Israel Radio reported a couple of weeks ago that Iran and Hezbollah had established a base inside of Nicaragua, near the border with Honduras.  (Naturally, this has received zero attention from the American press, with the exception of Investor’s Business Daily.)  This is apparently an extension of Iran’s presence in Venezuela.  Obama’s claims notwithstanding, Hugo Chavez seems determined to prove himself a menace to the US.   And those who claimed that our old nemesis Danny Ortega, had turned over a new leaf, have been deceiving themselves.  (Many of us cheered the old Marxist’s fall from power; P.J. O’Rourke’s chapter on the Nicaraguan elections in Holidays in Hell is priceless.)

It’s perfectly reasonable to assume that Hezbollah isn’t using a Latin American training facility to prepare for operations against Israel.  They have most of Lebanon at their disposal for that sort of thing.  The options for operations here in the Americas are multiple.  There’s a growing Muslim community in South America, portions of which could presumably be incited against US diplomatic facilities.  The operatives could directly target Mexican natural gas pipelines, or, given the porousness of the US-Mexican border, be bound for targets here in the US.  Also, given Hezbollah’s involvement with  the Latin American drug cartels, they could be training to help reinforce those efforts, or to provide additional training to those cartels in their fights against the Mexican and/or US military.

In fact, Iran’s presence in Nicaragua is not a new development.  Todd Bensman had been covering this story as far back as October of 2007, and we had noted it here on this blog at the time as something to be concerned about.  At that time, Iran was establishing a large, outsized presence in Nicaragua under diplomatic cover, claiming that it was there to promote economic development.  Anyone with an ounce of sense knew at the time that this was a precursor to something more serious, and now, that something more serious seems to have arrived.