Israeli Vice Prime Minister Moshe Ya'alon declared on Monday in an interview that Iran is framing, with the little help of Venezuela, a "terrorist infrastructure" in Latin America against the United States, Israel and their allies.

"The idea is framing a terrorist infrastructure to be underlying for a while and in due time be able to attack the interests of the United States or in the United States," as well as "Israeli or Jewish interests or of any other country opposed to their political stance," he uttered, as quoted by Efe.

Ya'alon, who completed in Montevideo a visit to Uruguay where he met with Uruguayan Vice-President Danilo Astori, among other authorities, put as an example of such theoretical strategy an alleged plot against the Saudi ambassador to the United States, recently replaced.

That case, where the United States fingered Iran and which was condemned last November 18 by the UN General Assembly, is not the only one, as proven by other episodes in the past, he remarked.

"Such a terrorist infrastructure worked already in 1992 against the Embassy of Israel in Buenos Aires and in 1994, against the AMIA Jewish community center," also in the Argentinean capital city, he specified.

According to Ya'alon, the strategy forms part of Tehran plans to "export the Iranian revolution, firstly to surrounding countries," such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon or the Palestinian territory, "and later to the West."

The Vice Prime Minister, who in the nineties was the chief of military intelligence, explained that data available in his country reveal that in Latin America "such an infrastructure includes Muslim elements existent in the area and it also relies on drug kingpins."

"It is also based on the impunity enjoyed by Iranian diplomats in the area" and "takes advantage very especially of the hospitality of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and in this way enters the whole continent," he denounced.

For Ya'alon, "the fact that Iranian passports do not need a visa to enter Venezuela," a country which severed ties with Israel in 2009 due to the situation in Gaza, opens them the doors to enter all Latin America."


Expressly queried, he argued to lack evidence of a linkage between alleged Iranian terrorists and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

The Vice Prime Minister also contended that he cannot understand why Mercosur, the economic bloc composed of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay (with Venezuela in the process of membership), intends to execute on December 20 a trade agreement with Palestine.

"What is the special meaning of an agreement between Mercosur and Palestine, as the only thing that Palestinians export are acts of terrorism and missiles?" he wondered.

Notwithstanding, he recalled that his country has this same agreement effective with the four Mercosur Member States jointly and severally. He elaborated that in his visit to Uruguay, the country holding the six-month presidency of the group; he has meant to explain to local authorities his vision of the situation in the Middle East.

"I repose hope that with my link here we will be able to throw a bridge to arrive at a middle point on this," he qualified.

Ya'alon also referred to the attack on the Embassy of the United Kingdom in Tehran as a token that "the enemy is not the State of Israel" but "the western world, the free world."

Furthermore, he warned that Israel purports to "convince" the Iranian regime to nullify its alleged arms plan based on nuclear energy. "But if this is not possible," it will exert pressure for Iranians "to choose whether they want to build the nuclear bomb or exist as a State."

As regards the polls held this year in Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia, "democracy neither starts nor ends with election," but "with education," he commented.

"We were very encouraged to see on Egypt's Tahrir square people who spoke of freedom of individual expression, of women. These are democratic factors, but they lost in the election," Ya'alon lamented and compared the events to the Iranian revolution of 1979.