You need a lot of rare earth magnets to fight in this war seriously that China is unlikely to provide to the US.
It is a long-standing concern among
U.S. officials and defense analysts that Iran is using Venezuela as a base to
expand its military influence and transfer drone technology in the Western
Hemisphere, creating a potential strategic challenge to U.S. interests
. The related issue of U.S.
dependence on China for rare earth magnets, which are critical for military
hardware like drones, is also a significant national security concern.
Who has more drones wins the war.
Iran-Venezuela Drone Alliance
Technology Transfer: Since the mid-2000s, Iran has provided technology,
training, and components to Venezuela, enabling the latter to establish local
assembly lines for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). These efforts, often
disguised as civilian projects, have evolved from surveillance drones to armed
and "kamikaze" (loitering munition) variants.
Operational Status: Venezuelan armed forces now operate Iranian-designed
drones, such as the Mohajer-6 (designated as the ANSU-100 in Venezuela), which
are capable of surveillance and precision strikes using guided munitions. U.S.
officials have expressed alarm that this technology could be transferred to
other non-state actors in the region.
U.S. Response: The U.S. has imposed multiple rounds of sanctions on
Iranian and Venezuelan entities involved in this drone network, including the
Venezuelan state-run aerospace company Empresa Aeronautica Nacional S.A.
(EANSA).
Rare Earth Magnets and U.S. Defense
Critical Dependency: Rare earth magnets are essential components in
numerous defense systems, including drone motors, jet fighter engines, and
guidance systems. China currently dominates the global supply chain, controlling
approximately 70% of rare earth mining and 90% of processing.
Supply Chain Vulnerability: This
heavy reliance on China creates a significant national security vulnerability
for the U.S. In late 2025, reports indicated that China was planning to
implement a "validated end-user" system to restrict the export of
rare earth magnets to U.S. military contractors, while fast-tracking shipments
for civilian companies.
Mitigation Efforts: The U.S. Department of Defense is working to
establish a domestic "mine-to-magnet" supply chain to reduce its
reliance on foreign sources, but experts suggest building a fully independent
supply will take significant time (five years minimum). The U.S. government has
invested in domestic production facilities, such as MP Materials in California.
In essence, while Iran's drone
presence in Venezuela is a credible strategic concern in the Western
Hemisphere, the U.S. is simultaneously grappling with a significant supply
chain vulnerability related to critical materials needed for its own defense
technology, a situation potentially exploitable by China, Venezuela, and Iran.
Concerns about this reached US media:
“Iran is
using Venezuela as a launching point in the Western Hemisphere to embed its
drone pipeline closer to U.S. territory, the Center for a Secure Free Society
(SFS) warned this week.
On Tuesday, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of
Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned a group of individuals and entities
for their role in the weapons trade between Iran and Venezuela on grounds that
it constitutes a threat to U.S. interests in the Western Hemisphere.
The broader list of sanctioned individuals include Empresa
Aeronautica Nacional SA (EANSA) and its chairman, Jose Jesus Urdaneta Gonzalez.
EANSA is a Venezuelan company that maintains and oversees the assembly of
Iran’s Qods Aviation Industries’ (QAI) Mohajer-series UAVs in Venezuela. OFAC
detailed that EANSA’s operations contributed to QAI’s sale of millions of
dollars’ worth of Mohajer-6 drones to Venezuela, with Urdatena serving as a
coordinator between Venezuelan and Iranian military officials for the
production of the Iranian drones in Venezuela.
OFAC noted that the sanctions are in line with the terms of
President Donald Trump’s February 2025 National Security Memorandum directing
the U.S. government to impose maximum pressure on Iran’s Islamic regime, deny
it all paths to a nuclear weapon, and countering its malign influence.
This week, SFS released a new report titled, “Venezuela as
Bridgehead: Treasury Sanctions Expose Iran’s Drone Capability Moving Closer to
the United States,” in which the organization applauded the administration of
President Donald Trump for the sanctions as it targets the chain of transfer
and support of drone capabilities between both anti-U.S. regimes. SFS
emphasized the significance of the measure as it marks the first time that the
U.S. government has acknowledged that Iran has been using Venezuela as a proxy
to wage war against the U.S. in the hemisphere — something that, SFS stressed,
is an argument “spearheaded” by the organization over the past five years.
“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,” SFS said.
OFAC
detailed in its announcement that Venezuela and Iran maintain active drone
cooperation since 2006 for the Mohajer series of drones produced by Iran’s QAI
and renamed in Venezuela as the ANSU series. The ANSU-100, OFAC explained, is
capable of launching Iranian-designed Qaem guided bombs.
In addition to EANSA and Urdaneta, Tuesday’s round of
sanctions targeted a group of Iran-based individuals for their efforts to
procure chemicals used for ballistic missiles for Parchin Chemical Industries
(PCI), an element of Iran’s Defense Industries Organization.
SFS explained in its report that the sanctions align its
documented strategic diagnosis that “Iran’s posture in Latin America is
deliberate, cumulative, and conflict-oriented, and Venezuela remains the
central axis of that projection.” SFS referred to a June 2025 report in which
it described 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,” SFS said.
SFS explained that this week’s Iranian drone-related
announcements are a “long-term chapter” that began during the rule of late
socialist dictator Hugo Chávez, when Venezuela ceased to be “merely an
ideological ally” of Iran and began to function as the Islamic regime’s
“operational hemispheric platform.”
“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,” SFS’s report read.
The report continued:
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, SFS detailed, both regimes saw
advancements in documentary and identity cooperation through the issuance and
sale of passports and visas by Venezuelan state structures.
SFS encouraged the Trump administration 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.”
“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, convergence,
and geostrategic pressure on critical routes and infrastructure,” SFS said.
The organization described OFAC’s sanctions as “necessary”
but stressed that it should not be the “end point.” To that end, it presented a
list of suggestions, which include — but are not limited to — the blocking of
dual-use components, maritime and air routes, commercial facilitates, the
reorganization of deterrence, robust customs controls, and frame Iran-Venezuela
as not an “anomaly,” but as a “model” that has 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,” SFS concluded.”
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