Anti-Western Influence Campaigns in Latin America: Understanding the Russia-Venezuela-Iran Triangle

Episode Transcript

• Anti-Western Influence Campaigns in Latin America: Understanding the Russia-Venezuela-Iran Triangle

  The transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

  Izabella Tabarovsky: From the Kennan Institute, I am Izabella Tabarovsky, and you are listening to The Russia File. 

  Latin America has long been a playground for Russia’s anti-American influence operations. But today Russia isn’t alone in this game. In recent years, Iran has become an increasingly prominent player on the continent as well—particularly in Venezuela. 

  On today’s episode I talk with my guest, Emanuele Ottolenghi, about the growing Russian-Iranian influence on the continent: How the two work together to spread anti-American and anti-Western propaganda and disinformation, circumvent sanctions, and contribute to America’s worsening border crisis. Emanuele Ottolenghi is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a nonpartisan research institute based in Washington, DC. He's been researching hybrid threat networks and the malign influence of Iran and its proxies in Latin America since 2015. Emanuele, welcome to the program.

  Emanuele Ottolenghi: Thank you so much for having me.

  IT: So there were elections in Venezuela recently, contested elections. There seems to be evidence of Russian pressure, perhaps Russian interference, on the side of Nicolas Maduro. But this, of course, is nothing new. You've been watching Russian propaganda in Latin America for a while. What can you tell us about Russian influence there, perhaps historically, perhaps in the most recent election? Let's start with that. 

  EO: Yes. Well, Russia historically, as you know better than I do, has tried to contest influence away from the United States in Latin America during the Cold War, and with the resurgence of Russia as an antagonistic power, this kind of approach has resurfaced as well. Russia has sought to maintain and then strengthen relations with proxies and friendly powers in the region for quite some time. Of course, Cuba remained closely aligned, but other countries have moved towards Russia's orbit or inhabit the same ideological space. And Venezuela is, of course, one of them. Venezuela also, since the rise to power of Hugo Chavez and later on, Nicolas Maduro, with their Bolivarian ideology, has become sort of the standard bearer of anti-Americanism in the Western hemisphere. They have, in a way, tried to play the same role that Cuba played during the Cold War, exporting the ideology and the revolution. And this has been done often in cooperation with Russia and other malign actors in the region, including Iran and China.

  Now, all of these malign actors make propaganda, one of the key components of their statecraft. They seek to influence public opinion and elites in Latin America in order to sway them in their favor, and also in order to strengthen support for those countries in the region that are already aligned with Russia and these other malign actors. So in the case of Venezuela, you do see very strong cooperation between the two countries. You see Russian support for Venezuelan worldview positions and stories. And you see this most strongly and most evidently in the media. For example, when it comes to the recent elections, Russian outlets have essentially endorsed the regime narrative that Maduro won fair and square; that there have been attempts to disrupt the electoral process with cyberattacks from the West; that the opposition is, of course, an American stooge, and that they are being financed from outside powers; that there is an attempt to attack, there is a coordinated aggression against Venezuela by Western countries with the US in the leadership of this aggression. And all of this is packaged in a very slick, elegant, articulate way, in flawless Spanish, on Russian media. 

  IT: Well, and you write—there is a great piece you wrote for The Dispatch [that] we’ll post in our show notes—you write about this trio of Spanish language media networks, Telesur, HispanTV, and Actualidad RT, which are controlled by Russia and Iran and Venezuela. And they're not just controlled by them. The three interact with one another. They share messaging. They share journalists and anchors. So there is kind of a smooth operation and a smooth echo chamber that has been developed, demonizing the West and demonizing American values and American politicians, American policy. Can you talk about that? 

  EO: You're absolutely correct in mentioning this synergy. The three outlets you mentioned are HispanTV, Telesur, and Actualidad RT, to which one could add Sputnik Mundo, which is the other Russian outlet in Spanish. These outlets, of course, report back to their respective powers that be. And there are nuances and differences sometimes in the focus of reporting or the in-depth programs, but when it comes to certain policy issues, typically international politics, national security, regional politics, some common themes emerge. 

  For example, when it came to Russian aggression in Ukraine and the Ukrainian response or the reasons for the war in Ukraine, all three outlets have repeatedly published stories as well as commentary and opinion essentially validating Russia's narrative that Ukraine is run by neo-Nazis. And in more specific incidents or stories, they have validated the theory—the conspiracy theory—that the West was running biolabs in Ukraine. A third example would be belittling, trivializing, or denying outright casualty numbers and the size of Russia's violent attacks against civilian targets or brutalities and atrocities committed by the Russians. So this is one example where an outlet promoted by Venezuela in Spanish for a largely Latin American audience, an outlet promoted by Iran for a largely Spanish-speaking Latin American audience, and Russian outlets are all singing the same tune from the same score sheet on issues that are important to Russia. And when you switch to issues that are important to Iran or to Venezuela, you will find the same scenario. 

  And as you pointed out correctly, to some extent this is even more obvious and more acute as a phenomenon because some of the people who work in the studios or who are correspondents for the three outlets or who run in-depth shows for the three outlets are shared by the three platforms, or they work for one platform and then they move to another. The three platforms oftentimes share producers, cameramen, correspondents, and also share physical space in the various capitals of Latin America where they have studios. So there clearly is a synergy. The question is to what extent it is coordinated and to what extent really the three different outlets and the three different countries that run them actually see eye to eye on these issues. And I think that you can identify a number of critical issues where essentially they see eye to eye. 

  And it's not even a matter of having their CEOs sitting together and coordinating the party line, but it is that they actually share this worldview. They are profoundly, aggressively, extremely anti-American. By extension, they're also extremely anti-Israel. They do peddle conspiracy theories pretty much across their coverage. And, of course, when it comes to the Israel-Palestine issue, you will find examples of antisemitism or of antisemitic tropes emerging in the conspiracy theories that these outlets promote. You will, of course, find them siding with Russia and its allies and proxies or Iran and Venezuela on territorial disputes.

  So, for example, all three outlets obviously support Russia on Ukraine, but you will find that they also support Venezuela on its territorial dispute with the neighboring Guyana over the Essequibo border region. So what you do find is that they essentially peddle the same party line on foreign policy, and they do that very effectively. They recruit not just Spanish speakers from their own countries—you do find Russian and Iranian journalists writing for these outlets—but they do recruit mostly Latin Americans who are ideologically aligned with this agenda, and they let them run the show to some extent. And the other thing is that they are very slickly designed, very sophisticated in their design and also communication platforms. And: no ads. So it is a fully free, accessible, continental-based and continent-wide media platform that offers news in Spanish to an audience that mostly speaks and understands only Spanish and so can get news [from these outlets offering] a very different perspective from their national newspapers. So as a result, it is extremely impactful. 

  IT: How many people do they reach cumulatively? 

  EO: They reach a few million people. Each channel, of course, has a different rating. But what is notable is that their coverage, despite disruptions and attempts by Western governments to limit their outreach, has spiked after specific crises. For example, when it comes to HispanTV and its coverage of the Middle East, they have been getting a lot more hits and audience since October 7. So what you see in the coverage and the [audience] following is that these outlets have found a niche, a gap, perhaps a credibility gap for other media outlets in the region. And also, they have a captive audience, because they hit sensitive raw nerves of a certain sector of the educated population of Latin America when it comes to what has been historically a very profoundly rooted disdain or distrust for the United States and Western countries. They do plug into antisemitic prejudices that are still spread across certain sectors of Latin America's audiences. [And] certainly the anti-imperialist, Global South rhetoric resonates a lot. So they have been making inroads and bizarrely acquired credibility among educated elites, who usually have more options and choices when it comes to news access and knowledge to make sound judgments. So overall, they are impactful, and they pose a serious challenge to people who believe in quality, sound, impartial, accurate information.

  IT: Well, and it's interesting, as you describe this—what I'm thinking about is the influence that Russia had in Latin America during the Cold War. There was massive Russian language propaganda, Soviet propaganda directed at Latin America, very much in the spirit of what we are seeing today: anti-American, anti-Western, cynically anti-imperialist, because obviously all of these countries are imperialists in their own way—Iran, Russia, China (which is also part of the mix), and yet they speak about Western imperialism, and that resonates and nobody questions their position in this regard. 

  EO: Right. And that is very much in line, as you said, with old Soviet propaganda. And what's interesting is that when you look at Iran, Russia, and Venezuela, despite the fact that they are revisionist powers that engage in military adventurism and aggression against neighbors, that reject the international order, provide weapons, funding, and training to insurgents and terrorist groups around the world—they very well qualify as imperialist, certainly not as peace-loving nations, and certainly not as the oppressed, weak victims of Western aggression as they purport themselves to be. But that is very much in line with the anti-colonialist, anti-imperialist narrative of the Soviet Union during the Cold War, as you indicated. And with some revisions, that narrative has been revived very much since 9/11, 23 years ago, as the world went from the short season of optimism after the end of the Cold War [to a] search of a new equilibrium between the resurgent powers. 

  So their point of view is: we are the oppressed, we fight for the oppressed. The real threat to the world is aggressive American imperialism. It is free market capitalism. It is the existence of a Jewish state in the Middle East that is the root cause of all the ills and grievances of the people of the region, and so on. And we're going to fight for the little guys. I mean, you have to remember that when you look at Iran, for example, the Iranian revolution has, at its roots, a strong revolutionary Marxist component. And the Shia element of the Iranian revolution has always been somewhat downplayed by Iranian propagandists seeking to export their ideology and build new alliances outside of the Middle East, precisely by emphasizing the narrative of Khomeini and of Iran as a struggle for the oppressed. Iran has a foundation for the oppressed. It presents its iconic religious and revolutionary figures as icons of fighting against the oppression. It tries to cast, for example, Qasem Soleimani, the late leader of the Quds Force of the Revolutionary Guards of Iran, as a latter-day Che Guevara. It celebrates icons that have nothing to do with the Iranian Revolution or Iranian foreign policy concerns and issues, such as Julian Assange as also a revolutionary icon. So there is an element of, if you wish, revolutionary ecumenism that you find in these outlets and in these campaigns. And it essentially goes back, once again, to the notion of “revolutionaries of the world unite.” They do in Latin America. 

  IT: Well, and I want to emphasize that the anti-oppression narrative that they propagate is deeply cynical. It was cynical in Soviet times and it's cynical today. It's really a play to reduce American influence, to reduce Western influence. None of these countries are paragons of human rights. So it's a really cynical narrative. I want to ask you, can you explain—I think that for a lot of us, the Russian-Latin American, and especially Russian-Venezuelan, connection is quite clear. We understand that there is history there and we understand why they're working together, why Russia would be supporting Venezuela right now in particular. How does Iran fit into the picture? 

  EO: Iran fits into the picture in a number of ways. The Iran-Venezuela strategic cooperation began in earnest with the rise to power of Hugo Chavez. But it really switched gears and went into a honeymoon, if you will, once Mahmoud Ahmadinejad became president of Iran in 2005. And during the era of Ahmadinejad and Chavez, it became a very tight strategic cooperation. And it was driven essentially by two interests which served both countries. For Iran mainly, but also for Venezuela, the cooperation opened up markets and enabled one side or the other, depending on the period of recent history, to evade sanctions. When that relationship began, Iran was under sanctions; it was the height of the sanctions pressure from Western countries with regard to its nuclear program. Working with Venezuela allowed Iran to evade sanctions in the financial sector, in the commercial sector—it created avenues for money laundering. And of course, there is a strong Shia Lebanese diaspora living in Venezuela, as elsewhere in Latin America. So it allowed Iran to strengthen this diaspora and facilitate the use of this diaspora by Hezbollah to launder money to finance its own activities and also facilitate the Venezuela regime's involvement in drug trafficking. So there was that dimension. But despite the ups and downs of both countries, that relationship has now turned from one of essentially two equal partners helping one another to an almost patron-client relation. Venezuela is highly dependent on Iranian support. And what does Iran get back from this support? It essentially gets a forward operating base for its own interests in the Western Hemisphere. 

  And why would Iran want to be in the Western hemisphere, you might ask as a follow-up question? Well, there are two reasons. One: although Iran is by no means the Soviet Union of the Cold War in terms of resources, power, and the ability to influence world politics, Iran aspires to be a leading member of the struggle to change the international order. It aspires to be a hegemonic power. It aspires, like any revolutionary country, to export its ideology. And since it views the United States as its main antagonist, positioning itself with influence and access to Latin America is extremely important. If you want to try and see it from their point of view, they say: America is in our neighborhood, with military bases and political influence and commercial treaties. We're going to do the same in their own neighborhood in the Western Hemisphere. So Venezuela has given Iran the platform and the access to do that. And it's been a very mutually beneficial relationship since then. 

  IT: It's very interesting because we just recently published an article—we'll also connect to it in the show notes—which talks about “strategic reciprocity” between Russia in Russia's approach to supporting Venezuela, because they view America as meddling in what's known as the Russian near abroad in Ukraine. And so they view Venezuela as America's “near abroad.” So they feel that this is strategic reciprocity, for them to be reciprocally meddling in Venezuela. 

  EO: Oh yes. And that view is shared, as I just described it, by Iran. I mean, the bottom line is this: Russia traditionally has supported anti-American regimes in Latin America; that is, of course, the legacy of the Cold War. And once Russia decided to embark on this path of aggressive and hostile antagonism towards the United States and the West, it essentially tried to revive those relations. 

  Now, the slide into left wing populism and soft authoritarianism of some countries in Latin America is not entirely related to Russian or Iranian influence alone. There are a lot of domestic factors that explain the rise of Bolivarianism and its successful sweep during the 2000–early 2010s. There are reasons why you do see the rise of people like Gustavo Petro in Colombia and Jamarra Castro in Honduras. Some of these reasons are not necessarily connected to Russia's malign activities or Iranian malign activities, but they are certainly playing into their hands, because the essence of these political swings is a return or a rise of a populist, anti-Western or anti-American wave of politicians who emphasize national sovereignty. They resent any kind of interference. And when malign actors like Iran, Russia, and China come to them offering them alternatives for development, for investment, they usually come without the strings attached to American or Western aid in general. Just to give you a couple of examples: they don't come with stringent environmental safeguards in infrastructure and development projects. They don't come with stringent anti-corruption practices embedded in legislation and contracts when they come to invest in the country. As a diplomat once put it, “when Americans come to Latin America, they give us a lecture. When Chinese come to Latin America, they give us a port.” So this mixture of economic benefits that come with cooperation, without the commitments to certain standards (which relate, again, to the international order the West created after World War II), and a traditional base of resentment or disdain for the United States and deep-rooted suspicions is something that the Russian regime and the Iranian regime have been able to manipulate to their own advantage in each and every one of those countries. 

  Now, of course, in addition to that, you have certain countries like Nicaragua, like Cuba, where the same people who were aligned with the Soviet Union during the Cold War are essentially today back in power. And so that's been a love fest for Russia and Iran and a hate fest against the United States as a result.

  IT: I think I want to get back to that, but I want to finish building out this triangle. So now we understand how Russia and Venezuela connect and how Iran and Venezuela and, generally perhaps, Latin America connect. And there is, of course, an important connection between Russia and Iran as well.

  EO: Yes. 

  IT: Talk to us about that. 

  EO: Well, that's a connection that comes from a relatively recent and progressive alignment in interests between Russia and Iran and, to some extent, mutual dependency, which we have, of course, seen since Russia's invasion of Ukraine and Russia's need to resupply its own arsenal and rely increasingly on countries that traditionally would have been recipients of Russian military aid. So Russia has relied on North Korea. Russia is relying now heavily on Iran, both in the drone field and, as we have learned recently, in the transfer of long-range ballistic missiles. So the two of them have become closer because they share an enemy, they share challenges, they share opportunities, as we discussed earlier, in expanding their influence or causing America's retreat outside of its near abroad. So there’s been a very strong rapprochement, if you will, between the two. 

  But I think that even in the past—of course, even when the Russia-Iran bilateral relationship was driven by a number of historical factors that denied them the possibility or made it hard for them to become strategic allies (of course, that's changed now)—even at that moment, Iran and Russia [found] ways to cooperate. First of all, because they did agree that they resented the international order created after World War II and they wish to change the rules of the game in their favor. Both agreed that they are wronged empires whose legitimate spheres of interest and aspirations have been eroded and penetrated by actors and governments that are not just hostile to them but backed by the West. And both countries, very much similar to the Venezuela-Iran relations, have been under sanctions: Iran first, Russia after. And what you're seeing is that all of these factors are helping the two regimes draw closer. The most obvious one we mentioned, the transfer of military hardware and the development also of an indigenous Iranian-designed and -backed infrastructure in Russia to produce some of these weapons. But we see other areas of cooperation that are mutually beneficial. Sanction evasion is one of them. The Iranians have been the forerunners of sanctions evasion in the world, because they have been under sanctions pretty much ever since the Iranian Revolution was established successfully in 1979. And as a result of those 40+ years of experience, they are now able to help others evade sanctions.

  Now Russia is under very heavy sanctions from the West, because of its war of aggression in Ukraine. And we have seen evidence, and I wouldn't be surprised and wasn't surprised to see it, that Iran is coaching Russia on how to evade sanctions. Iran is helping Russia to evade sanctions, very much like Russia helped Iran during the sanctions era from 2005 to 2015 to evade some sanctions through Russia. Iranians established banks in Russia; that's probably the most obvious example. So there is a history, which perhaps was limited due to some divergence between the two regimes. But today, because of the current circumstances, that divergence has been significantly reduced. There is a convergence and there is clearly a strategic alignment. 

  IT: And on sanctions relief, you also write about the role of Venezuela in helping all three, or in helping Iran. There is a really fascinating story that you have followed about the Venezuela national carrier airline helping evade sanctions, I believe you write, for Iran and also for Russia, perhaps. Can you talk about that? 

  EO: Absolutely. So thank you for mentioning that. The Venezuelan national carrier Conviasa has been used very much like the aviation sector of Iran, not just to carry passengers for business and pleasure around the world, but also, it's been put to the service of the regime and the government to advance its own purposes, some of them nefarious.

  Back in the 2010s, for about three years, Conviasa ran a direct flight between Caracas, Damascus, and Tehran. It was nicknamed Aero Terror in Spanish because, of course, it was not a plane you could buy a ticket on and fly with. It was really used by government officials from both sides. It's rumored to have carried drugs and weapons and illicit cargo of [various kinds] and, of course, government officials and, potentially, terror operatives. That flight eventually was terminated. But it was resumed more recently. And here's where you see the cooperation. Iran essentially has transferred some of its aircraft fleet to Venezuela to enable Venezuela to carry long-distance flights. And Venezuela has been carrying these long-distance flights not just to Tehran or the region, but also to Moscow.

  Now, in addition to that, there is another area of cooperation between Venezuela and Iran that is worth mentioning here, because it touches upon Russia. Iran has given a license to Venezuela, as it has done to Russia and in Tajikistan, to produce and locally assemble its own drones. So what you're seeing is a triangle between Iran giving Venezuela the tools to run its own operations; Venezuela benefiting from these tools and transferring, potentially, some of the equipment and tools and goods to Russia; and then the Russians are providing Iran with something in return as well. So you see a triangulation. 

  That triangulation then creates all sorts of other possibilities. One of the things that I did cover in recent months, tangentially, at least, is the border crisis in the United States. Not so much the domestic dynamic of the border crisis and the polarized debate about what's to be done or not to be done with the border crisis, but the fact that America's adversaries, and notably Venezuela, Russia, Iran—these triangular players—are exploiting this crisis to polarize public opinion further. How are they doing that? Essentially by helping illegal immigrants trying to come into the United States have an easier passage. And how do they do that? They essentially have people from all over the world who want to immigrate to the United States come to Latin America, mostly to Cuba and to Venezuela, fly them to Nicaragua—another part of this axis of adversarial “resistance” nations—and from Nicaragua it is a lot faster, easier, and cheaper to get to the United States than if you start in, say, Ecuador or Colombia. 

  To do this, Venezuela has offered its own airline, Conviasa, using planes provided by Iran, flying into an airport largely controlled or secured by Russian forces, oftentimes transferred from Cuba, another Russian proxy. And all of this is done to add pressure and further polarize US public opinion—something which, of course, they are also doing through the media platforms that we discussed before. And here you see that triangulation come into play in a way that is disruptive and trying to diminish American influence as well in the region.

  IT: And you talk in this context…there are some really fascinating cases that you examine in your writings. You talk about Conviasa, for example, flying people to Managua, returning empty, not picking up anybody, essentially indicating that they flew people in, [but] these people never left, which means that—or they never left via any airline—so it means that they went elsewhere via ground routes.

  EO: Correct. And I mean, I'm glad you mentioned that specific anecdote, because it came to my attention from, of all places, a South Korean social media influencer who does travel videos. So he's traveling across Latin America and is in Nicaragua making his way to South America. He buys a ticket to fly from Managua to Caracas, and he boards the plane and he's the only passenger. And he films it, and he posts a video; the video goes viral. And that essentially is the insight into these flights. 

  Now, there are more insights that are important and worth emphasizing. Flying aircraft is expensive. Using jet fuel to fly and to fly back, pay the services on the ground, technical support, catering—all of these things are expensive. So airlines try to maximize the number of passengers that they carry. But when they are not carrying passengers purposefully and flying back and forth, with one leg of the journey full but the other one empty, it clearly [indicates] something they're doing not for commercial purposes. It's a piece of evidence that suggests this is done on behalf of a regime. 

  Also, how do we know that these people are not coming back? We know that from data released by immigration authorities in Nicaragua. You'd think that the Nicaraguans, who are complicit in this scheme, would be discreet, but they're not. They have entry and exit records, and not just in the case of people coming from Venezuela, but other countries as well. It's evident that there are more people coming into the airport from other countries than people returning—foreign citizens who come into Nicaragua—than those going back to the countries where they came from. And that is an indication that at least some of the people who come are there to stay and probably to begin their journey [north].

  Nicaragua, by the way, has implemented a laxer visa policy to allow people to stay in the country for 96 hours, and, of course, they have to pay some money. So in the process of polarizing our public opinion in America, pressuring the United States, disrupting the regional situation, they also make money along the way. 

  IT: Where is China in all of this? 

  EO: China is, as in other spheres of world politics and competition, China is less prominent in this game. It's sort of the fourth or fifth violin in the orchestra when it comes to propaganda. Its news outlets are certainly not friendly to Western views of international politics. But China essentially is interested, first of all, in a much longer game. And second of all, I believe, it has to balance a number of—we could almost call them genuine interests, right? It wants to expand access or gain more access to consumer markets, and it also wants to gain more access to raw resources and commodities. 

  Now, those are two legitimate interests. The way China does it, of course, is another story. But those are things that drive China's policy in Latin America as well as other places in the world, such as Africa and so on. So China is a much bigger presence and it is a real commercial partner for Latin American countries, and it therefore poses a very real dilemma in the choices that these governments and countries make when it comes to awarding contracts and taking loans, for example, or welcoming investments. Of course, China comes with a lot of strings attached, as we know. And China has also sought to use its largesse that it relies on when it comes into these countries to gain access to personal data and security—for example, providing security equipment such as CCTVs to national law enforcement agencies, and then being able to access those data to harvest that information. 

  But I guess my point on China is this. When you look at the China-Latin America relationship, you do see very conspicuous bilateral trade. There is a balance of trade. There is a serious exchange of resources and wealth and capital and commodities. So it fits more a neocolonial model that China is promoting in that region, as elsewhere. It does help China, and China uses it to help local regional powers to promote the agenda (shared by Russia and Iran, by the way) to de-dollarize the global economy. But it is a real relationship. 

  When you look, by contrast, at the commercial ties between Russia and Latin American countries or Iran and Latin American countries, it is minimal, it is insignificant. It's clear that what they're doing there is entirely driven by ideological and political goals of switching countries to their sphere of influence, and it's not driven by genuine commercial economic interests, which you could say is the case with China. 

  IT: What is the attitude in Latin America (aside from the regimes that obviously do cooperate with Russia and with Iran, and you named Venezuela and Nicaragua and Cuba)—do Iran and Russia exercise the same kind of influence in other Latin American countries? And what is their attitude to attempts to impose this kind of influence? 

  EO: The short answer is yes, they do attempt to influence other countries as well in a number of ways, many of which are, again, from the old Soviet playbook. They infiltrate opposition groups or they fund them, they create a whole array of NGOs that have benign-sounding names and are run by locals, but essentially are attuned to the ideological sensitivities and sensibilities of Russia and Iran. They try to buy politicians and journalists. Latin America is a region where, unfortunately, there are still significant levels of corruption. And of course, there are also higher levels and larger segments of the population that experience poverty, and therefore the ability to recruit, to mobilize—the sort of rent-a-mob situation—is something that they're still doing very effectively. 

  Iran is also doing something that perhaps Russia and China are either not doing yet as effectively or can't do as effectively. Namely, they're using expatriate communities of Lebanese Shia who have been rooted in those countries for at least three [or] four decades and sometimes longer and therefore speak the language perfectly (in many cases are born there; they are citizens), to actually enter politics. So in addition to buying influence, funding political campaigns, establishing NGOs, plus running the media platforms we already discussed, they also seek to influence the political dynamic by entering politics. And of course, that happens sometimes by placing these people to run for those political parties that they have already tried to infiltrate. So I think then, probably as an expert on that period of history, you recognize a lot of the elements and activities that the Soviets did in what was then called the Third World—with new tools, and, of course, with the new reality of social media and the digital age. But they're essentially doing the same. 

  IT: A hundred percent. I actually just wrote an article recently where I looked at how the Soviets, in order to create these bubbles, these echo chambers—they needed to organize so many conferences. They invested massive amounts of resources in conferences, gatherings, fairs, festivals. Now you don't really have to be doing any of it. Everything is done online through social media. It's so much faster; it's so much cheaper. But the patterns are the same, just as you say. 

  EO: Agreed. Although I think that there is something to be said about human contact and the bringing together of these people. And truth be told (I follow Iran a lot more than I follow Russia in this arena), I do see Iran doing that. And by the way, what you do see is that—we didn't mention it a lot, but it's something that perhaps is worth mentioning in our conversation—the cause of Palestine has been some sort of a platform that allows the convergence and synergy of all of these groups.

  And of course, we didn't mention that either, but it's worth mentioning: Russia and Iran both are extremely, if you will, pragmatic and ecumenical when it comes to picking allies in these countries. It's not just the extreme left, but it's also the extreme right. They always try to find common themes. And of course, the cause of Palestine is one of them. It brings together extreme right, pro-Russia, pro-Iran, Hezbollah, Sunni Arabs, Shia Muslims—everybody converges—and all Marxists, of course, as well. And the cause of Palestine has been one where you do see a lot of international conferences where parliamentarians or NGOs or journalists or whatever category you can think of converge. And as you wrote in that excellent article, a lot of these people who come from poor countries of the world get their trip all-expensed by the organizers. And these are, of course, grounds that are used to further radicalize, motivate, create enthusiasm, and also provide material motivation for this kind of activism. And that, of course, then is amplified in a quantum leap of impact by the fact, as you mentioned correctly, that we do now live in a digital age. And so it's a lot easier to go back home and coordinate globally or regionally, to do a lot of things online, and then to mobilize locally in physical ways as well. But yes, it is exactly what the Soviets were doing. And now instead of the Soviets, we have the Russians, the Iranians, and the Venezuelans doing it all at the same time and often times together, holding hands. 

  IT: What are we doing? We as the United States. Are we doing anything about this? Have we responded in any way? It seems like the influence is growing and it's multi-level, and it's multidimensional. What have we been doing to counter that, and what should we be doing to counter that?

  EO: We have done a few things, but we are essentially kind of at a loss to understand and wrap our heads around what the threat truly is. We've done a few sanctions against disinformation platforms. These sanctions have been infrequent and not very effective for the very simple reason that even when we get an outlet sanctioned or we get a domain name seized by law enforcement, these platforms just migrate to a different domain name. The next day they are reopened. Yes, it causes some temporary disruption, but it doesn't last long enough to diminish and mitigate, significantly, their impact. 

  Also, beyond the information platforms but still in the disinformation arena, we are treating a lot of these influence operations as if they are legitimate expressions of free speech or of, in the case of Iran, which uses mosques and cultural centers to run its propaganda and indoctrination recruitment efforts, [a case of] freedom of religion. We don't treat them as clear propaganda influence operations. And that's been, I think, a mistake. 

  Now, one way to change that is, of course, to ratchet up and increase the pace of sanctions against individuals and entities that are involved in these activities, to work with social media to block these platforms from reaching their vast audiences. And, remember, these platforms are not just used for influence. They're also used, through their instant messaging and networking capabilities, to keep these networks working and to communicate. So, if you will, this could also be coined as an intelligence operation of sorts. 

  And I think that also, when it comes to the area of incitement to extremism and potential violence, we could use tools more aggressively, more effectively—tools of immigration that have only been sparingly used by countries and governments that are under attack in this sphere until now. We can deny entry, we can impose travel bans, we can put people on blacklists, we can share this information with allies to ensure that none of these people travel. We can harass them when they travel by [using] interrogation. We can do a lot of things that would diminish the effectiveness of [these groups]. 

  And another thing that we can do more aggressively is also to expose them, to ensure that they're held responsible, that their clear connection to Russia and Iran and Venezuela's influence operations is known publicly in order to call them by the name that they deserve. These are not media operations. These are not NGOs. These are not human rights activists. They are paid propagandists and agents of authoritarian regimes trying to disrupt the free flow of accurate information in our free societies. 

  IT: Emanuele, thank you so much for joining us.

  EO: It's been a pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.

  IT: From the Kennan Institute, I am Izabella Tabarovsky. Thank you for listening, and we look forward to having you with us on the next episode of The Russia File. 

  The opinions expressed are those solely of the speakers and do not reflect the views of the Kennan Institute.