Todd Bensman, whose reporting on a particularly alarming strain of illegal immigration we’ve noted in the past, has discovered more illegal immigration, this time from Iran into Nicaragua:

The second military helicopter in as many days hovered over the jungle and then landed to a most unwelcome reception from several dozen angry Rama Indian and Creole villagers. Rupert Allen Clear Duncan, a leader of some 400 Creole who live along the shoreline, confronted the foreigners dressed in suits and military uniforms that day in March and demanded to know the purpose of their aerial trespasses. “This is our land; we have always lived here, and you don’t have our permission to be here,” Duncan spat, when refused the courtesy of an explanation.

Not until Duncan threatened to have his machete-waving followers damage the aircraft did they learn that some of the men were from the Islamic Republic of Iran and had come promising to establish a Central American foothold in the middle of their territory…

A mystery compound — Twelve-foot-high concrete walls topped by neat rolls of razor-sharp concertina wire protect the manicured grounds of a mansion inside. The compound is not unlike many others in the affluent Managua suburb of Las Colinas, except for a telltale identifier. From the street outside, through the wire at just the right angle, can be seen the top half of the distinctive red, white and green flag of Iran. This is the temporary embassy of Iran’s new envoy to Nicaragua, Akbar Esmaeil-Pour.

The envoy, however, hasn’t been in a talking mood lately, since local media stirred just the sort of questions that fuel Yankee fears. Last month, the country’s largest-circulation newspaper, La Prensa, published leaked government documents that showed Nicaragua’s chief immigration minister personally authorized 21 Iranian men to enter the country, without visas that would have left a record. Officials denied the report until confronted with the document but refused to explain why the men were let in that way or what became of them.

Another report named as Revolutionary Guard operatives several men who accompanied the Iranian envoy to his new digs. A Honduran newspaper in June reported that Iranians had entered that country without permission from Nicaragua…Iran’s latest move places it just a few porous borders from Texas, where illegal Nicaraguan laborers routinely travel.

Bensman adds: “on many minds is Argentina’s contention that Iran, using its embassy as cover, orchestrated two Hezbollah bombings of Israeli and Jewish community targets in Buenos Aires in the early 1990s. This year, Argentina secured Interpol arrest warrants for five former Iranian officials, most of them who worked as diplomats in the Buenos Aires embassy.”

Of course Iran dismissed the charges by Argentina that it used its Buenos Aires embassy to plot and stage Hezbollah bombings as “a Zionist plot“. So that settles that. Nothing to worry about from Nicaragua and our new friends in the neighborhood.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 17th, 2007 at 10:30 am and is filed under General, Iran, Religion, War. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.