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Jaime Daremblum, the former Costa Rican ambassador to the United States, is a rightwing pundit based at the neoconservative think tank, the Hudson Institute, where he directs the Center for Latin American Studies.[1]

At Hudson, Daremblum frequently writes critical commentaries about leaders in Latin America, especially in countries that have pursued left-of-center political projects. Among his favorite topics are relations between Iran and countries like Bolivia and Venezuela, which he describes in a menacing light.

“I believe the Venezuela-Iran alliance represents the biggest threat to regional stability since the Cold War,” warned Daremblum in a January 2011 piece for theWeekly Standard.[2] In a 2010 speech for the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Daremblum claimed that Iran's outreach in Latin America is “Messianic in its goals and relentless in its tactics … [and] intimately linked to narcoterrorism, both in its own practice and in the groups and activities it sponsors.” The “key” to Iran’s expanding reach, he claimed, “has been Hugo Chávez.”[3]

While Tehran and Caracas have developed strong trading relations in recent years, these ties are more than “a mere annoyance,” Daremblum has argued. Rather, the relations between the governments of Iran and Venezuela are “a serious strategic menace” to the United States.[4]

Daremblum likes to point to things like the positioning of Iranian embassies in Latin American capitals as threatening signals. A December 2010 Washington Post story on Iranian-Bolivian relations highlighted the then-recent exchange of ambassadors between the countries and Bolivia’s interest in buying Iranian-built planes and helicopters, prompting Daremblum to comment: “This is not economic. This is politics, imagery and the world noticing, ‘We have lots of friends.’”[5]

Commented Right Web contributor Charles Davis, “While many analysts see Iran's outreach in Latin America as more an attempt to overcome its status as an international pariah, than part of a nefarious plot to build a base from which to literally attack America, Daremblum isn't among them. He sees the country's building of embassies and diplomatic missions throughout the region as part of their long-term game plan to launch such attacks. ‘For these regimes,’ he warns, ‘an embassy is a platform for terrorism.’”[6]

According to Davis, “The concern about Iranian embassies should sound familiar. In 2009, prominent neoconservatives like Michael Rubin drew attention to media reports claiming that Iran had built a new embassy in Nicaragua's sprawling capital Managua that was ‘the largest diplomatic mission in the city.’[7] The embassy, coupled with Iran's investments in Nicaragua and elsewhere in the region, Rubin warned, indicated the Islamic Republic ‘might see Latin America as a beachhead from which to conduct an aggressive strategy against the United States and its allies.’”[8]

This outlandish claim, wrote Davis, spread beyond rightwing circles, eventually spurring Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to comment, "The Iranians are building a huge embassy in Managua. And you can only imagine what that's for."[9] However, as theWashington Post reported in July 2009, that “huge embassy in Managua” was never found. “It doesn't exist,” a chuckling Ernest Porta, head of the Nicaraguan Chamber of Commerce, told the paper.[10]

Daremblum—along with pundits like the American Enterprise Institute’s Roger Noriega—has also been out front in efforts to link drug trafficking with “Islamic terrorists.“ He told an AIPAC audience in 2010, “The drug cartels are expanding their reach in our countries, as has been shown by diverse police operations. The proven links between the Islamic terrorists and the drug cartels significantly increase the security risks in the region. In this respect, several Central American countries suffer the assaults of ‘maras’ (gangs). These ‘maras’ are tightly linked to drug trafficking and all kinds of highly violent criminal acts as well as to gangs in the United States; they are also instrumental in the illegal infiltration of this country. Security experts worry that these gangs’ expertise could be put at the service of terrorists who want to enter the United States without being detected.”[11]

Daremblum believes that drug cartels' “expertise could be put at the service of terrorists who want to enter the United States without being detected.”[12]

According to his Hudson bio: “Ambassador Jaime Daremblum, a scholar of Latin America, international politics, and international economics, joined Hudson Institute as a Senior Fellow and Director of Hudson's Center for Latin American Studies in 2005. He served as Ambassador of Costa Rica to the United States from 1998 to 2004. Prior to assuming his post as Ambassador, he was a professor at the University of Costa Rica, the Autonomous University, and the Center of Administrative and Political Research, affiliated with Tulane University. He has also practiced law in Costa Rica. Ambassador Daremblum also served, from 1985 to 1998, as a foreign policy advisor to the Presidential campaigns from the Social Christian Unity Party of Costa Rica. From 1983 to 1998 Daremblum was a columnist and editorial writer for Costa Rica's daily newspaper La Nacion. He continues to write for the paper. In addition, he writes a syndicated column which is distributed widely throughout Latin America, the United States, and Spain. He has written several books on international and Latin American politics and economics, and his articles have appeared in such American publications as the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the Weekly Standard, RealClearWorld, the New York Sun, the American, the Miami Herald, and Diario Las Americas (Miami). He also provides frequent radio and television commentary. Daremblum also regularly publishes a blog for the Weekly Standard on Venezuela. Daremblum has testified numerous times before Congress on U.S.-Latin America relations, and has spoken in numerous forums in the United States, Latin America, Europe, and Israel. Daremblum is a graduate of the University of Costa Rica (LL.B.) with honors, and obtained his Master of Arts, Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy, and Ph.D. at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University.[13]

Please note: IPS Right Web neither represents nor endorses any of the individuals or groups profiled on this site.