion) strategic independence plan to bolster Israel’s defense industry and reduce its reliance on foreign markets.
The move, he said, stemmed from a desire to "reduce our dependence on all players, including friends," after allies imposed various restrictions on weapons sales to Israel in reaction to the war in Gaza.
Still, he noted, many countries around the world "want to buy more and more systems from us."
Shortly after Spain passed its trade ban on defense products in September, the country canceled a contract worth nearly 700 million euros ($825 million) for Israeli-designed rocket launchers.
The country has already blocked 200 attempts to buy material linked to Israel, its digital transformation minister Oscar Lopez recently told national broadcaster TVE.
But besides concerns about the embargo’s impact in and of itself, there is concern that the measure could pave the way for other countries to follow.
"This is sending a strong political message that others are seeing," Sion-Tzidkiyahu said.
Ireland, Israel’s fourth-largest export market in the EU, is said to be close to finalizing its Occupied Territories Bill, which could endanger billions of dollars in annual trade. Israeli companies sold more than $3 billion of electronics and microchips to tech manufacturers in Ireland last year and bought more than $1.6 billion in pharmaceuticals and medical products.
A ban on products from Israel’s settlements could create a legal quagmire for Ireland, as it could trigger US anti-boycott laws that would affect large multinational corporations, including Intel, Google and Microsoft, that have large hubs in all three countries. If Irish law forces them to boycott an Israeli subsidiary or service, even ones based over the Green Line, those companies could face massive legal penalties in the United States.
That, in turn, could create a snowball effect that would be difficult for Israel to combat.
"If other countries follow, they could form a group that would protect them from Israeli retaliation," Sion-Tzidkiyahu said. "That would be very challenging."
[JustTheNews] Another chance at an "Arab Spring": If Iran violently kills peaceful protesters, the United States of America will come to their rescue, Trump said in a 3 a.m. post Friday on his TruthSocial platform. "We are locked and loaded and ready to go."
Posted by: Skidmark ||
01/03/2026 05:36 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[1837 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Iran
#5
Thank you Skidmark...
The posting reminds us that Obama actions, and/or lack of them likely has caused the deaths of 100's of 1000's worldwide over the years.
#8
After Midnight Hammer Iran didn’t need any reminders.
Posted by: Difar Dave ||
01/03/2026 17:58 Comments ||
Top||
#9
I'm still waiting for a 60-ship ARCLIGHT strike on Bandar Abbas and the surrounding territory. I'm sure THAT would be a "message" the Ayatolahs couldn't ignore.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
01/03/2026 18:35 Comments ||
Top||
[IsraelTimes] Iran is offering to sell advanced arms to foreign countries in exchange for cryptocurrency in an attempt to circumvent Western financial controls, the Financial Times reports, citing documents and payment terms.
Mindex, the Iranian Defense Ministry’s export center, is preparing to reach military deals to sell ballistic missiles, drones, and warships to countries in exchange for digital currencies.
Mindex’s website has a FAQ section that answers questions about potential buyers’ concerns about Western sanctions, asking, “Given the sanctions on Iran, what is the guarantee that the contract will be executed and the product will reach the destination country?”
“It should be noted that, given the general policies of the Islamic Republic of Iran regarding circumvention of sanctions, there is no problem in implementing the contract,” the response reads.
“Your purchased product will reach you as soon as possible.” "But wait! There's more: Free ballistic missile with every purchase, just pay separate shipping and handling!"
Precisely as the Syrian branch of Al Qaeda intended — the hard jihad of the sword finished quickly. The easier, but slower, soft jihad of the law is taking place in front of our eyes.
[NationalContext] As the stated deadline of the Damascus–SDF March 10 agreement for the integration of the SDF into the Syrian army passes without a deal, the risk of military escalation rises. Yet the political geography of what has come to be known as northeast Syria—now largely under SDF control—creates a contradictory, two-sided challenge for all three key actors: the SDF, Damascus, and Turkey.
Context: The SDF’s area of control consolidated on the eastern bank of the Euphrates after Turkish-backed Syrian factions seized Manbij and Tel Rifaat following the Assad regime’s collapse in December 2024. The SDF now controls most of Hasakah and Raqqa provinces and roughly half of Deir Ezzor.
Analysis: Despite last-minute diplomatic efforts and US mediation to salvage the March agreement, there are growing signs that a breakthrough is unlikely by the intended year-end deadline. An extension remains possible, but likely only briefly – unlikely to run beyond March – and the odds of a real breakthrough are shrinking fast unless one side makes major, unexpected concessions. If that doesn’t happen, the prospect of escalation to subjugate the SDF by force increases.
Even setting aside the question of US political approval, the political geography itself gives each of the three actors a paradoxical advantage–disadvantage balance that complicates any move toward war.
1) The SDF: demographic weakness, geographic necessity
For the SDF, the core geographic problem is that large parts of what it controls sit well outside its comfort zone and popular base. That leaves a Kurdish-led project structurally fragile: despite years of governing Arab-majority areas in Deir Ezzor and Raqqa, and parts of Hasakah, the SDF has made limited inroads in winning hearts and minds there.
The rise of a Sunni-led order in Damascus further intensifies these demographic realities. Many Sunni Arabs are naturally drawn to an emerging authority that is also Sunni Arab. Two separate polls—The Economist in March and a newer survey by Arab Barometer—show support for Syria’s new leader Ahmad al-Sharaa at 81%. Notably, even after events between March and September–October (when the more recent poll was conducted), support for al-Sharaa remained at 81%. Both polls say they sampled across all provinces, including the SDF-run northeast and Sweida, though neither specifies what share of the sample came from those provinces. The overall direction is still clear: there is consolidated Sunni Arab support around al-Sharaa—and that matters directly for the SDF’s long-term prospects because a large portion of the population in its territory is Sunni Arab.
More at the link
Posted by: badanov ||
01/03/2026 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[1761 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Syria/HTS
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
..the braying voice of Islamic Resistance®,...
