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Spreading the Iranian Revolution in Latin America

(Tablet) Emanuele Ottolenghi - Iran's Al Mustafa International University has branches in over 50 countries, including a new center inaugurated in November 2020 at the Universidad Bolivariana de Venezuela in Caracas. The U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned the university in 2020 for its role in Iran's propaganda efforts, including the provision of material support for the training and indoctrination of Shiite militias. As Kasra Aarabi and Saeid Golkar wrote in February 2021 for the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, "Al-Mustafa's objective is to enroll and train non-Iranian students interested in Iran's revolutionary Shia Islamist ideology, or in becoming Shia clerics, to disseminate and advance the ideological goals of Iran's Islamic Revolution." Al Mustafa carries the torch of Iran's Islamic Revolution through hundreds of blogs, online materials, journals, and other publications, with classes in dozens of languages that train tens of thousands of students, including foreign converts. Thanks to the zeal of its acolytes and Iran's funding, a vast regional network is now in place. Al Mustafa-sponsored institutions are an echo chamber for Iran's narrative of resistance to so-called imperialists and oppressors, usually embodied by the U.S. and Israel, which resonates more in parts of Latin America than a specifically Islamic message would. Since the death of Iranian Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani in 2020, Iran has depicted him for Latin American audiences as a latter-day Islamic Che Guevara. The writer is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
2022-03-03 00:00:00
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