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.
Arezoo Abedi, a mountaineer and fitness coach, was shot on Baghe Daryacheh Street on January 8 while her children were with her, sources said.
Bystanders helped her children transport her to Saadi Hospital, but the facility declined to admit her, according to her family. They then headed toward Alzahra Hospital.
On the way, members of the Basij and other security forces stopped the vehicle and fired warning shots in an attempt to force the passengers out, sources said.
The family was eventually allowed to proceed, but Abedi died before reaching the hospital. Her body was transferred to Alzahra’s morgue.
Her family said authorities released the body after three days on the condition that no public funeral be held. She was buried at night under security presence at Bagh-e Rezvan cemetery beside her father’s grave.
The official forensic report listed the cause of death as “cardiac arrest.”
Kazem Gharibabadi, Iran’s deputy foreign minister for legal and international affairs, spoke before the council in Geneva as most delegates remained seated, despite calls from campaigners urging democratic governments to walk out.
For many Iranians, the moment underscored what they see as a stark reality: while families continue to mourn the thousands killed in the protests, representatives of the same government accused of carrying out the violence were again granted an international platform at the world’s leading human rights body.
“Several UN Human Rights bodies have found that the Islamic Republic is committing crimes against humanity. The regime’s perpetrators should be punished rather than given a platform,” Brandon Silver, director of policy and projects at the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights, told Iran International.
Walkout campaign falls short
In the days leading up to the session, human rights advocates and Iranian activists urged democratic governments to leave the chamber during the speech.
In an interview conducted before Gharibabadi was set to speak, UN Watch executive director Hillel Neuer called on governments to refuse participation, warning that granting Tehran a podium would send a devastating message to victims and their families.
“You cannot grant a false badge of international legitimacy to a regime that just murdered tens of thousands of its people,” Neuer told Eye for Iran, adding, “Shame on the UN for inviting the murderers who try to wound and kill innocent people.”
A global petition supporting the walkout effort gathered more than 360,000 signatures. But video from Monday’s session showed that most delegations remained in place as the Iranian official delivered his remarks.
Tehran’s narrative
During his speech, Gharibabadi dismissed reports of large-scale killings and instead accused the United States and Israel of orchestrating unrest inside Iran.
He claimed “enemies of Iran” had diverted economic protests into “riots and chaos,” alleging that demonstrators committed “Daesh-like atrocities,” while asserting official figures showed 3,117 total deaths — far below estimates reported by rights groups.
He further accused supporters of the protest movement abroad of spreading “fabricated casualty figures,” while insisting Iran itself was a defender of human rights.
The claims closely mirrored messaging that has circulated across state media and official channels since the crackdown.
A recent joint investigation by Iran International and The Free Press documented what it described as a coordinated international information campaign launched alongside the repression, blaming the domestic uprising on foreign conspiracies and amplifying those narratives through media personalities and social media networks.
Diplomacy over grief
For families of victims, the speech stood in sharp contrast to testimonies emerging from inside Iran.
One father told Eye for Iran that his 17-year-old son, wounded during demonstrations, was later killed inside a hospital while doctors were attempting to save him — one of many accounts shared by families seeking international recognition and accountability.
Activists say allowing such narratives to be delivered at the Human Rights Council risks amplifying disputed claims while survivors continue to demand justice.
Politics over principles
Later the same day in Geneva, Gharibabadi also appeared at the UN Conference on Disarmament, where images captured him greeting and shaking hands with UN Secretary-General António Guterres following the session.
For critics, the optics reinforced what they see as a rapid return to diplomatic normalcy despite the recent crackdown.
“The UN either stands for something or it doesn’t,” Hillel Neuer told Eye for Iran, arguing that international institutions cannot claim to defend human rights while granting legitimacy to officials accused of mass repression.
For many Iranians watching from inside the country and across the diaspora, the sequence—a speech at the Human Rights Council followed by diplomatic handshakes—symbolized the uneasy coexistence of international diplomacy and unresolved domestic trauma.
