One’s loss, another’s gain

Frustrated by the political strings attached to trade agreements by the Global North, Latin America is increasingly engaging with the Middle East

Diversification is the key word to describe the needs of Latin America. The region is looking for partners outside the Global North, which makes the Middle East a natural attraction. Meanwhile, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Türkiye – if we consider the latter as part of the Middle East – are continuously seeking to increase their presence in Latin America. The interactions between the two regions are concrete proof of today’s multipolar world.

In its paranoia about China, the US perceives Latin America merely as a secure provider of raw materials and a counterweight to the Chinese influence. For the EU, Mario Draghi’s recent report on European competitiveness asserted the strategic scope of European foreign policy: seeking energy and natural resources. China’s plans, meanwhile, are still unclear. As Latin American governments are refusing the political mandates or clauses that the countries of the Global North have usually imposed as part of economic partnerships, the Middle East is asserting itself as the only force capable of approaching Latin America respectfully, offering fair trade and commercial agreements with little conditionality to its Latin American peers.

Iran, UAE and Saudi Arabia
For a region with an estimated slow growth rate of 2.1 per cent and a strong dependence on commodity prices, diversification is vital. If these conditions are generally true for Latin America as a whole, there are country-specific characteristics that make some Middle Eastern nations more suitable partners than others.

Western sanctions against Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela, for instance, are the essence of Iran’s presence in Latin America. After 1979, when the Iranian Revolution and the Sandinista uprising in Nicaragua coincided, Tehran began providing oil and energy-related resources to Cuba and Nicaragua as an alternative scheme to the US sanctions. Since Hugo Chávez’s 1999 mandate in Venezuela, the Ayatollahs have also been preparing military and commercial projects for Caracas, which have taken on added significance in light of Washington’s current sanctions against Venezuela. While US and European governments are in detrimental relations with these countries, to which we can add Bolivia, Iran has been organising continuous high-level visits centred on energy cooperation, trade and defence. One only has to look at the US and EU reactions to the controversial Venezuelan elections to understand why Caracas, which holds most of the natural resources Draghi so desperately seeks, favours ties with Iran instead.