It took more than a year and a half, but in the end they achieved their goal.
After a long time chasing it, the United States managed this Monday to definitively take over the Venezuelan cargo plane that the Argentine Government immobilized in June 2022 in Buenos Aires at the request of Washington, which assures that the device was used for covert operations by Venezuelan and Iranian agents. throughout Latin America.
According to the Department of Justice, the United States Government confiscated the Boeing 747-300 plane at the Opa-Locka executive airport, in Miami-Dade County, where it had arrived from Argentina in the early hours of the morning, which culminates an international operation that provoked protests by the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, who criticized the Argentine government for responding to the requests of the United States.
“The United States’ seizure of the Boeing 747 cargo plane culminates more than 18 months of planning, coordination and execution by the United States government and our Argentine counterparts,” said Markenzy Lapointe, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida after learning that the aircraft had finally landed in Miami and was already under the control of federal authorities.
The fight around the plane, from the Venezuelan airline Emtrasur, began after it was stranded in Buenos Aires due to lack of fuel. He had arrived in the Argentine capital on the 6th and two days later he planned to go to Montevideo, but Uruguay denied him access to its airspace, so he had to return to the Argentine airport, where he was detained at the request of the United States. Its 19 crew members were arrested.
Before belonging to Emtrasur, owned by the Venezuelan State, the Boeing had operated with Mahan Air, an Iranian airline sanctioned by the United States for its links with the Quds Force, a powerful elite paramilitary arm of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, to which which Washington considers a terrorist organization.
Washington claims that Mahan Air provides transportation of weapons and fighters to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
At the time of its seizure, the Argentine authorities were struck by the fact that the crew was much larger than that required for flights of these characteristics. Among them were five Iranian citizens. Emtrasur then assured that they were flight instructors.
The pilot of the plane, Gholamreza Ghasemi, was credited by the United States with having been a member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.
The governments of Tehran and Caracas denied the US accusations that the plane was actually used for Iranian intelligence operations in Latin America and an Argentine judge ordered in October 2022 the release of the last crew members who remained imprisoned due to the “lack of merit” of the charges against them.
The aircraft, however, was detained because in July 2022, the United States Department of Justice, with the collaboration of the Argentine authorities, obtained a court order for the plane to be confiscated in Buenos Aires for “unauthorized transfer.” from Boeing of the sanctioned Mahan Air to Emtrasur.
The ties between Venezuela and Iran
Last January, an Argentine judge ordered that the cargo ship be delivered to the United States, a decision that the Venezuelan government called “theft.”
The Boeing 747-300M model was manufactured between 1982 and 1990 and its initial sales price was estimated at US$83 million..
Mahan Air has been on the Commerce Department’s list of sanctioned entities since 2008. An order that has been renewed prohibits it from participating in any transaction in which U.S. exported products are affected and the Boeing is a U.S.-designed and manufactured aircraft.
The United States has been systematically imposing sanctions on the governments of Iran and Venezuela, which it accuses of violating human rights. Iran is also considered one of the countries sponsoring terrorism by the State Department. The Iranian government denies this and, instead, accuses the United States of destabilizing the Middle East region with its “imperialist” policy.
In response, Caracas and Tehran have strengthened their ties and signed cooperation agreements.
During the governments of Hugo Chávez and Mahmud Ahmadinejad – in Venezuela and Iran, respectively – Tehran became one of Caracas’ main political allies outside of Latin America.
Beyond signing a large number of oil and economic agreements, many of which were not fulfilled or, at least, did not achieve the objectives they had set, Caracas and Tehran led a kind of anti-American political front with the support of Syria and other Latin American governments such as that of Cuba, Bolivia, Nicaragua and Ecuador.
After the death of Chávez and the departure of Ahmadinejad from power, that link has been maintained, although not with the same vitality.
During the government of Nicolás Maduro, Iran has helped Venezuela with gasoline shipments and Iranian technicians are believed to have helped repair deteriorating Venezuelan refineries.
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