The Panamanian people will never tolerate full U.S. sovereignty over their canal. Yet Washington must lock in American corporate control of the Panama Canal to prevent China from seizing control of hemispheric trade routes and ports across Latin America.
In the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico, the pro-independence movement accelerated after the 2019 “Ricky Renuncia” protests. Recent polls show sovereignty options tied, with statehood at 44%, while 41% of voters aged 18 to 34 favor independence. Alongside this, a growing surge in anti-American sentiment there threatens recently reactivated military facilities such as Roosevelt Roads, which host critical F-35 operations. The Dominican Republic is a reliable partner within the Shield of the Americas framework; however, no single ally can secure every maritime corridor against sophisticated threats. Washington, therefore, requires a reliable forward Caribbean territory not only to interdict cocaine flows but also to dismantle the regional Islamic terrorist networks.
Venezuela’s Margarita Island has served as Hezbollah’s primary Western Hemisphere base. Between 2010 and 2019, the regime issued more than 10,400 passports to Lebanese, Syrian, and Iranian nationals, many funneled to Hezbollah operatives thanks to figures such as former Venezuelan Vice President Tareck el Aissami.
The terrorist group has established paramilitary training camps on the island, exploited its duty-free status for money laundering, and coordinated cocaine shipments through state-linked networks, including the Cartel of the Suns. Hezbollah’s Latin American cocaine operations generate an estimated $400 million annually, sustaining alliances with FARC dissidents and the NLA through shared trafficking routes and money laundering.
From there, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps personnel have operated Mohajer-6 drones with 2,000-kilometer ranges capable of reaching Florida from Venezuelan territory. Conviasa flights dubbed “Aeroterror” moved personnel, cash, and contraband between Caracas, Damascus, and Tehran. The same passport and document-fraud schemes have enabled transit and safe haven for Hamas operatives seeking new nodes across the Americas.
Thus, dismantling Margarita Island’s hub severs critical financing for these Latin American communist terrorist networks while delivering a decisive blow to Iran’s regional projection. This will also allow Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s initiative against the resurgence of political terrorism and transnational narco-terrorism to take root by establishing a permanent American platform for intelligence fusion and maritime interdiction in the Caribbean basin.
Three concrete steps deliver this leverage.
First, Washington should negotiate with post-Maduro authorities a quake reconstruction deal requiring both the handover of Diosdado Cabello to U.S. justice and long-term strategic rights over Margarita Island to purge the narco-terrorist networks that made it a Hezbollah hub under his protection.
Second, the United States must integrate Israeli intelligence and Mossad technical expertise into every phase of the transition. Israeli penetrations of Hezbollah’s financial and operational networks identify cocaine kingpins and training-camp locations on the island. Joint teams then must deploy American and Israeli maritime drone systems, artificial intelligence-enabled transaction monitoring, and cyber tools to map and seize the “black cocaine” pipeline in real time, terminating Hezbollah’s primary revenue source in the Americas.
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Finally, Washington must transform Margarita Island into a trilateral U.S.-Israel-Venezuela Strategic Energy and Counterterrorism Hub. Israeli firms would install AI sensor networks and blockchain tracking systems across ports and former facilities, monitoring traffic and financial flows in real time. A fusion center could dismantle Hezbollah cells while certifying Venezuelan oil exports. Tourism, duty-free commerce, and monitored oil revenues would finance partner training in Israeli counterterrorism methods. In tandem, Israeli agricultural technology would create jobs and undercut extremist recruitment.
These measures block reinfiltration, secure a verified U.S. foothold in Venezuelan energy logistics, reduce Chinese-Iranian influence over regional oil supplies, and starve allied communist networks of revenue — fulfilling Rubio’s goal.
Jose Lev Alvarez is an American–Israeli scholar specializing in international security policy. A multilingual veteran of the Israeli special forces and the U.S. Army, he holds three master’s degrees and is completing a doctorate in intelligence and global security in the Washington, D.C., area.