The Argentine government and members of Bolivia’s opposition on Monday demanded answers following the sealing of an opaque defense agreement between Iran and Bolivia that raised concerns in South America’s Southern Cone that it could be a way for Tehran to boost its influence in the region.
The deal reached on Wednesday last week has particularly raised concerns in Argentina, where prosecutors have long alleged that Iranian officials were behind the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires that killed 85 people. Iran has denied any involvement in the attack.
The Argentine Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Monday sent a note to the Bolivian embassy in Buenos Aires “requesting information about the scope of the discussions and possible agreements reached during the official visit of [Bolivian] Minister [of Defense] Edmundo Novillo to the Islamic Republic of Iran,” a ministry official said, requesting anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the record.
Photo: AP
The note from Argentina’s diplomatic headquarters came on the same day as members of Bolivia’s opposition submitted a written request to the government demanding information about the scope of the agreement.
“The defense minister must explain the agreement and why it has been signed with a country that has complications on the international stage when Bolivia is supposed to be pacifist according to its constitution,” said Gustavo Aliaga, a Bolivian opposition lawmaker who is the secretary of the Defense and Armed Forces Committee in the Chamber of Deputies.
Iranian Minister of Defense Mohammad Reza Ashtiani signed the defense and security memorandum of understanding with Novillo in Tehran, a report by Iran’s state-run Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) said.
“The Iranian minister said Latin American countries are of special significance in Iran’s foreign and defense policy based on the importance of very sensitive South American region,” it said.
Novillo has yet to give any details on the agreement since returning to Bolivia over the weekend.
“All I know is what the press publishes,” Aliaga said.
“They say that [Iran] will give us drones. Others say they will give us missiles. All of this sounds strange, even more so considering it involves Iran,” he said. “I can’t understand why Bolivia is getting involved in such a complex and difficult relationship.”
Bolivian Senator Leonardo Loza, who is aligned with the ruling Movement Toward Socialism party, praised the agreement.
“The country has the right to sign these agreements. The United States is the most dangerous country, and Bolivia has the right to sign agreements with other nations,” said Loza, who is secretary of the Senate’s Security Committee.
Iran could be seeking to sell drones to Bolivia, the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War said, adding that Ashtiani had said Tehran could help Bolivia with controlling its borders and combating drug smuggling.
“Iran has sought to increase the number of countries that buy Iranian drones in recent years,” the institute wrote in a report.
The agreement comes at a time when Iran has supported Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the government of Bolivian President Luis Arce in Bolivia has refused to condemn Moscow at the UN General Assembly.
Argentina demanded explanations from La Paz after the DAIA, an organization representing the country’s Jewish community, warned of the “risks for the security of Argentina and the region” due to the agreement, noting Tehran’s ties to Lebanon-based militant group Hezbollah.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
RSS