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| Tareck Zaidan El Aissami Maddah (centre) |
In Venezuela and Bolivia, Iran has moved
to the next level, developing a military presence through joint ventures in
defense industries. In Venezuela, the state of Aragua, where Mr. El Aissami is
now governor, is ground zero for this activity. Havana applauds this Islamic
intervention. Since the rise of chavismo, Cuba has supplied intelligence
services to Venezuela and its regional allies, notably Nicaragua, Bolivia and
Ecuador. Mr. Humire says it has also supplied passport-information technology
to allow these countries to process individuals from the Middle East, hand out
new documents and maintain the secrecy of true identities. Cuba has used this
capacity to exchange information with like-minded nations, including Russia and
Iran. Raised in Venezuela by a Lebanese-born Muslim father and mentored in the
“Utopia 78” left-wing student movement at the University of the Andes, he was
Venezuela’s interior minister from 2008-12. According to a June 2014 paper from
the Washington-based Center for a Secure Free Society, where Mr. Humire is
executive director, “regional intelligence officials” believe that Mr. El
Aissami’s office used information technology developed by Cuban state security
to give some 173 individuals from the Middle East new Venezuelan identities
that are extremely difficult to trace. More…
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