Iran International
As cartel violence grips Mexico following the death of a top drug lord, experts tell Iran International that Tehran-linked networks may be intertwined with the criminal infrastructure fueling instability across Latin America.
Mexico has deployed thousands of troops after coordinated attacks erupted across at least 20 states following the capture and death of Jalisco New Generation Cartel leader Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, known as El Mencho.
Cartel fighters torched buses, blocked highways and clashed with security forces, leaving dozens dead and forcing authorities to mobilize nearly 10,000 personnel nationwide.
While Mexican authorities frame the unrest as cartel retaliation, security analysts say such episodes increasingly unfold within transnational financial and trafficking systems that extend beyond Mexico’s borders.
Those systems, experts say, have in some cases intersected with Iranian state-aligned networks operating across Latin America.
“There are longstanding money-laundering and trafficking ecosystems that connect Latin American cartels, Iranian state-aligned networks and global criminal finance,” investigative journalist Sam Cooper told Iran International, pointing to investigations linking criminal actors across North and South America.
Cooper who has reported extensively on transnational crime networks, stressed that the overlap does not necessarily indicate direct operational control by Tehran but reflects a convergence of interests that could benefit the theocracy during periods of heightened pressure.
“I don’t have direct evidence their intelligence would be involved in helping the cartel push back against the Mexican state,” he said. “But I do believe the Iranian regime would want to benefit very much from increasing the turmoil in Mexico.”
That convergence of illicit finance and geopolitical competition, analysts say, creates openings for states such as Iran to benefit from regional instability.
'Using gangs for dirty work'
Janatan Sayeh, a research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies focusing on Iranian domestic affairs and regional influence, says the Islamic Republic frequently advances its objectives indirectly, relying on criminal intermediaries to apply pressure while maintaining distance from direct involvement.
“They (Iran's regime) do try to put a distance between themselves and their criminal activity, specifically assassination plots,” Sayeh said.
“They increasingly are leveraging some of these gangs… to do the dirty work.”
In 2011, US officials brought charges against several Iranian nationals, among them an operative linked to the IRGC’s Quds Force, accusing them of conspiring to kill the Saudi ambassador in Washington.
According to prosecutors, an Iranian go-between attempted to recruit individuals he thought were tied to a Mexican drug cartel, offering payment to carry out the assassination. Those individuals were in fact informants working with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.
Networks built over decades
Analysts say many of these connections trace back decades, particularly through Iran’s partnership with the former regime ruling Venezuela, where Iranian Revolutionary Guard-aligned networks and Hezbollah operatives established financial and logistical footholds across Latin America.
Hezbollah has long been accused of running criminal networks in Latin America that intersect with drug trafficking routes.
Dr. Walid Phares, a foreign policy expert and co-secretary general of the Transatlantic Parliamentary Group, said those networks gradually expanded into cooperation with organized crime groups operating across the region.
“Hezbollah had developed relationships with similar organizations across Latin America, Brazil, Colombia and beyond,” Phares told Iran International. “But the most important move backed by the IRGC regime was in Mexico.”
According to Phares, access to trafficking routes and financial channels allowed militant networks to expand their reach while maintaining distance through criminal intermediaries.
“The most important goal of Hezbollah was to get to the American and Mexican border,” he said.
Sayeh added that Western governments often mischaracterize the threat by treating such activity solely as organized crime rather than part of a broader national security challenge.
“A lot of times when it comes to the Americas it is treated as a criminal network, not a terrorism network,” he said. “Accurately labeling it for what it is important.”
For Iran, "it’s anything anti-America… and cartel is just part of that paradigm for them,” he said. “Any opportunity just to exert pressure on the Americas.”
Crime and geopolitics converge
Security specialists say the convergence has blurred the traditional boundary between criminal activity and geopolitical competition. Networks originally built for sanctions evasion and terror financing can also serve narcotics trafficking and money laundering operations, creating mutually beneficial partnerships between state and non-state actors.
For Cooper, the violence unfolding in Mexico reflects a wider shift in the Western Hemisphere, where criminal networks increasingly intersect with global rivalries.
“The level of threats that are emerging in the Western Hemisphere right now,” he said, “is all related.”
As Mexico contains the fallout from El Mencho’s death, experts say the episode highlights how criminal violence in the Western Hemisphere increasingly intersects with global power competition.
Tehran’s unveiling of a towering statue depicting the Roman Emperor Valerian kneeling before pre-Islamic Persian King Shapur I has renewed criticism of the Islamic Republic’s appeal to nationalist sentiment following the June war with Israel.
For over forty years, the theocracy purged ancient Persian history from schoolbooks, replacing it with post-Islamic narratives. But after the 12-day conflict with Israel, officials have turned to the distant pre-Islamic past to rally a divided society.
From murals of ancient kings and soldiers to patriotic songs added to Shi’ite mourning ceremonies performed before Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Tehran now embraces imagery once deemed heretical by its own revolutionary ethos.
'Kneel before Iran' campaign
Tehran’s Revolution (Enghelab) Square was the scene of an unusual spectacle on Friday as officials unveiled a massive bronze statue depicting Roman Emperor Valerian kneeling in submission before Sassanid King Shapur I, commemorating Iran’s victory at the Battle of Edessa (260 AD).
The event was held under the slogan “Kneel before Iran,” part of what authorities describe as a campaign to project “national unity and historical pride” following the June war with Israel.
Tehran Mayor Alireza Zakani, a staunch ultraconservative, said on X: “Enmity with Great Iran can only end in kneeling before this historic nation.”
Municipal official Davood Goodarzi said the installation would be accompanied by visual displays depicting “other victories of Iranians over foreign aggressors,” including the defeat of British forces by local commander Rais-Ali Delvari, Mirza Kuchak Khan’s resistance against Russian troops, and Surena’s triumph over Rome at the Battle of Carrhae in 53 BCE.
The goal, Goodarzi said, is “strengthening concepts such as national dignity, social unity, and Iranian identity.”
The statue, he said, would remain temporarily at Revolution Square before being moved to a city gateway “where it will stand as the first emblem of Iran before diplomats and foreign visitors.”
Unveiled women were allowed to attend the unveiling ceremony—an uncommon scene at events organized by Tehran’s ultra-hardline municipality.
The turn to the pre-Islamic past
The sharp reversal also recalls remarks once made by Khamenei. In a 2011 speech, he asserted that “all the great military victories of this nation came after Islam,” dismissing pre-Islamic accounts as “things that are not documented.”
In 1987, he had said that prophets triumphed over kings such as Cyrus and that “nothing remains of these monarchs in history but names remembered with derision.”
Nevertheless, pro-government social media accounts have now gone so far as to circulate posters equating Khamenei himself with Shapur, showing him standing with a staff as Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump kneel before him. The caption reads: “You will kneel before Iran.”
'Hypocrisy'
Pro-government figures have hailed the move as a patriotic success. Conservative political reporter Hossein Saremi posted: “Today’s grand Iranian gathering showed that people and the state share one essence: Iran itself. Nothing can take our homeland away.”
Others, however, called the spectacle “hypocrisy.” Journalist Gholamhossein Pashaei wrote on X: “Every year you close Pasargadae to stop people from celebrating Cyrus Day, yet you unveil Shapur’s statue in Enghelab Square with drums and fireworks during Fatimiyya (mourning period)!”
Dissident commentator Hamid Asafi called the ceremony “a perfect snapshot of the Islamic Republic’s contradictions.”
On Telegram he wrote: “A week ago they closed Cyrus’s tomb out of fear of the crowds, and now they glorify Shapur in the same breath. The Islamic Republic fears living history but poses for selfies with its corpse.”
He added: “They know people no longer respond to rosaries and sermons. That’s why they’ve brought history back to the stage—in a controlled costume. If they can’t erase the past, they’ll try to own it.”
The irony deepened as UNESCO formally recognized Cyrus’s Charter as one of the earliest human-rights documents.
President Masoud Pezeshkian wrote on X: “Iran, the cradle of dialogue, justice, and coexistence, can still inspire peace today.”
Users swiftly replied, questioning how such pride could coexist with a government that blocks access to Cyrus’s tomb each year to those wishing to visit it on his birthday.
