With oil production at a record low, the Maduro regime has turned to the precious metal to pay for Tehran's services.
° With no more credits from China or Russia, Caracas consolidated in 2020 the reborn relationship with the Iranians, who are in charge of trying to reactivate the country's paralyzed refineries.
° In the last year, cargo ships dispatched by Iran have brought to the Caribbean nation more than 5 million barrels of gasoline, as well as products for its Megasis supermarket.
° The involvement of entities related to the Revolutionary Guard, declared group terrorist by Washington, hinders any gesture towards the Biden Administration.
► Venezuelan Vice President and Iranian Vice Minister of Industry inaugurate Megasis supermarket in Caracas, July 2020 [Gov. of Venezuela].
report SRA 2021 / María Victoria Andarcia [ PDF version] [PDF version].
MAY 2021-Venezuela's relationship with extra-Hemispheric powers has been characterized in the last year and a half by the resumption of the close ties with Iran already seen during the presidencies of Hugo Chávez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. With the financing possibilities provided by China (it has not granted credits to Caracas since 2016) and Russia (its oil interest in Venezuela, through Rosneft, was particularly constrained in 2019 by the Trump Administration's sanctions on PDVSA's business) exhausted, Nicolás Maduro's regime knocked again on Iran's door.
And Teheran, once again surrounded by US sanctions, as it happened during the Ahmadinejad era, has once again seen in the alliance with Venezuela the opportunity to stand up to Washington, while at the same time getting some economic return in times of great need: shipments of gold, worth at least 500 million dollars, according to Bloomberg, would have left Venezuela in 2020 as payment for the services rendered by Iran. If the credits from China or Russia were in exchange for oil, now the Chavista regime must also get its hands on gold, since the production of the state-owned PDVSA was at historic lows, with 362,000 barrels per day in the third quarter of the year (Chávez took over the company with a production of 3.2 million barrels per day).
The change of partners was symbolized in February 2020 with the arrival of Iranian technicians to start up the Armuy refinery, abandoned the previous month by Russian experts. Lack of investment had led to neglect of the maintenance of the country's refineries, which was causing major gasoline shortages and long lines at service stations. The Iranian attendance would barely manage to improve the refinery status , and Tehran had to make up for this inefficiency by sending gasoline freighters. Likewise, food shortages offered another avenue of relief for Tehran, which also dispatched ships with foodstuffs.
Gasoline and food
The Venezuelan-Iranian relationship, which without being completely eliminated had been reduced during the presidency of Hassan Rohani, as the latter focused on the international negotiation of the nuclear agreement to be reached in 2015 (known as JCPOA), was resumed throughout 2019. In April of that year, the controversial Iranian airline Mahan Air received operating permits in Venezuela to cover the Tehran-Caracas route. Although the airline has not marketed the air route, it has chartered several flights to Venezuela despite the closure of territorial airspace ordered by Maduro due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Mahan Air's operations served to transport Iranian technicians who were to be employed in efforts to restart gasoline production at the refineries of the Paraguaná complex, as well as material necessary for these tasks.
These and other arrangements would have been prepared by the Iranian embassy in Venezuela, which since December 2019 has been headed by Hojatollah Soltani, someone known for "mixing Iran's foreign policy with the activities" of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), according to researcher Joseph Humire. He believes that Mahan Air would have made about forty flights in the first half of 2020.
Similarly, Iran has been sending multiple fuel tankers to Venezuela to address gasoline shortages. The first shipment arrived in a flotilla of tankers that, in defiance of U.S. sanctions, entered Venezuelan waters between May 24 and 31, carrying a combined 1.5 million barrels of gasoline. In June another vessel arrived with an estimated 300,000 barrels, and three others brought 820,000 barrels between September 28 and October 4. Between December 2020 and January 2021 another flotilla would have carried 2.3 million barrels. To this total of at least 5 million barrels of gasoline should be added the arrival of 2.1 million barrels of condensate to be used as a diluent for Venezuelan extra-heavy oil.
In addition to fuel, Iran has also sent medical supplies and food to help combat the humanitarian emergency suffered by the country. Thus, it is important to highlight the opening of the Megasis supermarket, which is linked to the Revolutionary Guard, an Iranian military body that the Trump Administration included in the catalog of terrorist groups. The commercial establishment sells products of brands owned by the Iranian military, such as Delnoosh and Varamin, which are two of the subsidiaries of the Ekta company, allegedly created as a social security trust for Iranian military veterans. The Ekta supermarket chain is subordinate to the Iranian Ministry of Defense and the Armed Forces Logistics, an entity sanctioned by the United States for its role in the development of ballistic missiles.
Gold and Saab
This activity is of concern to the United States. An Atlantic Council report details how Iranian-backed networks prop up the Maduro regime. Venezuelan oil minister Tareck El Aissami has been identified as the core topic actor in the illicit network . He allegedly agreed with Tehran to import Iranian fuel in exchange for Venezuelan gold. According to agreement with the above-mentioned Bloomberg information, the Venezuelan Government had delivered to Iran, until April 2020, around nine tons of gold with a value of approximately 500 million dollars, in exchange for its attendance in the reactivation of the refineries. The gold was apparently transferred in Mahan Air flights to Teheran.
The negotiations may have involved the Colombian-born businessman Alex Saab, who already centralized a good part of the food imports carried out by the Chavista regime under the Clap program and was getting involved in the Iranian gasoline supplies. Saab was arrested in June 2020 in Cape Verde when his private plane was being refueled on an apparent flight to Tehran. Requested to Interpol by the United States as Maduro's main front man, the extradition process is still open.
The entities participating in many of these exchanges are sanctioned by the Office of Foreign Assets Control of the U.S. Treasury for their connection to the IRGC. The IRGC's ability to operate in Venezuela is due to the reach of network to support Hezbollah, an organization designated as a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union. Hezbollah has successfully infiltrated Venezuela's Lebanese expatriate communities, giving Iran a foothold to grow its influence in the region. These links make it difficult for Caracas to make any gesture that might be attempted to facilitate any de-escalation by the new Biden Administration of the sanctions applied by Washington.
