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Perhaps beginning with the 1994 bombing of the Jewish cultural center in Buenos Aires, the world was put on notice that Iran and its proxy Hezbollah had infiltrated the Western Hemisphere. Unfortunately, their presence doesn’t begin and end in Argentina as Hezbollah has expanded its operations throughout Latin America from the tri-border area of Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay to Columbia and beyond while Iran has formed a strategic alliance with Venezuela. Their presence south of our border poses a multitude of national security threats from terrorism to drug trafficking. Join us for an in-depth discussion with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ senior fellow, Emanuele Ottolenghi, who will discuss these and related issues.

About the Speaker: Dr. Emanuele Ottolenghi is a senior fellow at FDD and an expert at FDD’s Center on Economic and Financial Power (CEFP) focused on Hezbollah’s Latin America illicit threat networks and Iran’s history of sanctions evasion. His research has examined Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, including its links to the country’s energy sector and procurement networks. His areas of expertise also include the EU’s Middle East policymaking, transatlantic relations, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and Israel’s domestic politics. Prior to joining FDD, Emanuele headed the Transatlantic Institute in Brussels and taught Israel Studies at St. Antony’s College, Oxford University.

He is author of The Pasdaran: Inside Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Iran: The Looming Crisis, and Under a Mushroom Cloud: Europe, Iran and the Bomb. Emanuele blogs at The Hill. His columns have also appeared in leading outlets including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and London’s The Sunday Times. He obtained his PhD in political theory at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, preceded by undergraduate studies in political science at the University of Bologna.