May 7, 2008
U.S.: Iran maintains "capacity in the Americas as a threat against us
in the event of any conflict"
The Iranian presence is nothing new, of course, especially in
Argentina, Nicaragua, and Hugo Ch=E1vez' Venezuela. "US sees Iran as
potential threat in Latin America," from Agence France-Presse
WA****NGTON (AFP) =97 Isolated Iran sees Latin America as a place to
push back US influence, from which it could maintain a terrorist
threat against the United States in the event of a conflict, a senior
US official warned Wednesday.
Iran views Latin America as a chance to break out of some of its
international isolation and defy Wa****ngton's major power status in
its back yard, State Department official Thomas Shannon said in
Wa****ngton.
"It's a way to push back on us," Shannon told a conference
bringing together cabinet ministers and other officials from North and
South America to promote greater economic integration.
Shannon, the assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere
affairs, said it also posed a threat there as he repeated charges that
Iran was behind bombings against Israeli and Jewish targets in Buenos
Aires in the 1990s.
Iran denies any links.
"Our broader concern is that it ... maintains that capacity in the
Americas as a threat against us in the event of any conflict," Shannon
said.
Despite a loud rattling of sabers over Iran's alleged sup****t for
****ite militias in Iraq, the US military said last week that it has
not embarked on new planning for war.
"As we urge countries to respect UN-based sanctions (over Iran's
disputed nuclear program), we also remind them about AMIA, we remind
them about the Israeli embassy bombings," Shannon said.
Twenty-two people were killed when the Israeli embassy in Buenos
Aires was bombed in 1992 and 85 people were killed when the
headquarters of the AMIA, a charities federation for Argentina's big
Jewish community, was bombed in the Argentine capital in 1994.
"And we remind them about the continuing relation****ps that exist
in the region between groups in Latin America and groups that we
consider to be terrorist in the Middle East, especially Hezbollah and
Hamas," Shannon said.
Israel blames the Iranian-backed Hezbollah for both bombings in
Buenos Aires, but there have so far been no convictions in either
case.
"And we urge their intelligence services and their police services
to monitor this activity with great care, because we do not want Iran
to become a factor of violence within the Americas," Shannon said.
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