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Iran's Strategic Penetration of Latin America Edited by Joseph M. Humire and Ilan Berman Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2014 142 pages $75.00
Iran's influence in Latin America and its national security implications have finally caught the attention of US policy makers in Washington. This greater interaction would go unnoticed were it not for the partnerships established between Iran and some of the Latin American countries. Ahmadinejad's political goal was to establish a policy toward Latin America that was anti-American. As he has publicly stated, "Tehran is pursuing a strategy that promotes its own ideology and influence in Latin America at Washington's expense." This foreign policy posture creates what the late Hugo Chavez referred to as "the axis of unity" foreign policy against the United States' "imperialist" foreign policy. In one of Ahmadinejad's many trips to Latin America in 2009, Chavez referred to him as a "gladiator of anti-imperialist struggles." In Iran's Strategic Penetration of Latin America, Joseph M. Humire and Ilan Berman call our attention to what they consider to be the most complex security challenge in the Western Hemisphere today, which is how deeply the Islamic Republic of Iran has penetrated the internal affairs of Latin America and what it means from a foreign policy perspective to the United States.
The book is divided into fourteen chapters, each addressing Iran's relations with a specific country in Latin America. Within the book the authors focus on the...