US Secretary of State Marco Rubio cast Venezuela as a regional platform for Iranian influence, describing Nicolás Maduro’s government as a narcotics transit hub that hosts Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah.
Rubio, speaking in a Fox News interview broadcast on Tuesday, said: “Iran, it’s IRGC, and even Hezbollah has a presence in South America, and one of their anchor presence – especially for the Iranians – is inside of Venezuela.”
He added: “Where they have planted their flag in our hemisphere is on Venezuelan territory, with the full and open cooperation of that regime.”
Washington is stepping up a counter-drug mission involving US naval assets in the Caribbean and nearby waters.
Rubio also said the administration used limited force to destroy Iranian nuclear sites earlier this year.
“The President conducted a precise campaign. It wasn’t a prolonged war. It was a 24-hour operation; B-2 bombers left the mainland of the United States, came over a defined target, dropped the payload – 14 missiles or 14 rockets right into the holes of this facility,” he said.
Framing the approach as narrowly tailored, Rubio said: “That’s a great example of the limited and strategic and focused use of American power to achieve something that’s in our national interest. It was in our national interest not to have Iran have a nuclear program that can be turned into a weapons program that could one day threaten the United States.”
Iran and radical Islamism
Rubio tied Iran to what he called a wider campaign by radical Islamist actors against the West.
“Radical Islam has designs, openly, on the West – on the United States, on Europe,” he said.
“And they are prepared to conduct acts of terrorism – in the case of Iran, nation-state actions, assassinations, murders, you name it.”
Rubio also said the administration remains open to diplomacy but skeptical of Maduro’s commitments.
“If you can work out a way where you can bring stability to the hemisphere, you can make Venezuela help be a country that isn’t the base for Iranian influence against and activities against the United States, that would be great,” he said.