The shockwaves unleashed bythe deadly US strikes on Caracasand the capture of Venezuelan presidentNicolas Madurowere felt all the way to the southern suburbs of Beirut, the stronghold of Lebanese Shiite groupHezbollah

Washington has used Maduros abduction to send an unmistakable signal to the militant groups leadership as well as its Iranian backers, with Secretary of StateMarco Rubiodirectly threatening them the morning after the attack.

It's very simple, hetold US broadcaster CBS. In the 21st Century, under the Trump administration, we are not going to have a country likeVenezuelain our own hemisphere in the sphere of control and the crossroads for Hezbollah, forIranand for every other malign influence in the country, in the world. That's just not going to exist.

Rubio later told NBC News that the new dispensation would mean the outright elimination of any Hezbollah or Iranian presence on Venezuelan soil, where they have been welcomed for the past three decades in the name of a shared antipathy to the United States. The US designated Hezbollah as a foreign terrorist organization in 1997.

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Rubio called on the Venezuelan regime now under the interim leadership ofMaduros vice president, Delcy Rodriguezto break with both Iran and Hezbollah. The Islamic Republic, facing mounting protests first triggered by a cost-of-living crisis, has also found itself under pressure, with US PresidentDonald Trumpeventhreatening to interveneif Iranian security forces kill peaceful protesters.

The US has long been monitoring Hezbollahs activities in the region. The US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has said since 2008 that the movement, then led byHassan Nasrallah, had been financing itself through drug-trafficking, arms sales andmoney launderingacrossLatin Americaand beyond. According to DEA figures, these activities earned Hezbollahabout $1 billion a year.

As for Venezuela in particular, US investigators say that Maduro was even more permissive than his predecessor,Hugo Chavez, and that Venezuela had become a safe haven for theShiitemovement, which reportedly set up command structures in the capital Caracas.

Both Venezuela and Hezbollah have strongly denied these allegations, with the latter insisting thatdrug traffickingand related activities are forbidden by Islam. Despite this, the self-described Party of God appeared to have played a key role, alongside Bashar al-Assads regime, intrafficking the illicit drug captagonacross the Middle East during the Syrian Civil War.

Safe haven

US investigators have long accused Hezbollah of extending its operations into Venezuela in part through the regions Lebanese and Syrian diaspora.

In Venezuela, Hezbollahs support network operates through compartmentalized, familial clan structures that embed into the Maduro regime-controlled illicit economy and the regimes political apparatus and bureaucracy, according to a 2020reportby the Washington-based Atlantic Council think tank. Many of the clans are assimilated within the Venezuelan state and society through the robust Lebanese and Syrian communities that extend to neighboringColombia.

Links between Caracas and the Shiite movement are mutually beneficial, allowing Hezbollah a safe space to conduct its global crime-terror operations and providing the Maduro regime with increased illicit support from the Middle East, the report says.

Caroline Rose, the director of military and national security priorities at the Washington-based New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy, said the Latin American drug trade had given Hezbollah access to badly needed financing.

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The relationship that Hezbollah has developed with the Maduro regime and the embedded Cartel de los Soles syndicate (a term used for Venezuelan officials the US accuses of having links to drug trafficking) is extremely nuanced, often simplified by reductionist assertions that Venezuela is a base for Hezbollahs terrorist operations, she said. Rather, the picture has been more complex, with the group exploiting Venezuelas proximity to established drug smuggling routes just as they have in Western Africa as a way to diversify alternative revenue streams through the trafficking of drugs, arms, and money laundering schemes.

Rose said that the sudden death of Chavez in 2013 had only intensified Hezbollahs activities in Venezuela after his hand-picked successor Maduro took office.

The relationship has grown since Venezuelas Chavez era, with reports that Hezbollah has particularly taken advantage of informal ports and smuggling routes off the coast of Venezuelas Margarita Island, she said.

This sun-drenched island in the countrys northeast is believed to serve as a key logistics hub for Hezbollah, used for financial activities, espionage and possibly drug trafficking. Margarita Island was described in 2011 during a congressional hearing of the Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence as havingeclipsedthe infamous Triple Frontier betweenParaguay,BrazilandArgentinaas the movements favored bastion in the Americas. This border region served for decades as one of Hezbollahs strongholds in Latin America, used by the group as both sanctuary and center of operations.

More recently, former assistant secretary for terrorist financing at the US Treasury Marshall Billingsleatold a Senate hearing in October 2025that under Hugo Chavez, Venezuela opened its doors to Hezbollah, allowing the group establish a major footprint, including a paramilitary training site, on Margarita Island.

New world order

Lebanons media have made much of the fact that Rubios threats come at a tense moment for the Shiite group and its new leader,Naim Qassem, who is under intense US and Israeli pressure to disarm.

Despite having beenseverely weakened both militarily and politicallyduring its most recent conflict with Israel losing longtime leader Nasrallah and most of its military leadership, as well as the abrupt collapse of its Assad ally inSyriaHezbollah has categorically refused to lay down arms.

According to Rose, 2025 has been a transition year for Hezbollah. And it may now need to consider its remaining options.

Israel has imposed a severe blow on Hezbollahs command and control, infrastructure and finances, creating an incentive for the organization to lay low in Lebanon while pursuing alternative revenue-generating schemes, such as drug trafficking, elsewhere, she said.

In that same vein, risk-taking behavior from bothIsraeland the Trump administration demonstrated through Israeli strikes onQatarand Iran, as well as the USs recent capture of Maduro and designation of cartels as terrorist organizations could also serve as a deterrent against any major Hezbollah entrenchment in Venezuela, she added.

For Rose, Trumps attack on Venezuela, and threats of more to come, could well push Hezbollah to redirect its operations to parts of the world less directly menaced by Washingtons military reach.

The Trump administrations violation of international law and brazen impetus to act against actors that could be brandished as narco-terrorists could makeSouth Americaa more risk-ridden zone for outside players like Hezbollah, Rose observed.

I believe that with so much attention and pressure against any organization that engages in illicit smuggling that encompasses an armed component militarized cartels, terrorist organizations, and mafia networks Hezbollah will do its best to quiet its activities in South America. Likely, it will turn its attention towards existing enclaves in Western Africa, as well as seek to charter new potential inroads, such as Southeast andCentral Asia.

This article has been adapted fromthe original in French.

Originally published on France24