A recent U.S. court ruling over a fight between Argentina and its creditors on Wall Street will increase global poverty by making it easier for “vulture funds” to seize the assets of indebted nations, according to anti-debt campaigners who are urging the U.S. government to overturn the decision.

In 2001, Argentina suffered an extreme economic crisis that led it to default on nearly 100 billion dollars in debt. Since then the country has settled with 93 percent of its creditors on a plan to pay back about a third of what was originally owed.

The seven percent who are holding out, however, insist that Argentina must pay the full value of its defaulted bonds, despite the fact that many of those now holding those bonds never paid the full value themselves, having purchased the debt in the immediate wake of the 2001 crisis for a fraction of what they are now demanding.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has argued that a victory for Argentina’s holdout bondholders would undermine efforts to renegotiate debt held by other nations while also risking another major debt default in Argentina, which could have major consequences for global financial markets."[The case against Argentina] will set a precedent that will just have huge repercussions in terms of global poverty."
-- Eric LeCompte

In a Jul. 23 statement, the IMF said it was “deeply concerned about the broad systemic implications” of the case. The administration of U.S. President Barack Obama has similarly argued that how Argentina handles its debt is a matter of national sovereignty. However, the administration cancelled an IMF plan to side with Argentina in the U.S. legal system, maintaining that such support was premature.

That excuse may no longer hold. On Aug. 23, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit  – the last step before the Supreme Court – upheld an earlier decision that Argentina must pay its bondholders in full, to the tune of 1.3 billion dollars, rejecting claims of negative impacts on global financial markets as “speculative” and “hyperbolic”.

“We believe that the interest – one widely shared in the financial community – in maintaining New York’s status as one of the foremost commercial centres is advanced by requiring debtors, including foreign debtors, to pay their debts,” the court ruled.

The government of Argentina has appealed the case to the Supreme Court. Its creditors, meanwhile, have spent millions of dollars on a lobbying and public relations campaign aimed at increasing the political cost to the Obama administration of siding with Argentina before the high court.

Paul Singer – the billionaire CEO of Elliot Management and a major Republican donor whose subsidiary NML Capital is the lead plaintiff in the legal fight against Argentina – has singlehandedly spent millions of dollars funding right-wing think tanks, pundits and politicians who have painted Buenos Aires as an increasingly lawless ally of Iran, as previously reported by IPS.

The campaign has included position papers and letters from Singer-supported members of Congress suggesting Argentina may even be helping the Islamic Republic develop nuclear weapons.

A victory for Singer and Argentina’s other creditors could make Singer hundreds of millions of dollars. It could also have devastating consequences for the world’s poor.

Increasing profits and poverty

The hedge funds pursuing legal action against Argentina “are profiting off the backs of the poorest people in the world,” Eric LeCompte, executive director of Jubilee USA, told IPS. Wealthy by global standards, those suing Argentina also hold the debt of the some of the world’s poorest nations – and the case against Argentina is crucial to their long-term business strategy.

“Essentially, it will set a precedent that will just have huge repercussions in terms of global poverty,” LeCompte said. Representing a coalition that includes organised labour and hundreds of religious groups and anti-debt campaigners, LeCompte said his group is urging the Obama administration to maintain its support for Argentina in the U.S. legal system while also pursuing a legislative solution in Congress.

If the hedge funds prevail, “poor countries will have less access to credit, and it will be much more difficult to restructure debt,” LeCompte said. If Argentine bondholders successfully hold out for the full value of their bonds, that could encourage the holders of other defaulted debt to do the same, miring indebted nations in poverty.

Even if a nation in default has already renegotiated its debt payments with the vast majority of its creditors, as has Argentina, all it takes is one firm to hold a nation hostage. Instead of funding domestic priorities such as education and health care, developing countries and others facing economic distress could be stuck paying off foreign creditors for a generation or more. The cost of credit for these countries will rise as financial institutions balk at the increased risk of lending.

This has happened before. In countries such as Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo, U.S. hedge funds used courts around the world to seize assets of poor nations they claimed owed them money. They are planning to do the same elsewhere.

“These vulture funds have been buying up distressed debt across Eastern Europe, in Greece, in developing countries, waiting for the precedent of this case being set,” said LeCompte. He hoped the Obama administration would not be cowed by the public relations campaign against Argentina and would continue to stand up for the right of sovereign nations to renegotiate their debt, before the Supreme Court and elsewhere.

“If the Supreme Court doesn’t take the case or takes the case and rules against Argentina,” said LeCompte, “we would hope the Obama administration would take executive action to protect the international financial system from this reckless behaviour.”

Paul Singer at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Jan. 23, 2013. Credit: WEF/cc by 2.0

By Charles Davis
LOS ANGELES, Jul 31 2013 (IPS)

Vulture capitalist Paul Singer has hundreds of millions of dollars at stake in his legal battle with Argentina over the country’s 2001 debt default.

The promise of a huge payday has led the Wall Street hedge fund manager to sink a small fortune into a campaign against the South American nation portraying it as a close – and anti-U.S. – ally of the Islamic Republic of Iran. (See series, Part One)

One way he has done this is by issuing press releases through the American Task Force Argentina (ATFA), a trade group he helped found, and buying full-page ads in major newspapers.

Giving money to politicians is another way to affect the debate in the United States.

Senator Mark Kirk, an Illinois Republican, has been a vocal critic of Argentina, writing a letter to the country’s president denouncing her agreement with Iran to investigate the the 1994 bombing of the Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina (AMIA) in Buenos Aires. That letter was later quoted in an ATFA ad.

As it turns out, Kirk has received more than 95,000 dollars from employees of Singer’s firm, Elliott Management, according to the Centre for Responsive Politics. Indeed, many letters expressing concern about Argentina’s ties to Iran appear are signed by lawmakers who have received campaign cash from Singer and his close associates.

A Jul. 10 letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, for instance, urged the Justice Department not to side with Argentina in its legal battle before the Supreme Court, citing both the AMIA agreement and Argentina’s expanding trade with the Islamic Republic “at a time when the rest of the world (including the United States) is attempting to isolate Iran to pressure it to give up its nuclear programme.”

“Rewarding Argentina’s decision to flout well-established international principles regarding the orderly restructuring of sovereign debt has clearly emboldened its leaders to defy other international norms with impunity,” the 12 lawmakers wrote.

Those who signed the letter received more than 200,000 dollars last year from companies and PACs tied to Singer.

One signer, Congressman Michael Grimm, a New York Republican on the House Financial Services Committee, was reelected to Congress last year after receiving 38,000 dollars from Elliott Management, nearly twice as much as his next largest donor.

Grimm has cosponsored legislation demanding “full compensation” for Argentina’s bondholders – the sponsor of that bill, former Congressman Connie Mack, took in 39,000 dollars from Singer’s company – and has urged the Barack Obama administration to investigate Argentina’s relationship with Iran. ATFA has commended Grimm for his work.

Another lawmaker who signed the letter to Holder is Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Florida Republican who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee. She accuses the Argentine government of colluding with the Islamic Republic to cover up its alleged role in the AMIA bombing and undermining U.S. interests “by giving Iran a larger footprint in the Western Hemisphere”.

But she isn’t just worried about Iranian-backed terrorism. In a 2012 press release, she said it was “troubling that Argentina refuses to honor its outstanding debts, and evades U.S. court decisions.”

Ros-Lehtinen received 108,000 dollars last year from the American Unity PAC. The PAC was founded in 2012 with a one-million-dollar investment from Singer, accounting for more than a third of the group’s budget.

New Jersey Republican Scott Garrett, chair of the House Financial Services subcommittee on capital markets, also signed the letter to Holder. On Jun. 7, 2012, Garrett held a hearing to address the Obama administration’s support for “deadbeat foreign governments . . . at the expense of our own U.S. investors.”

At the hearing, he decried that “U.S. investors are taking billions of dollars in losses, despite Argentina having the money to pay the bill.”

Garrett received 35,000 dollars from employees at Elliott Management last year, more than all but one of his other campaign contributors.

On Jul. 9, a House subcommittee chaired by South Carolina Republican Jeff Duncan held a hearing entitled “Threat to the Homeland: Iran’s Extending Influence in the Western Hemisphere”, the primary purpose of which was to rebut a recent report from the State Department that said Iran’s influence was on the decline.

Duncan received 10,000 dollars in 2012 from the Every Republican is Crucial PAC, which was heavily supported by the executives of Wall Street hedge funds, including Singer.

At the hearing, Douglas Farah, a former Washington Post reporter turned right-wing foreign policy analyst, testified that Argentina “is rapidly becoming one of Iran’s most important allies.”

He accused the government of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner of taking steps “aimed at absolving senior Iranian leaders of their responsibility in a major terrorist attack,” while also embracing “a series of seemingly irrational economic and political polices that favour transnational organised crime, are overtly hostile to U.S. interests, and could offer Iran a lifeline in both its economic crisis and its nuclear programme.”

That testimony was followed by a Jul. 11 letter to Secretary of State John Kerry, signed by a bipartisan group of politicians, including Singer-supported lawmakers Duncan and Grimm.

The letter, which warned that “Argentina may be seeking to aid Iran’s illicit nuclear weapons programme,” urged the secretary to weigh the Fernández government’s “ties with the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism” when considering whether the State Department will side with Argentina in its legal battle with U.S. hedge funds.

Farah, whose testimony was cited in the letter, wrote a Jun. 26 column for the Miami Herald in which he referred to Argentina’s “increasingly cozy relationship with the ayatollahs,” citing the 2012 Nisman report to claim Iran is using the country as a base from which to conduct intelligence and terror operations with the ultimate goal of “exporting the Iranian revolution”.

The column also asserts that the president-elect of Iran “would have been infinitely familiar with the planning” of the 1994 AMIA bombing, a claim echoed by other right-wing pundits but which Nisman himself rejected a day before the column was published.

The column was co-authored by Mark Dubowitz, executive director of the Foundation for Defence of Democracies (FDD), a neoconservative think tank that has been highly critical of Argentina’s relations with Iran. This year, FDD and its analysts have published more than a half-dozen such critiques.

“Why is Argentina letting Iran examine the 1994 AMIA bombing in Buenos Aires, a crime Hezbollah surely committed?” asked Lee Smith, an editor at The Weekly Standard and fellow at FDD, in a column for Tablet magazine. In The Atlantic, FDD’s vice president of research, Jonathan Schanzer, explored the “dark connections between Argentina’s government and Tehran”.

Since 2008, Singer has given FDD at least 3.6 million dollars, according to a 2011 tax filing seen by IPS.

Conservative connections

FDD is but one of many neoconservative organisations with ties to Singer. Since there aren’t that many neoconservatives to begin with, those who don’t recoil at the label all tend to know each other – and serve on each other’s boards.

William Kristol, publisher of The Weekly Standard, serves on the board of the Singer-funded FDD, as well as the Manhattan Institute, a New York think tank that advocates hands-off capitalism and an interventionist military policy; Singer is the chairman of the institute’s board.

In the small world of neoconservative politics, even when there aren’t necessarily financial ties, everyone still knows each other. Still, there are usually financial ties.

In March, Roger Noriega, another former Bush administration official, wrote a piece with José Cárdenas – another Bush official who now works at Noriega’s consulting firm – calling on the U.S. government to hold Argentina accountable “for its failures to abide by its obligations to international financial institutions” and “troubling alliances with rogue governments”. The piece was published by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), an influential neoconservative think tank in Washington.

Noriega has been paid at least 60,000 dollars (in 2007) by Elliott Management to lobby on the issue of “Sovereign Debt Owed to a U.S. Company.” A tax filing that was mistakenly disclosed and reported on by The Nation shows that the publisher of Noriega’s piece, AEI, received 1.1 million dollars from Singer in 2009. Filings for subsequent years have not been made public.

Asked to comment, an AEI spokesperson told IPS that the think tank had “looked into the matter” and found Noriega “has no conflicts of interest in this regard”.

The other people and organisations named in this article did not respond to requests for comment.

Money is power

Singer has used his riches the way a lot of other wealthy people do: to get richer, of course, but also to promote what he believes – and fund the politicians and pundits who will promote it too.

At the very least, those who benefit from his generosity are going to think twice about opposing his interests; one doesn’t bite the hand that feeds. Some may even see the money they receive from Singer as a reason to actively promote his interests.

One thing is clear: no matter how his case against Argentina turns out, Paul Singer is going to be a very rich and powerful man. If he wins, though, he will be richer. And money in the United States means the power to shape the debate not just on financial matters, but war and peace.

Excerpt:

By Charles Davis
LOS ANGELES, Jul 29 2013 (IPS)

When Argentina defaulted on its national debt in 2001, U.S. hedge funds swooped in to buy the nation’s bonds at pennies on the dollar, confident they would eventually prevail in the U.S. legal system and force the country to pay out in full.

That battle is set to reach the Supreme Court later this year, but the country’s creditors on Wall Street – labeled “vulture capitalists” by their critics – are also making their case in Congress and the court of public opinion, with a current media campaign aimed at painting Argentina as an increasingly rogue nation in bed with Washington’s enemies.

The public relations effort, which focuses on Argentina’s increasingly friendly relations with Iran, comes as the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama is weighing whether to side with Argentina before the Supreme Court in its battle with Wall Street. According to The Washington Post, officials from the Justice Department, Treasury Department and State Department met Jul. 12 with lawyers from both sides to discuss the case.

In previous court filings, the Obama administration has argued that Argentina’s debt is not a matter for the U.S. legal system, reflecting concerns that a victory for its holdout bondholders could cause another default and complicate future debt restructuring plans for other nations.

However, Argentina’s bondholders, including one of the top financiers of right-wing politics in the U.S., have a string of victories under their belt. In October 2012, a federal appeals court ruled that the South American nation and member of the G20 must pay out more than 1.3 billion dollars to its creditors.

Meanwhile, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) announced Jul. 24 that it would not formally side with Argentina in its U.S. legal battle. An IMF statement cited opposition from the Obama administration.

That the White House is backing away from its earlier defences of Argentina indicates that the millions of dollars U.S. hedge funds have spent lobbying members of the administration, Congress and the press are starting to change the debate, with Iran about as popular as Iraq was in 2002.

“We do whatever we can to get our government and media’s attention focused on what a bad actor Argentina is,” Robert Raben, executive director of the American Task Force Argentina (ATFA), recently explained to The Huffington Post.

An assistant attorney general under President Bill Clinton (1993-2001), Raben’s group was founded by Argentina’s holdout bondholders and, to date, has spent at least 3.8 million dollars on its efforts to paint Argentina in a bad light. But the money it has spent pales in comparison to what ATFA’s funders stand to gain.

In 2008, hedge fund NML Capital – whose parent company Elliott Management, led by major Republican donor Paul Singer, is spearheading the legal and political battle over Argentina’s debt obligations – paid 48 million dollars for bonds that prior to the country’s default had been valued at over 300 million dollars.

After the default, more than 92 percent of Argentina’s bondholders agreed to accept a fraction of what they were originally owed as part of a negotiated settlement. NML, however, insists Argentina pay out the full 370 million dollars, which would be a return of more than 770 percent on the firm’s initial investment.

Singer has done this before, purchasing bonds worth around 30 million dollars from the world’s poorest country, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and suing for repayment of over 100 million dollars. In the case of Argentina, the groups behind ATFA stand to gain more than 1.3 billion dollars.

Including fights going on in other jurisdictions, however, Singer alone ultimately stands to gain more than two billion dollars in his battle with the South American nation. But it’s not just about debt anymore.

A request for comment from ATFA was not responded to by deadline.

Fear of an Iranian planet

Paul Singer is a very rich man – one of the 400 richest in the world. According to Forbes, the hedge fund manager and founder of Elliott Management has a net worth of 1.3 billion dollars. That wealth has enabled him to become one of the top funders of the Republican Party.

In 2012, he gave more than one million dollars to the party’s failed presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, and millions more to those lower down on the ballot. Employees of his firm, meanwhile, gave more than three million dollars to various politicians, making his company one of the top 100 funders of U.S. politics. And those politics are decidedly to the right.

In 2007, Singer described himself as a believer in American exceptionalism, noting that he has given “millions of dollars to Republican organizations that emphasize a strong military and support Israel.” Speaking to the New York Times, Singer explained that he believes the West “finds itself at an early stage of a drawn-out existential struggle with radical strains of pan-national Islamists.”

In the case of Argentina’s relations with Iran, which have grown to more than one billion dollars per year in trade, he finds his financial interests and fear of radical Islam perfectly aligned: by stoking fear of the latter, the U.S. government may be less inclined to interfere with the former.

“What’s the TRUTH About Argentina’s Deal With Iran?” asks a recent full-page ad from ATFA placed in The Washington Post. The deal in question concerns an agreement announced by the governments of Argentina and Iran to open a “Truth Commission” examining the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community centre in Buenos Aires, the Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina (AMIA), which killed 85 people and injured more than 300.

Another ATFA ad featuring photos of Argentina’s president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and outgoing Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadenijad poses the question: “A Pact with the Devil?”

A 2006 report from Argentine prosecutor Alberto Nisman fingered Iran as the culprit, allegedly using the Lebanese group Hezbollah as a proxy. That led to INTERPOL arrest warrants being issued for several high-level Iranian officials.

An updated 2013 report from Nisman, oft-cited in the media campaign against Argentina, claimed the attack was but one piece of evidence for the existence of an extensive Iranian intelligence apparatus throughout South America that has only grown since the AMIA attack, a conclusion that contradicts the US State Department’s recent assessment that any influence Iran had in the region is now “waning”.

No one has ever been convicted in the AMIA case, which has been hampered by a botched prosecution and judicial corruption. Concerns have also been raised about the veracity of Nisman’s report, which claims Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, approved the bombing at a meeting in Tehran just months prior to the attack, a finding that is based on the testimony of a former Iranian intelligence official known as Aboghasem Mesbahi who defected from the Islamic Republic in 1996.

That defector previously told U.S. officials that Iran had funded and facilitated the Sep. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, claiming he was made aware of the authorisation by secret messages in newspapers. His testimony was dismissed by the 9/11 Commission.

In its ad, ATFA quotes a letter from Senators Kirsten Gillibrand, a Democrat from New York, and Mark Kirk, a Republican from Illinois, to President Kirchner expressing concern that the opening of the commission “will lead to a dismissal of charges and the whitewashing of this heinous crime”.

The ad also quotes a defiant Iranian politician stating that under “no circumstances” will the Islamic Republic allow its senior officials to be questioned by any Argentine judges or prosecutors.

Though not mentioned in the ad, Iran’s refusal to submit to the Argentine legal system is the ostensible reason for the “truth commission”, which would create a panel of independent jurists from third-party nations to assess the case and, alongside Argentine jurists, interview suspects in Iran.

The details of Argentina’s relationship with Iran – which consists mostly of agricultural exports – are not terribly important to ATFA, however. Instead, as its executive director put it, that group would simply like to know: “Why is Argentina willing to negotiate with Iran, but not with its law-abiding creditors?”

Argentina has of course successfully negotiated with nine out of 10 of its creditors. But the holdouts, led by Singer, think they can get the whole pot. (See series, Part Two)

Excerpt:

By the end of 2011, the United States had elite special operations forces in around 120 of the 192 countries recognised by the United Nations, with U.S. military bases in more than half of the world’s nation-states.

A 1917 U.S. Marine Corps recruiting poster. Credit: Nevada Tumbleweed/CC BY 2.0

Yet despite this global empire – some would say because of it – the U.S. is a country today that is characterised not so much by peace and prosperity as by poverty and anxiety.

While the rhetoric of the political class in Washington boasts of fearlessness in the face of terror, the United States, writes author Tom Engelhardt in a new collection of essays, has become a nation ruled by fear, characterised by a cynical, institutional overreaction to the relatively minor threat that is international terrorism.

The country that proudly claims to have defeated an evil empire now spends billions of dollars to prevent so much as a perception of risk, looking more and more like its one-time superpower rival.

Politicians from both major parties, aided by the generals, military contractors and corporate media outlets that stand to benefit from a militarised, militarist U.S., speak of bravery and resolve in but two contexts: with respect to their millions of unemployed subjects – keep your chin up, kid! – and when rhetorically confronting the endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary, they use to sell a bellicose foreign policy of endless war.

For more than a decade, Engelhardt has opined on his website TomDispatch.com, launched in the wake of the Sep. 11 terrorist attacks, about the country’s oddly unreflective imperial hubris in an engaging, conversational style that evokes the image of a crackling fireplace on a cold winter’s day, a cup of Earl Grey – or a bourbon on the rocks, depending on the day’s news – resting at the author’s side.

Throughout “The United States of Fear”, a collection of Engelhardt’s essays since Barack Obama’s campaign of hope and change became an administration of human rights violations and continuity, two themes pop up again and again: the “do unto others as you would never have them do unto you” nature of U.S. foreign policy – when a Pakistani opposes state-sponsored terrorism in their country, they are being irrational, possibly malicious; when an American opposes state- spurred blowback in their country, they are just being patriotic – and the close, oft-ignored relationship between Washington’s foreign policy and the state of life back home.

It’s no coincidence, Engelhardt observes, that at a time when politicians in Washington are spending on the military almost as much as what the rest of the world pays combined – accounting for half of the average citizen’s income tax – state governments are slashing services and federal social programmes are being put on the chopping block, Wall Street all the while making a record-breaking killing fueled by its investments in the U.S. war-making machine.

“(T)his is not just a domestic crisis,” Engelhardt writes, “but part of imperial decline.” And yet, “in our deluded state, Americans don’t tend to connect what we’re doing to others abroad and what we’re doing to ourselves at home,” even as their experience at the airport more and more comes to resemble a checkpoint outside Kabul.

Even activists involved in the Occupy Wall Street movement have generally treated foreign policy – the occupation of Afghanistan, military aid to Egypt and Israel, the global garrison of U.S. military bases – as just something to tack on to the end of a mission statement, not a core and economic issue around which to mobilise.

Indeed, says Engelhardt, “We refuse to see that the more than one trillion dollars that continue to go into the Pentagon, the U.S. Intelligence Community, and the national security state yearly, as well as the stalemated or losing wars Washington insists on fighting in distant lands, have anything to do with the near collapse of the American economy, job devastation at home, or any of the other disasters of our age.”

In part, this is because militarism is a core American value these days, the oddity of soldiers selling Budweiser or a military contractor sponsoring a college football “Military Bowl” so banally commonplace they’re accepted as normal, unremarkable. Left or right, membership in the armed forces is treated as the pinnacle achievement of the modern citizen.

Nick Kristof, a reliably centre-left voice on the New York Times Op- Ed page, has even called the U.S. military a model for the country as a whole – and a progressive one, at that.

“You see, when our armed forces are not firing missiles, they live by an astonishingly liberal ethos,” wrote Kristof, whistling past that whole messy killing part of military service, as well as its illiberal characteristics like hierarchy and rape culture, in favour of feel-good heroising. “In Afghanistan, for example” – the country bombed and militarily occupied by the U.S. military for going on a decade now – “soldiers sometimes dig into their own pockets to help provide supplies for local schools.”

Presidents likewise begin nearly every major national address these days with the same paeans to the military, complete with the usual platitudes about the glory of killing and potentially being killed on behalf of the U.S.’s unusually bloody brand of Freedom. In his January State of the Union address, President Obama declared the armed forces a “testament” to American values and the sort of “courage, selflessness and teamwork” that the rest of the nation would do well to emulate.

In that sense, with its Sparta-like praise of martial values, the U.S. in 2012 is a lot different a country than the one Engelhardt remembers from his youth. No, the U.S. military was still wreaking tremendous violence abroad; the 1959 French film “Hiroshima Mon Amour”, named after the Japanese city bombed with an atomic weapon during World War II, helped turn him antiwar, and Lyndon Johnson’s escalation of the war in Vietnam helped dispel Engelhardt of his rosy view of politics and politicians’ ability and desire to affect positive social change.

But before the collapse of the Soviet Union, the U.S. ruling establishment – the members of which increasingly resemble their old foes in the politburo – at least had, if not an actual existential threat, a decent boogeyman: another superpower with the technical capacity to destroy life on Earth.

A ragtag band of terrorists who, since 9/11, have been able to pull off little more than the burning of a would-be bomber’s crotch? Not quite as impressive.

And yet the United States is more afraid – and more openly militaristic, in popular culture, political rhetoric and policy – than perhaps even during the height of the Cold War.

For decades, U.S. citizens have been told their nation is exceptional, “indispensable”, chosen by the Creator to lead the world toward freedom, or at least a McDonald’s and market-based reforms.

While less exciting to would-be war presidents and military planners – and to their hangers on at think tanks and corporate media outlets – Engelhardt’s essays reflect his longing to live in a more normal country, one more reliant on the force of its example than the force that comes out of the barrel of a gun. Presumably much of the world, those in Iraq and Afghanistan especially, longs for that day too.

Through its ties with Venezuela and other nations in Latin America, Iran is building an anti-U.S. alliance in the Western Hemisphere that poses a direct, imminent threat to the United States, an influential U.S. lawmaker said Thursday.

The remark from House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, author of sanctions legislation targeting Iran that was recently passed by a near-unanimous vote, comes amid an increasingly visible campaign by right-wing politicians and allied institutions to build the case for further sanctions and other acts of economic warfare against the Islamic Republic – and, perhaps, set the stage for military action.

The administration of President Barack Obama has implemented stringent sanctions against Iran that have helped cripple its economy and, as the president himself noted in his State of the Union address last month, refused to take the prospect of all-out war off the table.

Its right-wing critics, however, allege the Obama administration has done too little to counter what they portray as an almost apocalyptic threat.

At a hearing Thursday of the House Foreign Affairs Committee focused on Iran’s dealings in Latin America, Norman Bailey of the conservative American Foreign Policy Council even charged that the Islamic Republic, through its allies Hezbollah, had constructed “numerous military camps inside Venezuela, as well as in South Lebanon, with the express purpose of training young Venezuelans to attack American targets.”

He also claimed Iran had “established missile bases in Venezuela”, though adding that those reports were as of yet “unconfirmed”.

In reality, though, there is no factual basis for either claim. Indeed, were there anything to them, one would imagine U.S. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper might have mentioned them during his Jan. 31 testimony before Congress on threats to the U.S.

And, indeed, reports of Iranian missiles in Venezuela were last year explicitly rejected by the Pentagon, with a spokesman saying that not only were said reports unconfirmed, but in fact there was “no evidence” to support the claim and “therefore no reason to believe the assertions… are credible.”

But with Iran, no claim – from allegations of a covert nuclear weapons programme to charges its providing training for the Venezuelan terrorists of tomorrow – appears too far-fetched for hawks in Washington. Latin America is but the latest anti-Tehran talking point, spurred in part by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad recent four-country tour of the region, which U.S. policymakers have long considered their rightful sphere of influence.

During his January trip, Ahmadinejad met with heads of state in Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba and Ecuador, all countries that enjoy at best rocky relations with Washington. To those seeking further sanctions and potentially a shooting war with Iran, the trip provided for ready-made right-wing propaganda.

Regional experts, however, said the tour was more about Iran attempting to project an image of diplomatic strength amid U.S. and European efforts at isolation than launching attacks against the U.S.

But such experts, with but one lone exception, were not invited to the Feb. 2 hearing called by Ros-Lehtinen, a Florida Republican. She said Iran’s relations with Latin America countries like Cuba and Venezuela posed a growing threat to the U.S. homeland, pointing to the recent testimony from Director of National Intelligence Clapper about Iran’s alleged willingness to “conduct an attack in the United States in response to real or perceived U.S. actions”.

In particular, she charged that Iran and its alleged proxies had established deep ties with drug traffickers and other criminal organisations. “The synergy between Hezbollah and the drug cartels in Latin America makes for a very powerful enemy,” said Ros-Lehtinen, one that poses “a clear and present danger”.

She announced after the hearing that she was introducing another sanctions bill seeking to limit Iran’s ability to carry out electronic financial transactions, presumably with countries such as Venezuela, by far its closest ally in either Central or South America.

Ros-Lehtinen’s at-times stark rhetoric at the hearing was matched by panelist Michael Braun, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s (DEA) chief of operations under President George W. Bush.

Hezbollah and Iran’s Quds Force, he testified, “are now heavily involved in the global drug trade. Not only that, they “are pouring into Latin America,” he continued, “thanks in large part to Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, the undisputed gatekeeper for Middle Eastern terrorist groups seeking to enter Latin America.”

Additionally, the spectacular-if-true plot on behalf of some Iranian officials to assassinate the Saudi Arabian ambassador in Washington “qualifies as the perfect example of the looming threat posed by Iran’s proxies operating freely in the Western Hemisphere, and their ability to collaborate with organised crime,” Braun added in prepared testimony.

The alleged plot against the Saudi ambassador is often cited by politicians in Washington as evidence of the Iranian government’s borderline irrational hostility to the U.S. and its allies. Howard Berman, the top Democrat on the Foreign Affairs Committee, pointed to it in his own opening statement at the hearing, as did Chairwoman Ros-Lehtinen.

But while intended to demonstrate the fearful extent of Iran and its proxies’ ties to criminal organisations in Latin America and willingness to exploit them, the plot if true would suggest the Islamic Republic’s regional ties are much weaker than alleged, showing it reliant on bumbling used car salesman in Texas to reach out to the very drug cartels with which it is alleged to already enjoy strong relations.

However, in Congress leaders of both major political parties are united in playing up the alleged threat to the U.S. posed by Iran. For his part, Berman, a California Democrat, said at the hearing that “Iran is arguably the foremost threat to United States interests in the world.” Berman said “Tehran’s pursuit of a nuclear weapons capability,” as well as its “support for international terrorism,” requires “extreme vigilance” on the part of the U.S.

Berman’s reference to Iran’s alleged pursuit of a “nuclear weapons capability” came despite the fact Director of National Intelligence Clapper testified earlier in the week that U.S. intelligence agencies “assess Iran is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons”, not that its leaders have actually decided to pursue a weapons capability.

Michael Shifter, president of the Washington-based think tank Inter- American Dialogue, was the lone witness at the hearing to portray Iran’s activities in Latin America as less than threatening – and even rather pathetic.

Though Latin America as a whole is enjoying increased assertiveness and independence from the U.S. in terms of foreign affairs, Shifter said, it has no real desire to enter into a meaningful alliance with a pariah like Iran.

While leaders of Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba and Ecuador may share the Islamic Republic’s view of the U.S. empire, and are more than willing to entertain Iran’s offers of aid – even if said aid never materialises, as has more often than not been the case – their relations are largely rhetorical in nature. They are also, notably, countries that are small, poor and of little or waning influence.

And while some on the U.S. right have alleged Iranian operatives are conducting terror training camps in Venezuela and perhaps elsewhere in Latin America, Shifter noted there is “no convincing evidence that such activities are taking place,” which is particularly “noteworthy in light of what are presumably vigorous efforts by US intelligence agencies to gather pertinent intelligence.”

As such, the U.S. should not let Iran’s diplomatic forays in its perceived sphere of influence cause it to lash out and punish the region for talking to a longtime foe.

“Invoking the Monroe Doctrine in this day and age would be very misguided and would alienate our closest Latin American friends,” Shifter testified. “It would ultimately be self-defeating.”

Its economy hurting from sanctions imposed by the United States and Europe, the Islamic Republic of Iran has been making a show of bolstering its ties to Latin America, with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad this past week making his sixth official visit to the region since taking office in 2005.

Contrary to assertions made by the regime and many U.S. policymakers, however, analysts say the trip is more about Iran seeking to maintain an appearance of diplomatic strength than meaningfully strengthening economic – much less military – relations.

According to Iranian state news, the “promotion of all-out cooperation with Latin American countries” is one of the Islamic Republic’s “top priorities”. As part of his five-day tour of the region that began Jan. 7, Ahmadinejad made stops in Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba and Ecuador, all countries ruled by governments that have rocky relations with the United States.

But while big on anti-imperialist rhetoric, Adam Isacson of the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) said the trip was short on substance.

“A lot of it was photo-ops and trying to show to the Iranian public, but also to the world, that Iran is not an isolated regime,” Isacson told IPS.

And he pointed out that while Iran’s economic ties with Venezuela’s are indeed substantial, with trade between the two nations topping three billion dollars annually, there is no evidence of any sort of joint military operations that might threaten the United States. And whereas the Iranian president visited Brazil two years ago, this time around he did not stop over at any of the economic powerhouses in South America, which points to waning diplomatic relations, not strengthening ones.

Yet right-wing and liberal hawks in Washington have spoken of the trip and Iran’s relations with Latin America in terms often reminiscent of the Cold War and its with-us-or-against-us mentality.

Robert Menendez, a Democrat from New Jersey who chairs the Senate subcommittee on the Western hemisphere, called it “alarming” that any country would host Ahmadinejad. In a statement, he said it showed “these nations place a higher value on colluding with an international pariah than in working with the world to address Iran’s support for terrorism, including acts of terror perpetrated in Latin America, as well as its nuclear weapons ambitions.”

Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Florida Republican who chairs the House Foreign Relations Committee, has been even more alarmist, describing Ahmadinejad’s trip to Cuba – where he received an honourary degree in political science and met with former President Fidel Castro – as indicative of an emerging threat against the United States.

“Both Iran and Cuba have clear intentions of harming the U.S.,” said Ros-Lehtinen in a press release. “(B)oth support extremist groups dedicated to bringing destruction to our nation or destabilizing our allies,” and they “work together on biotechnology research that could have weapons applications.”

Connie Mack, another Florida Republican who chairs the House subcommittee, for his part took aim at Venezuela, saying its president Hugo Chávez was helping Iran flout international sanctions “while welcoming the building of Iranian missiles sites in Venezuela”.

“A visit from Ahmadinejad is just the beginning of what could be a nightmare for the U.S.,” said Mack, noting a recent report that Iranian and Venezuelan diplomats stationed in Mexico had discussed the possibility of launching cyber-attacks against the U.S. government.

But while big on bluster, statements on Iran and its ties to Latin America from hawks in Washington have long been short on fact. In 2010, for instance, Roger Noriega, a former State Department official under the George W. Bush administration and now with the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute, alleged that Venezuela was not just aiding Iran’s nuclear programme, but receiving help from the Islamic Republic to build an atomic weapon of its own – a claim mocked by U.S. diplomats.

Sometimes the claims are contradictory. Testifying before Congress last year, Noriega claimed Iran had “at least two parallel terrorist networks” operating in Latin America engaged in everything from “narcotics smuggling” to providing “weapons and explosives training to drug trafficking organisations that operate along the U.S. border with Mexico”.

Months later, Noriega cited alleged Iranian involvement in a plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the U.S. as bolstering those claims – despite the fact that, if true, the plot would undermine those claims, showing that Iran’s ties to Latin America are so weak that it would have to reach out to a failed used car salesman in order to contact the very drug trafficking organisations to which it was purportedly already providing training in terrorist tactics.

Likewise, despite allegations from Ros-Lehtinen and others that countries such as Venezuela and Ecuador are colluding with Iran and helping supply it with uranium for its nuclear programme, Michael Shifter of the Washington-based Inter-American Dialogue noted in a recent piece that the U.S. government has no evidence to support that, “despite what are presumably serious efforts to gather intelligence by U.S. intelligence agencies.”

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) also continues to verify the non-diversion of radioactive material from Iran’s nuclear energy programme.

The U.S. government has also dismissed allegations Iran has stationed missiles in Venezuela as being without foundation.

“They’re just way out ahead of what the intelligence community and even U.S. Southern Command are saying,” WOLA’s Isacson told IPS about the claims about Iran’s allegedly nefarious doings in Latin America. “We’re not seeing significant military cooperation with Iran.”

Rather, the U.S. is “seeing investment projects, they’re seeing obviously these shows of political support – they don’t like those – but if they actually were seeing the things (lawmakers) are alleging… I think you’d be seeing far more than just Ileana Ros-Lehtinen or Connie Mack saying aggressive words.”

In reality, Iran’s relations with Latin America, not unlike U.S. politicians’ rhetoric, is about little more than aggressive words – not that there have not been plenty of them uttered by Ahmadinejad and his counterparts.

Venezuela’s Chávez was characteristically boisterous, calling Ahmadinejad his “real brother” and calling it “a danger to the world – these pretensions of the Yankee Empire to control the globe.”

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, elected last fall to a legally controversial third term, similarly defended Iran during Ahmadinejad’s visit, echoing the Iranian state’s contention that it is Israel – not the Islamic Republic – that needs to dismantle its nuclear programme.

But beyond a shared dislike for the U.S. and Israel – and a shared anti-U.S. revolutionary history – there is not much more to the Iranian-Nicaraguan relationship, not unlike the Iranian relationship to the region as a whole. As the second poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, however, Nicaragua is not in a position to turn down many offers of aid, no matter how long it may take them to materialise.

At the same time, with the U.S. and Europe increasingly trying to isolate it, the Islamic Republic is in no position to display its diplomatic strength, insofar as it has it, no matter how small or poor the host nation.

But in contrast to assertions from U.S. policymakers about a Persian menace in their backyard, Iran’s close relations with almost exclusively small, poor nations are more indicative of weak and superficial ties to Latin America than a strong – much less threatening – relationship.

Hundreds of protesters, dozens outfitted in orange jumpsuits and black hoods, took to the streets outside the White House on Wednesday to demonstrate against torture and indefinite detention on the 10th anniversary of the opening of the U.S. prison facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

Outside the White House, protesters withstood rain and cold to decry what they labeled a bipartisan assault on human rights. Credit: Charles Davis

Yet despite pledging to shutter the facility, President Barack Obama has instead institutionalised the practice of indefinite detention, his administration asserting the right to detain at least 48 of the remaining 171 men at Guantánamo indefinitely without so much as a military tribunal, declaring them too dangerous to be released even as it concedes it lacks sufficient evidence to try them. Though more than half of those housed at the prison have been approved for transfer or release, the last two to actually leave did so in body bags.

And at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, around 2,600 men are currently imprisoned without charge, with human rights groups reporting they are subjected to Guantánamo-like conditions such as routine sensory and sleep deprivation and other techniques condemned as tantamount to torture.

Rather than push back against this expansion of indefinite detention, lawmakers in Congress have instead codified it, passing a bill, the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which allows the military to imprison without charge for the duration of the war on terror anyone accused of a terrorism-related offence, including U.S. citizens.

Nonetheless, the Obama administration has maintained that Congress is to blame for the fact the Guantánamo detention facility remains open three years after the president issued an executive order declaring his intention to close it. In late 2010, congressional Republicans and conservative Democrats successfully passed a measure blocking the White House from spending any funds transferring prisoners at Guantánamo to facilities in the United States.

But Ramzi Kassem, a professor of law at the City University of New York who represents seven men detained at Guantánamo, told IPS there is plenty of blame to go around.

“I think Congress shoulders a share of the responsibility, but it’s also the president’s fault,” Kassem said. “There are many things he could have done to close Guantánamo, so to the extent it’s still open it’s very much a self-inflicted wound on the president’s part.”

Guantánamo is also only a place, Kassem added. More troubling are the legal principles it represents – principles that have been embraced wholeheartedly by the president.

“His legal position as to Bagram is indistinguishable from the Bush administration’s position as Guantanamo,” he said, “namely that there is no (legal) jurisdiction – Obama administration lawyers are going to court these days to say that.”

Human rights groups agree. “The men indefinitely detained at Guantánamo have been abandoned by all three branches of government,” the Center for Constitutional Rights declared in a Jan. 11 statement, “but the primary responsibility for the prison remaining open lies with President Obama.”

Rather than deliver its promise of a “new era of accountability and respect for the rule of law”, the group noted the Obama administration has also “repeatedly acted to block virtually any accountability for those who have planned, authorized, and committed torture at Guantánamo and beyond.”

Amnesty International also issued a statement decrying the prison’s “toxic legacy”, while Human Rights Watch sent a letter to President Obama criticising his embrace of indefinite detention and urging him to reaffirm his commitment to closing Guantánamo.

A group of prominent attorneys and retired military officials – including Admiral John D. Huston and Lawrence Wilkerson, the former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell – likewise called on Congress and the Obama administration to close a facility they said undermines the rule of law and acts as a recruiting tool for terrorists.

Outside the White House, meanwhile, protesters withstood rain and cold to decry what they labeled a bipartisan assault on human rights, with over 60 protesters outfitted in Guantánamo’s trademark orange jumpsuits and black hoods encircling the White House to demand the facility be shuttered.

More than 50 protesters also took part in a 10-day hunger strike and deployed a make-shift prison cell in front of the White House to highlight their opposition to what activist Beth Brockman termed the Obama administration-supported, Congress-approved “architecture of torture, abuse and indefinite detention”.

Among those joining the protest was Morris Davis, the former chief military prosecutor at Guantánamo from September 2005 until 2007, who resigned after objecting to the use of evidence gained through torture. He said the prison’s continued operation was an indictment of the U.S. government as a whole.

“Congress has failed us, the president has failed us,” Davis told the crowd. “It’s up to the people to demand our government do the right thing.”

Protestors rallied outside a US military base to support Bradley Manning, the Army intelligence analyst who gave classified information to Wikileaks. Credit: Charles Davis/ IPS

By Charles Davis
WASHINGTON, Dec 17 2011 (IPS)

Hundreds of people gathered today outside a U.S. military base where evidence against Bradley Manning, the soldier accused of leaking classified information to the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks, is being presented before a military judge for the first time since Manning’s arrest.

An U.S. Army intelligence analyst, Manning was arrested in May 2010 by U.S. military police in Iraq when a government informant reported him to law enforcement after he allegedly confessed to leaking to the public scores of classified information containing evidence of corruption and war crimes.

He has been charged with aiding “the enemy” through the disclosures, a charge that carries the possibility of death, though prosecutors says they are seeking a life sentence.

“Bradley shouldn’t be doing time for the Pentagon’s war crimes,” chanted approximately 300 supporters outside the gates of Maryland’s Fort Meade, home of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), as dozens of police and a helicopter circling above looked on.

The rally, one of 50 taking place across the world, coincided with Manning’s 24th birthday and the second day of court hearings aimed at determining whether evidence against him is sufficient to proceed to trial. According to Manning’s counsel, David E. Coombs, the hearings are expected to conclude before Christmas.

Manning is accused of leaking video evidence of a 2007 massacre outside Baghdad in which at least 18 people, including two Reuters journalists, were killed by U.S. troops in what many consider a war crime.

He also reportedly leaked hundreds of thousands of State Department cables exposing U.S. support for dictatorial regimes, the Obama administration’s responsibility for a missile strike in Yemen that killed dozens of women and children and the cover-up of child rape by private U.S. military contractors in Afghanistan.

Exposing America’s “dark underbelly”

“He did the right thing,” said Michael Patterson, a 21-year-old Alaska native and veteran of the Iraq war. A former U.S. Army interrogator, Patterson credits Manning – and the “Collateral Murder” video of the 2007 massacre in Baghdad in particular – with finally turning him against a war he once supported.

Rather than making him a traitor, he said, Manning’s actions demonstrated his commitment to upholding a “soldier’s honour”.

Manning knew his commanders would be unwilling to act on the evidence of war crimes he witnessed, said Patterson. “So he went outside the influence of the government and gave it to an entity that was for the public good. And now you have a revolution in the Arab world and you have a revolution in the United States.”

Despite White House claims that the disclosures threatened U.S. national security and the lives of U.S. informants named in diplomatic cables, a State Department review conducted earlier this year concluded that they had caused no serious damage.

At the rally, protesters from around the country – including more than 40 from the Occupy Wall Street movement in New York – waved signs and chanted slogans proclaiming Manning a hero who was being prosecuted not for endangering America, but for exposing the dark underbelly of the American empire.

“When truth and justice are in jeopardy, it is the job of the solider to stand up and fight for a peace that transcends,” said Lieutenant Dan Choi, a prominent activist who was discharged from the military for being openly gay. “Bradley Manning did that and he should be free.”

“He is not the one on trial,” Choi added. “The United States of America is on trial.”

Though charged with aiding the enemy, Manning – based on online conversations he reportedly had with the informant who turned him in – explained that he was motivated by a desire to inform the American people about what was being carried out in their name.

“If you had free reign over classified networks… and you saw incredible things, awful things… what would you do?” Manning reportedly asked.

“I want people to see the truth, because without information, you cannot make informed decisions as a public,” he wrote.

Manning’s imprisonment

Manning’s case has become an international cause célèbre not just because of what he allegedly disclosed, but also because of the way he has been treated in captivity.

For the first 10 months of his imprisonment, Manning was denied almost all contact with the outside world and held in solitary confinement 23-hours-a-day, contrary to the recommendations of mental health professionals and despite the fact he had not yet been to trial, much less convicted of a crime.

In March, the chief spokesman for the U.S. State Department, PJ Crowley, resigned after publicly remarking, “What is being done to Bradley Manning is ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid.”

Human rights group Amnesty International also denounced Manning’s pre-trial detention conditions as “inhumane”, criticism that ultimately led him to be transferred from Quantico Marine Corps Base in Virginia to Kansas’s Fort Leavenworth, where supporters say his treatment has improved.

But the Obama administration continues to steadfastly refuse requests by the United Nations’ special rapporteur on torture to meet with Manning as part of an investigation into his treatment at Quantico.

That fact led more than 50 members of the European Parliament to send a letter to President Obama and other top U.S. officials late last month demanding that U.N. access to Manning be allowed in light of reports that he “has been subjected to prolonged solitary confinement and other abusive treatment tantamount to torture”.

The Centre for Constitutional Rights, meanwhile, filed a petition on Dec. 16 with the U.S. Army Court of Criminal Appeals demanding that lawyers for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange be allowed full access to the proceedings against Manning.

Many observers speculate that Manning’s harsh and unusual treatment is both an attempt to intimidate other would-be whistle-blowers as well as an effort to intimidate Manning into testifying against Assange, who is currently the subject of a U.S. grand jury investigation.

Excerpt:

Claims by neo-conservative and right-wingers that Iranian influence in Latin America poses a growing security threat to the United States seem exaggerated, at best, with recent allegations that Tehran sought the help of an Iranian- American used-car salesman in a high-profile assassination plot.

Overblown though they may be, those wide-ranging claims have been frequently aired on Capitol Hill.

At a July hearing of the House subcommittee on counterterrorism and intelligence, Chairman Patrick Meehan, a Republican from Pennsylvania, charged that Hezbollah has a “growing operation in Latin America” that involves “recruiting operatives” as well as “smuggling weapons and drugs” – an operation he claimed is fully backed by both Venezuela and Iran.

“When you put that together,” Meehan said, “you have a fully functioning, easily accessible terrorist network with a ready capacity to act if so inclined.”

Roger Noriega, a former assistant secretary of state under George W. Bush and now a fellow at the neo- conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI), agreed.

He alleged that Iran’s Quds Force, an elite unit of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) at the heart of the alleged assassination plot, and Hezbollah were carrying out a “conscious, offensive strategy to carry their fight to our doorstep”.

They had created “at least two parallel terrorist networks (that are) growing at an alarming rate in Latin America”, Noriega testified. One network, he said, was “managed by a cadre of notorious (Quds) operatives”.

Their activities, he went on, ranged from “narcotics smuggling” to “weapons and explosives training to drug trafficking organisations that operate along the U.S. border with Mexico”.

But claims of close ties among Iran, Hezbollah and Latin American drug cartels, particularly in Mexico, appear at odds with the case presented by the administration of Barack Obama.

On Oct. 11, the U.S. Department of Justice announced it was charging two individuals, Manssor Arbabsiar, a naturalised U.S. citizen, and Gholam Shakuri, an alleged Quds officer, in a murder-for-hire plot that had targeted Saudi Arabia’s ambassador in Washington.

According to the complaint, Arbabsiar offered an undercover government informant, whom he believed to be a member of Mexico’s Los Zetas cartel, 1.5 million dollars to carry out the assassination.

“This conspiracy was conceived, sponsored and directed from Iran,” U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said at a press conference, while the complaint itself alleged the operation was “directed by factions of the Iranian government”.

President Obama subsequently pledged to “make sure that Iran is further and further isolated and pays a price for this kind of behaviour”.

Serious questions have been raised about the official story since the charges were announced, especially given the paucity of evidence the government has disclosed to date.

Iran specialists have questioned why Tehran would have an interest in assassinating the Saudi ambassador on U.S. soil, while counter-terrorism experts have expressed doubt that the Quds Force, whose tradecraft is generally highly regarded, would rely on someone as inexperienced as Arbabsiar to arrange a high-stakes act of terrorism.

Arbabsiar has been described by his Texas neighbours and associates as bumbling and absent-minded, with a history of failed business ventures.

So far, the only explanations for Iran’s reliance on Arbabsiar are background comments of unidentified “U.S. officials” who reportedly told The Washington Post on October 14 that Abdul Reza Shahlai, a senior Quds officer related to Arbabsiar, “hoped that Arbabsiar, by virtue of his time in Texas, might be able to get in touch with Mexican drug traffickers”.

But if that version of the story is true, it casts serious doubts on claims from right-wing hawks, such as Meehan and Noriega, about the extent of Iran and Hezbollah’s operations in Latin America.

If the Islamic Republic had extensive dealings with drug cartels, particularly in Mexico, it would not have needed assistance, especially from the untried Arbabsiar, reaching out to those groups to carry out a terror plot of major geopolitical significance.

Indeed, in light of the Obama administration’s criminal allegations, those claims of Iranian influence appear strikingly over the top.

In an address before the 2010 national conference of the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Jaime Daremblum, a senior fellow at the neo-conservative Hudson Institute who served as Costa Rica’s ambassador to the U.S. from 1998 to 2004, described the expanding ties between Iran and Latin America in decidedly ominous terms.

“I must confess that, after years of closely observing Iran’s strategies abroad, I find its growing presence in Latin America to be the most disturbing geopolitical development the region is facing today,” Daremblum remarked.

“Iran’s presence is Messianic in its goals, relentless in its tactics. It is intimately related to narcoterrorism, both in its own practice and in the groups and activities it sponsors.”

Those almost apocalyptic claims were echoed at the July hearing chaired by Congressman Meehan. Witnesses told lawmakers that Iran and Hezbollah, whose agenda, they maintained, is identical to and dictated by Iran, had thoroughly infiltrated Latin America, with one central goal: striking the United States.

“Mexico’s shared border with the United States makes it an attractive operating base for Hezbollah activities aimed at penetrating the U.S. homeland,” testified Ilan Berman, a part-time consultant to the Pentagon and Central Intelligence Agency who is vice president of the neo-conservative American Foreign Policy Council (AFPC).

Hezbollah, he said, had developed an “extensive organisational network” over the last 15 years “in places such as Tijuana”, and it “partners with drug cartels active in the country”.

Douglas Farah, a senior fellow at the International Assessment and Strategy Centre, a Washington think tank that often works with the U.S. government and advocates a “strong national defence posture”, echoed that assessment, calling “the presence of Hezbollah and its primary sponsor, the government of Iran” a “significant and growing threat to the U.S.”.

Specifically, he cited “growing concern that Hezbollah is providing the technology for the increasingly sophisticated narco tunnels being found along the U.S.-Mexico border, which strongly resembles the type used (by Hezbollah) in Lebanon”.

Earlier this month, Noriega and Jose Cardenas, also from AEI, published a paper, “The Mounting Hezbollah Threat in Latin America”, that reaffirmed Noriega’s testimony before Congress. “Evidence indicates Hezbollah is sharing its terrorist experience and techniques with Mexican drug cartels along the border,” the paper asserted.

That charge, published only a week before the Justice Department released its complaint, appears seriously unsubstantiated in light of the Obama administration’s claim that elements of the Iranian government sought to contact those very drug cartels, not by reaching out to its allies in Hezbollah, but by contacting a used-car salesman in Texas.

If the official story is flawed, however, and the alleged assassination plot was not in fact a scheme designed by senior elements of the Iranian regime, that too would suggest Iran and its purported proxy’s dealings in Latin America are not as threatening as U.S. hawks claim – and that the dire threat its influence in the region poses to the United States has, yet again, failed to materialise.

* Jim Lobe contributed to this story.

U.S. citizens of Cuban descent are once again free to travel to Cuba and send an unlimited amount of money to their relatives on the island, but for the most part U.S. policy toward the communist nation hasn’t changed under President Barack Obama.

Since taking office, Obama – who called the nearly half-century U.S. embargo on Cuba a “miserable failure” as a candidate for Senate – has largely followed the lead of his predecessors, extending just this month a near total prohibition on trade and travel with Cuba for most U.S. citizens, declaring the embargo “in the national interest of the United States”.

The U.S. State Department continues to list Cuba as one of its four officially designated state sponsors of terrorism, and the Obama administration insists on serious democratic reforms and the freeing of political prisoners as a precondition to restoring diplomatic relations.

Imposed in 1962 soon after Fidel Castro took power, the U.S. embargo has failed to achieve its ostensible aim of promoting serious democratic reform in Cuba – and the return of property nationalised by Castro’s regime to U.S. corporations. But as detailed in Daniel Erikson’s engaging history of recent affairs between Washington and Havana, “The Cuba Wars”, U.S. policy toward Cuba has not always been judged on the basis of effectiveness.

“It’s not like I delude myself that the embargo works or that it’s brought about tremendous reform on the island,” Florida Democrat Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a member of the congressional leadership, tells Erikson.

Maintaining that “the plight of Cuban exiles was similar to what Jews went through in the Holocaust,” Wasserman Shultz says her support for the embargo is based on principle. “A relationship with the United States is a privilege,” she says, “and an economic relationship is especially a privilege. And it has to be earned.”

Wasserman Schultz’s remarks are one of the more revealing anecdotes Erikson, an expert on U.S. policy toward Latin America with the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington-based think tank, intersperses between detail after detail in his book highlighting the disconnect between the hyperbolic Cold War-era rhetoric often heard on Capitol Hill and the reality of a U.S. Cuba policy that has by all accounts failed miserably.

Based on a mix of his own interviews, travels to places such as Guantanamo Bay, the U.S. military prison based in Cuba, and news accounts, Erikson paints a picture of a policy pursued not because it works at improving the lives of average Cubans, but because it helps politicians win support from hard-line elements among the politically influential Cuban exile community.

But attitudes are changing. Polls show Cuban-Americans, particularly younger generations, favour engagement with Cuba over confrontation. And even “Castro foes outside of Cuba who dreamed of bringing the regime crashing down have become increasingly aware that time is no longer on their side,” Erikson writes.

Indeed, thanks to reforms enacted by Congress in 2000 allowing U.S. agricultural exports, sold on a for-cash basis to Cuba – corn, poultry, wheat – trade between the two official enemies has grown dramatically, rising to 700 million dollars in 2008.

The Obama administration is also now permitting U.S. telecommunication firms to sell satellite and cellular services to their Cuban counterparts, and the U.S. and Cuban governments are meeting this month to discuss restoring direct mail service for the first time in decades.

There was a time, though, when it looked as if a U.S. government, buoyed by its perceived successes in Afghanistan, was looking to engage in some more regime change, this time in its own hemisphere.

In May 2002, John Bolton, the Bush administration’s top arms control official at the time, warned in a speech at the conservative Heritage Foundation that the “United States believes that Cuba has at least a limited offensive biological warfare research and development effort.”

Meanwhile, New York Times reporter Judith Miller was dutifully regurgitating claims of anonymous administration officials in breathless front-page pieces, writing that “Cuba has been experimenting with anthrax” and “other deadly pathogens”.

And in Congress, Democratic lawmakers were marching in lockstep with a Republican president, as many did in the lead-up to the Iraq war.

“I am happy to see that the administration has finally come forth with an acknowledgement of Cuba’s capabilities,” Erikson quotes New Jersey Congressman Robert Menendez, himself a Cuban-American, commenting after Bolton’s speech.

Ultimately the Iraq war proved too big a distraction for U.S. officials to pay much attention to Cuba, or the rest of Latin America for that matter. Yet fears that an aggressive U.S. administration was bent on invading Cuba – and the cover provided by the Iraq war’s domination of international media coverage – were used by the Cuban government to justify a crackdown on its domestic opposition.

As it had over the previous four decades, U.S. policy toward Cuba – and its vocal support for Cuban dissident groups – proved counterproductive to the U.S. government’s stated goals, aiding Fidel Castro as he ordered “that scores of innocent individuals be rounded up and placed in prison for lengthy sentences”, writes Erikson.

These days there are some signs U.S.-Cuba relations may be thawing, though few believe Obama, given the number of competing domestic and international policy issues, is willing to upend decades of U.S. policy in the face of a diminishing but still influential lobby in favour of the embargo and its potential to sway a national election.

“In the meantime, the Cuba wars will continue to rage in Havana, Miami, and Washington,” Erikson concludes in his highly readable and concise account of U.S.-Cuba relations, the fates of “eleven million diverse and divided people” hanging in the balance.

“One hopes that a moment will come when the forces for peaceful reconciliation gather critical mass, but such a vision still remains on the distant horizon,” he says.

Ecuador’s leftist President Rafael Correa says he will not renew the United States military’s lease on an Air Force base in Manta, a move viewed by some in Washington as evidence of a growing push back against U.S. intervention in Latin America.

U.S. military jet refuels over the Pacific Ocean near the west coast of Ecuador as part of a Manta counter-drug mission. Credit: US Air Force

On a recent trip to Italy, Correa, who took office in January, reiterated his campaign pledge to close the base – unless the United States were to allow Ecuador to establish its own base in Miami, Florida.

“If there’s no problem having foreign soldiers on a country’s soil, surely they’ll let us have an Ecuadorean base in the United States,” he joked with reporters.

Located on Ecuador’s Pacific coast 338 kilometres south of neighbouring Colombia, the Manta Air Base was leased to the United States in 1999 for a period of 10 years.

Home to eight U.S. surveillance planes, the base has played a large role in U.S. efforts at stemming the flow of cocaine from Colombia. According to the U.S. embassy in Ecuador, planes operating out of the Manta Air Base helped in the seizure of 262 tonnes of illicit drugs last year.

Correa’s decision not to renew the lease has frustrated U.S. officials, and is the latest in a series of disputes that have placed Ecuador at odds with Washington.

In May 2006, the Ecuadorean government seized the assets of California-based Occidental Petroleum and revoked the company’s contract to operate in the country.

The election of the populist Correa later that year – who while campaigning famously referred to U.S. President George W. Bush as “tremendously dimwitted” – did nothing to soothe fears in Washington that South America was in the midst of a leftist revolution inspired by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

But analysts say Correa’s opposition to the U.S. presence at the Manta base has less to do with his relationship with Chavez, who he considers a close friend, than it does with the political reality in Ecuador.

“It’s a mistake to underestimate Latin America’s desire for independence,” says Michael Shifter, vice president for policy at the Inter-American Dialogue, “and that means independence from Washington and it means independence from Caracas.”

“In Ecuadorean politics this isn’t a very radical position… this is a sentiment that is widely held,” said Shifter. Many Ecuadoreans feel the U.S. presence violates their national sovereignty and has drawn them further into the ongoing conflict in Colombia, he told IPS.

Still some in Washington see Correa’s actions as evidence of an emerging alliance with Bolivian President Evo Morales and Venezuela’s Chavez.

Roger Noriega, a former U.S. State Department official who under President Bush helped formulate U.S. policy toward Latin America, argues Correa is following Chavez’s example of “bare-knuckles class warfare” with “reckless abandon”.

Noriega, now a fellow at the influential neoconservative American Enterprise Institute, views Correa’s efforts to rewrite Ecuador’s constitution as an attempt to roll back democracy, a process he sees as paralleling Chavez’s efforts to consolidate power in Venezuela – a charge often repeated in the U.S. media.

But observers of the region say it’s too soon to be drawing that comparison. “It’s clear he wants to assert his power,” says Shifter, “and it’s clear there are some aspects of his ideology that resemble those of Chavez. But Ecuador is not Venezuela.”

Unlike Chavez, Correa has no military background. A trained economist, he received a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois and has expressed a desire to improve commercial ties with the United States.

Experts say his pledge not to renew the U.S. lease on the Manta Air Base is in keeping with the feeling among many Ecuadoreans that their country has been taken advantage of by the United States.

Critics in Ecuador say the lease signed by the United States, agreed to by then-president Jamil Mahuad, is unconstitutional because it was never ratified by Congress as required by law. Mahuad was forced out of power a year later following a military coup.

It’s also widely believed in Ecuador that the United States has violated the terms of the Manta lease by assisting in the fight against guerillas in southern Colombia, rather than simply conducting aerial surveillance.

“My strong impression from conversations with people at the Pentagon is that [in the past] Ecuador did have a sort of look the other way policy about flights being used for [counter-guerilla] purposes over Colombia,” Adam Isaacson, an expert on South America at the Washington-based Centre for International Policy, told IPS.

Since 1997 Ecuador has received more than 243 million dollars in military aid from the United States for its efforts in fighting drug trafficking. That number has consistently decreased over the years, as aid has been redirected toward the conflict in Colombia. Isaacson expects the decision not to renew the U.S. military’s lease on the Manta Air Base will hasten that downward trend. “I think that there’s going to be distancing, aid is going to be a fraction of what it was,” he told IPS. “Ecuador will not be on the U.S. radar screen.”

But Shifter is not as pessimistic. He believes Washington will want to continue to count on Ecuador as an ally in the drug war.

In contrast to Chavez, who ended Venezuela’s cooperation in counter-drug activities with the United States two years ago, Correa’s government has increased its cooperation in fighting drug traffickers, according to officials in both countries.

A spokesman at the U.S. State Department described Ecuador’s assistance in counter-drug activities under Correa as “excellent”.

“It would be shooting the U.S. in the foot if it said ‘well, we’re not going to give you any more military aid because you didn’t renew Manta.’ I think [the United States is] going to want to continue to find ways to cooperate,” Shifter said.

U.S. State Department officials say they will respect Ecuador’s decision not to renew the lease, though they may consider an attempt at renegotiating the terms of the agreement before it expires in November 2009. Analysts speculate the United States could also choose to replace the Manta base with a facility in either Colombia or Peru.