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The US is urging Bolivia to deport suspected Iranian spies from its soil and designate the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), Tehran's military force, as a terrorist group.
This comes at a time when US-Iran tensions are again on the brink of spiralling out of control as an American aircraft carrier strike group and additional military assets prepare to arrive in the Middle East. Tehran, in turn, has warned the US of "all-out war" in case of an attack on its soil.
But why would the threat of war spill over into Washington's diplomatic overtures against Iran in South America?
According to a Reuters report citing officials in the know, this is one of the latest efforts by the US to increase its influence in South America while also reducing enemy influence in the region.
Notably, apart from kicking out the suspected Iranian spies, the US has also urged Bolivia to list the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah—as well as the Palestinian militant organisation Hamas—as terrorist forces.
This comes after the Donald Trump administration's attack on Venezuela earlier in January, which saw its president, Nicolas Maduro, and his wife, Cilia Flores, brought to the US to be put on trial.
According to Rick de la Torre, a retired senior CIA officer formerly stationed at Caracas, Venezuela had been an important base for Tehran's diplomatic and intelligence operations throughout South America.
Other US officials noted that Iranian espionage even spread to the neighbouring states of Bolivia and Nicaragua in recent years, partly because these regions were conducive to counterintelligence operations.
"(Bolivia's) value to Tehran was the permissive political climate, lighter scrutiny and central geography," de la Torre noted.
Though Washington's attempts to prise apart Iran and Latin American nations aren't new, the report points out that these efforts were ramped up amid recent tensions with Tehran.
This has already led to Ecuador labelling the IRGC, Hamas and Hezbollah as terrorist organisations, while Argentina did so for Iran's Quds Force earlier in January.
The officials added that Chile, Peru, and Panama were next on the list of nations from which the US wanted to flush out Iran, although talks in that regard have not yet taken place.
