Venezuela has become a key Latin American node in an emerging alignment that links the government of Nicolás Maduro, the Islamic Republic of Iran, and Hezbollah. As a result, there is the need to analyzes three interlocking dimensions of that alignment. Firstly, this article aims to map the main Islamic groups active in Venezuela, focusing on the composition, geography, and institutional footprint of Sunni and Shi’a communities and their associated religious, commercial, and logistical infrastructures. Second, it evaluates how Iran–Venezuela relations have evolved from ideological solidarity under Hugo Chávez into a sanctions-resilience partnership that now spans oil services, trade corridors, security cooperation, and even health technology, and which accelerated between 2020 and 2025 under extreme U.S. pressure on both regimes. Lastly it examines Hezbollah-linked financial, commercial, and logistical networks operating in Venezuela, including the acquisition and control of local companies, free-trade zone storefronts, and service firms allegedly used to launder funds, move personnel, and channel money back to Lebanon.

Figure 1.

The chart below plots the number of major, publicly reported Iran–Venezuela cooperation milestones per year (e.g. Iranian fuel/rescue missions to Venezuela’s refineries in 2020; the 20-year strategic partnership covering oil, petrochemicals, agriculture, and defense signed in 2022; Caracas–Tehran renegotiation of oil swap and industrial projects in 2024; and the dual push in 2025 toward a tariff-free trade agreement and Iranian deployment of technical and medical expertise in Venezuela).

Introduction

For two decades, successive Venezuelan governments have framed “south–south” alliances with actors such as Iran, Russia, and non-state armed movements as instruments of strategic autonomy and sanctions evasion.  The alignment is not merely rethorical. By 2025, Tehran and Caracas “were negotiating a tariff-free bilateral trade agreement” and “openly talking about integrating supply chains in areas such  as energy, petrochemicals, agriculture, industrial parts, and medical technology,” all intended to sidestep U.S. financial controls. Iran and Venezuela already operate in a shared sanctions ecosystem: both sell oil via shadow fleets, use intermediaries to disguise cargo origin, and rely on opaque barter-like swaps instead of dollar-settled contracts.

Indeed, Hezbollah’s function within that infrastructure is more than just an abstract ideological connection to Iran- Since at least 2008, open-source reporting, U.S. Treasury designations, and the region’s security services have all identified several key nodes and permissive environments for Hezbollah-linked facilitators across Venezuela, including in Caribbean free-trade hubs like Margarita Island and border logistics corridors across the Guajira peninsula. Their commercial fronts are widely understood to facilitate massive laundering of proceeds from contraband, narcotics, and currency arbitrage and to remit this cash back to Lebanon.

 Islamic groups in Venezuela: demography, geography, and institutional footprint

Islam is a minority religion in Venezuela. Current estimates place the Muslim population at roughly 100,000 people, or about 0.4% of the national population. The most substantial congregations are situated in Caracas, Maracaibo, Valencia, and the Nueva Esparta state (Margarita Island). The majority hails from commercial diasporas from Lebanon, Syria, and the Palestinian territories, mobilized during the constitutional era. It is believed that today approximately 15,000 Muslims live in Caracas. The Sheikh Ibrahim Al-Ibrahim Mosque in Caracas, built with Gulf philanthropic funding, is among the largest mosques in Latin America and serves as a visible institutional anchor.

The landscape is plural. Sunni institutions such as the Centro Islámico de Venezuela and mosques in Caracas, Maracaibo, and Valencia coexist with explicitly Shi’a institutions such as the Imam Al Hadi Islamic Center in Caracas and Shi’a cultural centers on Margarita Island, reflecting Lebanese and Syrian Shi’a migration.

 The Shi’a presence matters analytically because Hezbollah, as a Lebanese Shi’a militant-political organization aligned with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), has historically relied on diaspora Shi’a commercial and familial networks for logistics, facilitation, and financing in Latin America.

Two geographic zones recur in security reporting:

Iran–Venezuela relations: from ideology to sanctions co-production

The Iran–Venezuela axis has matured from symbolic anti-U.S. rhetoric under Hugo Chávez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad into an operational partnership oriented around sanctions evasion, oil production recovery, industrial substitution, and dual-use technical assistance.

Starting with energy and oil services, under U.S. sanctions, Venezuela’s state oil company PDVSA lost access to spare parts, diluents, and specialized refinery services. Beginning in 2020, Iran shipped gasoline, condensates, and refinery technicians to Venezuela, helping restart refineries and partially alleviate acute domestic fuel shortages. Labeling this relation merely as South-South solidarity fails to address its strategic value where: Iranian technical inputs and refined products in exchange for Venezuelan heavy crude and access to downstream assets create a economic infrastructure which is central to the Venezuela’s ability to to monetize crude despite U.S. restrictions.

Formally in 2022 Iran and Venezuela signed a 20-year “cooperation roadmap,” described in Iranian and Venezuelan state media as covering defense industry cooperation, oilfield services, refinery rehabilitation, petrochemicals, and agricultural projects. The overlaying agreement formally lays down the basis for a multi-level strategic convergence, that effectively serves a win-to-win function. To this extent Mutual sanctions evasion represents the priority for both regimes. These latter, being locked out of Western Finance and energy services, share tanker fleets, use front companies, and conceal the origin of oil transportation through ship-to-ship transfers (often ultimately selling to Chinese refiners).  For Maduro, Iranian refined products, engineering assistance, and barter-style swaps  are life-giving cash substitutes, ensuring fuel availability and generating  hard currency outside U.S. reach. For Tehran, Venezuela is a physical foothold in the Western Hemisphere; it provides a diplomatic shield on international forums (such as multilateral organizations); and an economic shoulder to lean on hosting sanctioned Iranian industries.

Hezbollah-linked acquisition and control of Venezuelan companies

Allegations that Hezbollah has “bought many companies in Venezuela” are best understood as a layered phenomenon: direct ownership, proxy/nominee ownership, and coercive parasitism of existing firms.

Going back to Margarita Island, as previously indicated high-cash businesses (duty-free retail shops, import-export houses, casinos, hotels, travel agencies) are proper  financial engines for Hezbollah facilitators, laundering proceeds from contraband networks and narcotrafficking and then exfiltrating capital via offshore accounts in Panama and the Cayman Islands.  For example, an individual identified in U.S. sources as Mohamed Ali Farhad, described as of Syrian-Lebanese origin,  was reported to be both a shareholder of a casino on Margarita Island and an owner of a textile store, and to have sent large checks to Hezbollah. Throughout this simple example there is the possibility to identify a pattern, rather than overtly branding themselves, Hezbollah-linked facilitators embed in normal Venezuelan sectors (travel agencies, currency exchange houses, casinos, and logistics brokers) where high cash turnover and discretionary invoicing make it easy to disguise transfers as legitimate service revenue. Over time, this looks like “Hezbollah buying companies,” but operationally it is friendly businessmen in diaspora communities setting up firms, those firms being repurposed as laundering pipes, and the profits or a “tax” stream being remitted to Hezbollah.

Secondly the bureaucratic dimension plays an essential role. Under Chavez and later Maduro insiders in the Interior Ministry and immigration services provided Venezuelan IDs, passports, or residency documents to individuals linked to Hezbollah and other Middle Eastern militant networks.  Facilitators can acquire Venezuelan legal identities  (genuine documents, not crude forgeries) being able to legally position themselves bypassing the shortcomings of Venezuela’s corporate control which often hinges on access to registry documents, tax IDs, import licenses and bank onboarding.

To comprehend the degree Venezuela’s rent streams are now intermediated by informal brokers, shell companies, and politically protected “entrepreneurs.” there is the need to mention the PDVSA-Crypto Case in which billions in oil revenue were allegedly misappropriated via opaque crypto-denominated sales of crude outside the formal accounting system. Going beyond the formal interpretation where the case was framed as theft by insiders, the structural point that needs to be addressed is that sanctioned oil is being sold through ad hoc intermediaries , many of them opaque trading houses registered offshore but effectively operating in Caracas, without transparent billing trails.  This modus operandi creates the perfect ecosystem Hezbollah-linked facilitators can slot in: running  cash-intensive trade, operating through shell entities in Panama and the Caribbean, and lastly  specializing  in sanctions evasion finance on behalf of Iran’s IRGC and Hezbollah.

Conclusions

By itself, the alignment or convergence of Iran, Hezbollah, and Venezuela represents more than an ideological affinity; it is the formalization of a sanctions-proof architecture in the Western Hemisphere. Although Venezuela’s Muslim populations remain largely peaceful and commercially oriented, a Shi’a presence in permissive environments on Margarita Island and the Guajira border corridor provides de facto cover for financial activity. These networks, serviced by Hezbollah enablers, have exploited weak governance in high-cash environments with state complicity to launder proceeds, aid in the transmission of assets, and enable exogenous militant financing. At the state level, the Iran-Venezuela relationship evolved to become a sanctions co-production model turning mere isolation into agency. Continuing energy cooperation, barter-based swaps of oil, and prospective trade liberalization illustrate how Tehran and Caracas intend to normalize non-Western trade arteries. This partnership also constitutes Hezbollah’s entry point into Latin America, blurring the lines between state advocacy and militant activities. The advent of Iranian and Hezbollah influence in Venezuela ultimately highlights the emergence of a sanctioned state that utilizes its affinity and diaspora networks to raise funds as a geopolitical fact, an axis of resiliency.