MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Pentagon Says Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Operating in Latinamerica

US Defence Secretary Robert Gates

Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps has stepped up its presence in Latin America, especially in Venezuela, according to a Pentagon report to the United States Congress partially de-classified this week.

The Revolutionary Guards' Quds Force “maintains operational capabilities around the world,” said the report on Iran's military power, released this week by the US Defence Department.

The force “is well established in the Middle East and North Africa, and recent years have witnessed an increased presence in Latin America, particularly Venezuela,” the report said.

”If US involvement in conflicts in these regions deepens, contact with the IRGC-QF (Quds Force), directly or through extremist groups it supports, will be more frequent and consequential“ warns the document.

The report said Iran's top priority is to ensure ”the survival of the regime“ and that Tehran has ambitions to position itself as a regional power, while expanding its presence on the world stage.

The Teheran regime uses the Revolutionary Guard to exercise economic, political and clandestine military pressure in all those places where Iran has interests overseas, adds the report.

The elite Quds force, which serves under the authority of the supreme leader Ali Khamenei, has been accused in connection with a 1994 attack on a Jewish community centre in Buenos Aires and bombings of US embassy in Lebanon in 1983/84.

The Pentagon alleges that in the last three decades Iran has promoted a network of terrorist groups such as Hamas, Lebanon’s radical Hezbollah, Shiite groups in Iraq, the Islamic Jihad in Palestine and the Taliban in Afghanistan.

US Defence Secretary Robert Gates last year accused Iran of engaging in ”subversive activity” in Latin America.

Venezuela, which accused Washington of meddling in Latin America, has denied the accusations and defended its ties with Iran as focused on economic cooperation.