Iran: Spread Latin American terror

Still flushed with its success in the 2015 nuclear deal, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif last week embarked on a five-nation tour of Latin America to spread the message that Tehran’s global influence is rising.

Zarif is one of those Iranian leaders eagerly embraced as a “moderate” by the Obama Administration. Like other Iranian officials of his rank, Zarif’s room for maneuver is strictly regulated by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader. Still, the notion that he represents a genuinely reformist faction within the Islamic Republic has been a convenient and comforting tool for persuading a skeptical public that Tehran will abide by its international commitments. That perception has been boosted by the soothing diplomatese which Zarif typically deploys when speaking to western leaders and the western press.

Without a leading outside power to put a brake on his activities, or even point out the appalling destruction wreaked by Iran and its allies in Syria, Iraq and Lebanon, Zarif has no reason to delay his charm offensive. As he sees it, the world is finally ready to accept that Iran is, firstly, a pillar of the new, multilateral global order, and secondly, that Iran is a viable commercial partner now that sanctions have essentially been lifted.

Speaking before his plane landed in Cuba, the first stop on a tour that also includes Nicaragua, Bolivia, Chile and Venezuela, Zarif emphasized the importance of the 60 executives from the Iranian “private sector” who were accompanying him. “The composition of the delegation,” Zarif informed Press TV, the regime’s English-language mouthpiece, “is indicative of the significance that both the private and the state-run sectors of the Islamic Republic of Iran attach to the enhancement of relations with Latin America.”