Iranian activist Masih Alinejad met Venezuelan Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Corina Machado in Norway, saying in a post on social media that Tehran menaced the South American country too.
“The Islamic Republic has invaded Venezuela alongside its allies Russia and its proxy Hezbollah. To those who claim with outrage that Venezuela’s democratic opposition asked the US government to ‘invade,’ let’s be serious and deal in facts,” Alinejad wrote on X on Friday.
“The real and ongoing violation of Venezuela’s sovereignty is already happening. Iran’s regime, Hezbollah and their terrorist proxy networks are operating inside Venezuela, strengthening repression, corruption and criminal networks that serve dictators, not citizens,” she added.
Machado arrived in Oslo this week after her daughter accepted the Peace Prize on her behalf. The veteran opposition figure said the United States had facilitated her exit from Venezuela, where she had been living in hiding.
US forces have mounted the largest military buildup in the Caribbean since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. The move appears to be a bid to pressure Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro to resign after he declared victory in polls against Machado's allies last year even as pollsters found he had lost.
The administration of US President Donald Trump has been attacking alleged drug boats off Venezuela and in the Pacific, in strikes Democratic opponents and some human rights groups say violate the laws of war.
Trump and his military and legal leadership say the campaign is a legitimate operation against narco-terrorism led by Maduro, and US forces on Wednesday seized a tanker off Venezuela it said carried sanctioned Venezuelan and Iranian oil.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee said on Wednesday that Iran was among various forces backing Maduro.
“Authoritarian regimes learn from each other. They share technology and propaganda systems. Behind Maduro stand Cuba, Russia, Iran, China and Hezbollah — providing weapons, surveillance and economic lifelines. They make the regime more robust, and more brutal,” its chief Jorgen Watne Frydnes said.
“Opposition groups did not start the imprisonments in Belarus, the executions in Iran — or the persecution in Venezuela. The violence comes from authoritarian regimes, as they lash out against popular calls for change,” Frydnes added.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio this month cast Venezuela as a regional launchpad for Iranian influence, describing Maduro’s government as a narcotics transit hub that hosts Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah
Little public evidence exists about the security relationship Venezuela has with Iran or its armed allies. Tehran and Caracas boosted ties under Maduro's predecessor Hugo Chavez, who cast himself as a bulwark against what he called American imperialism.
Machado said on Wednesday that their influence in Venezuela amounted to an invasion while not directly addressing whether she supported stepped up US military attacks on the country to bring about Maduro's downfall.
“Venezuela has already been invaded,” she said at a news conference alongside the Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store on Thursday.
“We have the Russian agents, we have the Iranian agents, we have terrorist groups such as Hezbollah, Hamas, operating freely in accordance with the regime. We have the Colombian guerrillas, the drug cartels.”
