Maybe Ahmadinejad just likes gallopinto

Actually, Hillary, I can't imagine. What will the Iranians do? Look for Basij recruits in a country full of Catholics and evangelical Protestants? Sell weapons to Nicaragua, a country with a whopping $40 million defense budget? Invest in a few development projects in Managua, instead of in Tehran, where they might actually boost the regime's popularity?

The State Department never really quantifies how an Iranian embassy in Nicaragua poses a "threat" to the United States. There are some vague references to Hizballah and the 1994 Buenos Aires bombing, but nothing substantive.

Unfortunately, I think this is the kind of half-baked thinking that passes for "analysis" in the U.S. foreign policy community.

Look, it's true that Ahmadinejad has tried to build up a sphere of influence in Latin America. This is what countries do. If the U.S. wants to counteract him, it can increase its own diplomatic and economic presence in the region. And frankly I'm not sure the U.S. should counteract Ahmadinejad; his Latin American investments aren't terribly popular at home (Mousavi, for one, complained bitterly about them during the campaign). Every dollar he spends building Venezuelan factories for "anti-imperialist cars" is a dollar he can't spend on projects in Iran.