Earlier this year I wrote about how Hugo Chavez had transformed Venezuela into a hub for international terrorist organizations of all shapes and sizes, their state sponsors, and participants in the black-market trade of nuclear materials and technology:

Mountains of evidence have arisen in recent years showing that South America is a hideout and breeding ground for the world’s most dangerous terrorist organizations, including al Qaeda, Hezbollah and Hamas. Pockets of South America—including areas in Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador, all of which have governments hostile to the U.S.—have become launching pads from which the world’s most venomous anti-American entities, particularly radical Islam, could strike the United States.

At the time, much of the evidence indicting Chavez was circumstantial, which is probably why the mainstream media and the American government hadn’t made a big story out of it. And as long as the media and the government weren’t reporting on it, it was easy for Americans to ignore or be dismissive of the threat.

That is beginning to change.

Over the past four months, more evidence has surfaced indicating danger is lurking in America’s backyard.

Notice what the Los Angeles Timesreported last week (emphasis mine throughout):

Western anti-terrorism officials are increasingly concerned that Hezbollah, the Lebanon-based Shiite Muslim militia that Washington has labeled a terrorist group, is using Venezuela as a base for operations. Linked to deadly attacks on Jewish targets in Argentina in the early 1990s, Hezbollah may be taking advantage of Venezuela’s ties with Iran, the militia’s longtime sponsor, to move “people and things” into the Americas, as one Western government terrorism expert put it.

How many Americans comprehend the significance of a radical Islamic terrorist group setting up camp in Venezuela?

Hezbollah is an appendage of Iran, which is bent on annihilating the United States. For years it’s been easy for Americans to downplay the Iranian threat. Surely Iran can’t be a big problem, we reason—it’s thousands of miles away. But that’s no longer true. Now even the mainstream media and the American government are talking more about Iran’s presence in America’s neighborhood.

Americans ought to be alarmed!

Iran and Hezbollah’s foothold in Venezuela is a result of the thriving friendship—bound by fervent anti-Americanism—between Hugo Chavez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The two strongmen have visited with each other on multiple occasions in recent years and have struck several agreements and embarked on joint ventures, including projects in cement, automobile and tractor manufacturing. Additionally, Iran and Venezuela have created a $2 billion program to fund social projects in Latin America, including oil subsidies for Cuba and Nicaragua, which are designed to counter American efforts to secure support from allies in Latin America.

Hugo Chavez has welcomed Iran and its interests into the South American neighborhood with open arms, which has turned Venezuela into one of the Southern Hemisphere’s largest terrorist havens. Chavez, says Latin American current affairs analyst Vladimir Torres, has helped both Iran and radical Islam cut themselves a foothold in Venezuela and across the region. “Since March 2, 2007, Iran’s national airline, Iran Air, is flying on a weekly basis to Venezuela. The commercial Tehran-Caracas flight, with a stop in Damascus, Syria, allows for easy movement of passengers, given Venezuela’s lax immigration controls, the absence of visa requirements, and the reported ‘unofficial’ instruction to Venezuelan custom officers not to ask questions regarding whom and what comes and goes in the flight” (Sept. 26, 2007).

Despite intense efforts and hundreds of millions of dollars spent by Western nations on national security measures to curb the flow of Islamic terrorists, such individuals are traveling between Iran and Venezuela with ease.

The diplomatic relationship between Hezbollah and the Venezuelan government was exposed further earlier this summer when the U.S. Treasury Department froze the assets of two influential Venezuelan citizens after it accused them of being avid supporters of Hezbollah. The L.A. Times continued:

Treasury officials formally accused Ghazi Nasr al Din, a Venezuelan diplomat of Lebanese descent, of using posts at embassies in the Middle East to support financing for Hezbollah and “discuss operational issues with senior officials” of the militia. Nasr al Din “facilitated the travel” of Hezbollah members to and from Venezuela and to a “training course in Iran,” according to Treasury officials. The president of a Shiite Muslim center in Caracas, he served as a diplomat in Damascus and later in Beirut, authorities say.

The other Venezuelan identified by the U.S. Treasury Department was Fawzi Kanan, a Caracas-based travel agent, who allegedly made travel arrangements for Hezbollah terrorists and even discussed “possible kidnappings and terrorist attacks” with senior Hezbollah officials in Lebanon.

The findings of the Treasury Department this past June substantiate the earlier claims of Torres, who reported on the vast diplomatic connections between Iran and Hezbollah and the Venezuelan government in September 2007: “The Iranian embassies in some [South American] countries have increased their number of accredited diplomats to figures that seem out of proportion with their needs. The presence of more than 30 diplomats in Managua alone has already triggered suspicions regarding their mandate. There are substantiated reports of Hezbollah cells operating in Venezuela—particularly in Margarita Island, where real-estate businesses provide the cover for alleged drug-money laundering and fundraising for the terrorist organization” (op. cit.).

Jonathan Halevi, a counterterrorism expert from the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, concurred with Torres in an article he co-wrote for Israel’s Ynetnews last month. “Iranian-Hezbollah footprints can be found in various African and South American countries,” he wrote on August 10. “In Venezuela and other South American countries Hezbollah has been waging a long-term campaign to convert the native Indians to Shiite Islam.” Halevi also cited an article from a Kuwaiti newspaper in June that reported that Hezbollah was training Venezuelans in military camps in south Lebanon to prepare them for attacking American targets.

Note that!

Hezbollah is training Venezuelans to attack American targets!

As proof of Hezbollah’s success in converting native Venezuelans to Islam, Halevi noted a recent claim by Teodoro Rafael Darnott, a Venezuelan convert. “If the United States were to attack Iran, the only country ruled by God,” stated Darnott, “we would counterattack in Latin America and even inside the United States itself. We have the means and we know how to go about it. We will sabotage the transportation of oil from Latin America to the U.S. You have been warned.”

Venezuela has clearly emerged as a strategic hub in Iran’s war against Israel and the United States!

Iran and Hezbollah’s operations in Venezuela were among the reasons the Israeli government cautioned its citizens in August that Hezbollah was planning to kidnap Israelis around the world. The L.A. Times confirmed Israel’s suspicions last week when, citing Western anti-terrorism officials, it reported that “agents of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and Hezbollah have allegedly set up a special force to attempt to kidnap Jewish businesspeople in Latin America and spirit them away to Lebanon …. Iranian and Hezbollah operatives traveling in and out of Venezuela have recruited Venezuelan informants working at the Caracas airport to gather intelligence on Jewish travelers as potential targets for abduction ….”

Today there’s little doubt in the minds of Western officials: Iran and Hezbollah are deeply rooted in Venezuela!

This ought to be alarming to the American people: One of their greatest enemies and its radical and dangerous proxies have moved into America’s backyard!

“Venezuela is known as a major transit hub [into America],” wrote Fred Burton from Stratfor, “and an entire industry has developed in Venezuela around the practice of illegal alien smuggling. There is an ‘underground railroad’ of sorts that begins in Caracas and stretches along various air, land and sea routes used to move migrants into the United States. This network consists of facilitators, document vendors, pilots, bus and truck drivers, sea captains, small hotels, money exchanges, restaurants and stores that all cater to illegal immigrants” (Dec. 13, 2006).

So Venezuela is not merely a hub and staging ground for international terrorist organizations, it has mastered the ability to smuggle illegals into America!

Next Thursday is the seven-year anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, d.c. Watching those planes charge into buildings filled with human beings was a horrifying, bloodcurdling experience. That attack introduced the American people to the world of radical Islamic terrorism.

The terrorists who steered those planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon died. But the hatred that inspired them did not!

That hatred lives. And not just in the mountains of Pakistan or Afghanistan, or on the streets of Iraq and Israel. Reality is, while hatred for the United States exists in the minds of the mullahs and political leaders in faraway Tehran and Damascus, and among the Hamas and Hezbollah terrorists, those radicals live and are thriving in Venezuela and other nations in Latin America. Believe it or not, radical Islam lurks in America’s backyard!