SFS TeamThe new U.S. Treasury designations underscore what SFS has documented for years: Venezuela is Iran’s Western Hemisphere bridgehead. The Tehran-Caracas drone pipeline is embedding capability closer to U.S. territory.
- The U.S. Treasury Department via OFAC announced santions against ten individuals and entities based in Iran and Venezuela, targeting the chain of transfer and support of combat drone (UAV) capabilities between the two regimes.
- This is significant because it is the first time that the USG has publicly acknowledged that Iran has been using Venezuela as a proxy to wage war against the U.S. in our own hemisphere; an argument that SFS spearheaded in Washington over the last five years.
- SFS applauds the Trump Administration for taking this step and encourages it to go further, by expanding the list of individuals and entities working in both countries and broadening it to China and Russia which are also working with Iran to prop up the Maduro regime and weaken the U.S. in the region.
On December 30, 2025, the U.S. Treasury Department, via OFAC, announced sanctions against 10 individuals and entities based in Iran and Venezuela, targeting the chain of transfer and support of combat drone (UAV) capabilities between the two regimes. The announcement is not just “economic pressure”: it signals that the Tehran–Caracas relationship now operates as an industrial and logistical architecture with assembly, maintenance, negotiation, payments, and, above all, military capacity installed in the Western Hemisphere.
The Treasury describes active cooperation since 2006 involving Mohajer series UAVs, produced by Qods Aviation Industries (QAI), renamed in Venezuela as the ANSU series. The focus of the announcement is the designation of Empresa Aeronautica Nacional SA (EANSA) and its president (José Jesús Urdaneta González), who are identified as responsible for the maintenance and supervision of the assembly of these systems in Venezuelan territory, in coordination with QAI, including the negotiation of “millions of dollars” in sales of Mohajer-6.
The statement is consequential because it goes beyond the platform and into operational capability. According to the Treasury, EANSA supports UAVs operated by the Venezuelan Armed Forces, including the Mohajer-2, known locally as Arpia/ANSU-100, and claims that the ANSU-100 is capable of launching Iranian-designed Qaem guided bombs.
At the same time, the announcement also targets actors involved in the acquisition of chemicals and supplies associated with Parchin Chemical Industries, linking the measure to sensitive industrial chains (including solid propellant engines, typical of missiles) and the Iranian defense apparatus.
For the Center for a Secure Free Society, these designations align with a strategic diagnosis we have documented over time: Iran’s posture in Latin America is deliberate, cumulative, and conflict-oriented, and Venezuela remains the central axis of that projection. In June 2025, the SFS published “Iran’s Latin American Strategy: Leveraging Asymmetric Warfare to Project Conflict into the Western Hemisphere,” describing how Venezuela is the central axis of this projection in the hemisphere.
The report described how strategic alliances, proxy networks, and criminal convergence create a western platform for operations and sanctions evasion and already accurately pointed to the deployment of military capabilities that the U.S. Treasury is now turning into sanctions.
To understand why an announcement about drones in 2025 is, in fact, a long-term chapter, one must return to the phase when Venezuela ceased to be merely an ideological ally and began to function as Iran’s operational hemispheric platform: the years of Hugo Chávez. Several analyses document that it was under Chávez that Tehran gained regional depth through Caracas—which opened channels, expanded Iran’s diplomatic presence, and served as a “shepherd” for Iran’s advance in the Western Hemisphere.
Formally, the partnership took the form of a multiplicity of “bilateral agreements” and memoranda, often presented as economic, industrial, and technological cooperation—a volume of instruments that, over time, created political and administrative cover for the flow of people, equipment, and resources. It was in this context that the Caracas–(via) Damascus–Tehran air corridor, nicknamed “aeroterror” in security circles, gained notoriety.
At the same time, the documentary and identity dimension advanced. An important milestone was the investigation “Passports in the Shadows / Pasaportes en la Sombra” by CNN and CNN en Español, which exposed allegations of irregular issuance and sale of passports and visas by Venezuelan state structures, with warnings about the risk of facilitating mobility for sensitive security actors.
The SFS itself, in its groundwork on Hezbollah networks in Venezuela, described how this partnership involves assistance for the covert movement of people, products, money, and materials.
VRIC: Venezuela as a bridgehead and hybrid warfare platform
This historical interpretation fits precisely with the paradigm that SFS has been developing for years within the VRIC Transregional Threats Program, which maps how Venezuela, Russia, Iran, and China operate through hybrid warfare, criminal convergence, and geostrategic pressure on critical routes and infrastructure.
Back in 2020, VRIC Monitor No 09 described Venezuela as a central hub for competition between major powers in the hemisphere and pointed to the presence of Middle Eastern actors, including Hezbollah, as a component of this ecosystem. The U.S. Treasury’s announcement, therefore, should be read as part of a necessary reaction to political and logistical penetration (under Hugo Chávez), through the consolidation of hybrid networks and crime convergence, to the materialization of transferable military capacity such as assembled and armed drones (under Nicolás Maduro).
The U.S. Treasury announcement is necessary, but it cannot be treated as the “end point.” The accumulated experience of the SFS suggests that an effective response must follow three simultaneous lines.
First, interdiction of the chain: mapping and blocking dual-use components (composites, engines, electronics, software), maritime and air routes, commercial facilitators and, including those outside the Hemisphere.
Second, regionalization of deterrence: Latin American allies need to be treated as such, designate Hezbollah (an important proxy for Iran in the region), and promote intelligence cooperation, more robust customs controls, and measures against documentation and facilitation.
Third, the correct strategic frame: Iran-Venezuela is not an anomaly; it is a model. Variants of this model have been pursued elsewhere in the region through political alignment, institutional capture, and the use of “cooperation” as cover for capability transfer.
The central lesson is that Tehran’s presence is not only ideological. It is infrastructural, and increasingly kinetic.
