The majority pro-regime Venezuelan Parliament approved the creation of a new state in Guyana’s Essequibo territory, the subject of a long-running dispute between the neighboring countries, Reuters reported on March 21.
The law creates the new state of Guayana Esequiba. The state’s borders would be the Atlantic Ocean to the north, Brazil to the south, Guyana to the east, and the Venezuelan states of Delta Amacuro and Bolivar to the west, Reuters reported.
This represents Nicolás Maduro’s latest attempt to seize this territory, rich in oil and minerals. Both Maduro and Guyana’s President Irfaan Ali agreed on December 14 not to escalate tensions and instead solve the dispute through dialogue and following international law, CNN reported.
The meeting between Maduro and Ali came a week after the Venezuelan regime held a referendum to claim sovereignty over the Essequibo, in which Venezuelan electoral authorities said that more than 10 million Venezuelans voted to support annexation. Experts, however, have said that the regime’s referendum was a sham, highlighting that the results were not made public and that most polls were empty on voting day.
Despite the agreement with Ali, Maduro has kept up his defiant stance, building up troops on Guyana’s border and deploying forces to the jungle frontier, The Guardian reported in early February.
In a February 9 report, Washington-based think tank Center for Strategic International Studies (CSIS) indicated that Venezuela had deployed at least three Iranian-made fast patrol boats equipped with anti-ship missile launchers.
These boats were incorporated to the Venezuelan naval fleet in August 2023, based on information from the Navy. According to military news site Defensa, in March 2022, Iran delivered four boats equipped with 107mm Fajr 1 rocket launchers. This was the first time that Iran delivered this technology to a country in the Americas, Defensa reported.
“The boats that they sold with the surface-to-surface missile system are proof of an asymmetrical approach,” Bolivarian Navy Rear Admiral (ret.) Carlos Molina Tamayo, former head of the Venezuelan Armed Forces Armament Directorate, told Diálogo on March 19. “They are boats with a low radar reflective surface, with a high speed of 50 knots [93 kilometers per hour], which can approach ships of large tonnage and can inflict considerable damage on them.”
The rapprochement between the Venezuelan and Iranian armed forces intensified in 2020, as Iran provided Venezuela with drones capable of carrying out surveillance, reconnaissance, and target attacks, Molina added. The project was extended to the delivery of rocket launchers for the fleet of speedboats manufactured at the Damen shipyard in Matanzas, Cuba.
CSIS indicates that the boats remain docked in a town near the border with Guyana, where one of the Venezuelan Navy’s bases in the eastern part of the country is located. “If stationed at Punta Barima, these boats could give Venezuela the capability to strike targets in the Essequibo and its waters in under an hour,” CSIS said.
“Guyana doesn’t have a navy that can stand up to Venezuela. It doesn’t have military vessels that would be a good target for those Iranian missiles. I don’t think that the regime clearly defined what strategy it has for those boats at that site,” Molina said. “Those boats operate well in the Persian Gulf, which is a calmer ocean, but the Atlantic that goes to the mouth of the Orinoco is more open and has its difficulties, as the sea changes continuously.”
Beachhead
Iran and Venezuela have maintained diplomatic relations for more than 73 years. Both regimes strengthened this nexus by being founding members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).
In June 2023, President of the Islamic Republic Ebrahim Raisi, during a visit to Caracas, dubbed the relationship with Venezuela “strategic,” as both share “common interests, visions, and enemies.”
“Venezuela is for Iran a forward base in the hemisphere; that is, a beachhead,” Brigadier General (ret.) Manuel Christopher Figuera, former director of the Bolivarian Intelligence Service (Sebin), said.
During an interview with Diálogo, Figuera, who distanced himself from the Maduro regime during the April 2019 uprising, indicated that as part of this strategic alliance Iran was facilitating training for Venezuelan military personnel.
The Mohajer-2 drone system that Iran supplied to the Venezuelan Aviation, “has not worked,” Figuera added.
“They brought them to assemble them in Venezuela. They weren’t manufacturing them in the country, they were making them abroad and the operators were being trained,” he said. “They selected a small group, and they received training over there [in Iran].”
The Venezuelan Armed Forces is the first Latin American military to have armed drones in its inventory, “courtesy of Iran,” Joseph Humire, director of think tank Center for a Secure Free Society, said in a commentary for The Heritage Foundation.
For CSIS, the escalatory actions of Maduro are not without risks, as “it remains uncertain whether Maduro can effectively avoid misunderstandings and manage the forces he unleashed.”