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Colombian man extradited to Miami may know secrets of Iran arms shipments to Venezuela | Opinion

When Colombian businessman and international financial fixer for Venezuela’s dictatorship Alex Saab, 49, was recently extradited to Miami, most news reports focused on the fact that he could reveal inside information about Venezuelan ruler Nicolás Maduro’s corruption.

That’s true, but most of the media missed a potentially much more important point: Saab was Maduro’s secret envoy to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. As such, the Colombian financier may know whether Iran is sending long-range missiles to Venezuela that could destabilize South America’s military balance.

What’s more, Saab could know whether Iran has already sent or is planning to ship missiles to Venezuela that could reach the United States, the way the former Soviet Union sent nuclear missiles to Cuba in the 1962 Cuban missile crisis.

U.S. officials have been looking into this for at least a year, according to several U.S. and Colombian news reports.

Asked about reports that two Iranian cargo ships headed for Venezuela may be carrying sophisticated weapons, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told a Senate hearing in June that “I am absolutely concerned about the proliferation of weapons, any type of weapons, in our neighborhood.”

A Politico report at the time said, “It’s not 100 percent clear what the Iranian ships are carrying — though there is some photographic evidence that the cargo may include fast-attack boats, which can be armed and which Tehran has frequently used to harass U.S. ships in the Persian Gulf. Much of the cargo is covered up, leaving officials and analysts to speculate.”

Since then, new details have come out. A Sept. 10 cover story in Colombia’s news magazine, Semana, cited international intelligence sources as saying that between 12 and 17 Iranian planeloads carrying weapons have landed recently in Venezuela, and two Iranian army ships had tried to reach Venezuela before being detected by the U.S. military.

The Iranian flights’ cargo included a total of 1,050 missiles, 400 bombs, 500 rockets, 30 containers and 35 radars, the magazine reported, showing pictures of what it said were Venezuelan Defense Ministry documents listing these items.

Iran’s main reason for such weapons transfers, according to arms experts, would be to threaten the United States with retaliation in its own neighborhood if the U.S. military were to attack Iran or its allies in the Middle East.

It’s hard to know whether Saab was involved in any arms negotiations with Iran, but there is little doubt that he is a key — if not the main — Maduro emissary to Iran.

Gerardo Reyes — an investigative reporter who has published a book in Spanish titled, “Alex Saab: The truth about the businessman who became a multi-millionaire under the shadow of Nicolas Maduro” — told me this week that Saab “was the link between Maduro and the Iranian regime to circumvent U.S. sanctions against both countries.”

There is some written evidence of that. Documents in the Miami federal court handling the Saab case revealed by Associated Press reporter Joshua Goodman earlier this year include a letter by Maduro, in which he accredited Saab to Iran’s supreme leader.

In the letter, Maduro asked Khamenei to help Saab get an “urgent” shipment of 5 millions barrels of gasoline, in addition to others that Iran had already sent to help alleviate Venezuela’s fuel shortages.

Saab was arrested in Cabo Verde 16 months ago, as his private plane was refueling on its way to Iran. Authorities in Cabo Verde executed the arrest at the request of the United States, where Saab is charged with several counts of money laundering.

In a statement sent by Saab to several media after his Oct. 16 extradition to Miami, he claims he has not committed any crimes, and that he won’t give any information to U.S. authorities that could damage Maduro. But Saab is no revolutionary ideologue, and may quickly reverse that stand if he’s sentenced to spend decades behind bars.

More importantly, he may help determine what’s behind the mysterious flights and cargo ships traveling between Venezuela and Iran. That — more than Maduro’s corruption, which wouldn’t come as a big surprise to most of us — could be by far the most explosive secret that Saab may possess.

Don’t miss the “Oppenheimer Presenta” TV show on Sundays at 8 pm E.T. on CNN en Español. Twitter: @oppenheimera