Iran Allies Cuba and Venezuela Condemn Anti-Hezbollah Pager Bombings

The authoritarian regimes of Cuba and Venezuela on Tuesday issued statements condemning an apparent attack on Hezbollah operatives in Syria and Lebanon in which hundreds of pagers exploded spontaneously.

Hundreds of alleged members of the Iran-backed terrorist group were reported wounded when their pager devices simultaneously exploded. According to Lebanese officials, the incident left eight people dead and an estimated 2,800 injured. The Iranian ambassador to Lebanon Mojtaba Amani was also reportedly injured in the attack, while a Hezbollah member of the Lebanese parliament was reported killed. The attack may also disrupt Hezbollah’s communications by forcing it to abandon pagers and use other systems that are either less efficient or even more susceptible to hacking.

No group or individual has taken responsibility for the bombings, though the government of Lebanon and Hezbollah itself blamed Israel for the attack. Hezbollah has been waging a campaign against civilians in northern Israel for the past year that has displaced over 60,000 people.

Cuba — a U.S.-designated State Sponsor of Terrorism (SST) due to its extensive ties with Hezbollah and other international terrorist groups — condemned Israel’s attack against the jihadists through a brief social media message by Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla on behalf of the communist Castro regime, who described it as a “cyber-attack” and accused Israel of perpetrating it against Lebanon.

“We condemn the cyber-attack against Lebanon attributed to Israel, which has caused the death of almost 10 people and left another 2,800 people wounded,” the message read.

“These events constitute a serious escalation in the Middle East conflict with grave and unpredictable consequences for the region,” the message concluded.

Similarly, Venezuela’s socialist regime condemned the attack on Hezbollah in a statement shared by Foreign Minister Yván Gil through his Telegram account. The Venezuelan Foreign Ministry statement said that “this type of practice, which generates violence, fatalities and destruction, also causes panic and anxiety among the defenseless civilian population.”

“This attack articulated through a sophisticated method of terror and intimidation of the population, adds to the abhorrent techniques used by hostile governments in the dangerous and growing escalation of political and military tension in the Middle East,” the statement read.

The socialist regime, under a purported “historical position as a promoter of peace and the defense of the right to life,” condemned the international community’s “silence,” claiming that it  “only feeds the pretensions of those who wish to unleash a dangerous escalation of violence of unimaginable consequences in the region.”

Both the Cuban and Venezuelan regimes maintain deep ties with Iran and its proxy Hezbollah, making them two of Iran’s and Hezbollah’s top allies in the region in addition to Bolivia — which at press time has not released a public statement on Tuesday’s attack on the Shiite jihadists.

Past reports indicate that the Venezuelan socialists granted Cuban-made Venezuelan passports — often difficult to obtain for Venezuelan nationals and expensive for the nation’s impoverished citizens — to members of Hezbollah.

It is largely believed that the Venezuelan regime deepened its ties with Hezbollah and provided its members with Venezuelan passports through Tareck El Aissami, a former protegé of late dictator Hugo Chávez with deep ties to the Shiite jihadists. El Aisammi was a high-ranking member of the socialist regime until early 2023, when he and his inner circle were purged by Nicolás Maduro. Maduro accused El Aissami of stealing billions of dollars in oil revenue from the state-owned Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) firm during his tenure as oil minister, from 2020 to 2023.

Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.