For a brief moment, the left and right came together in unanimous sympathy over the October 7 terrorist attacks in Israel. But soon after the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) entered the Gaza Strip in retaliation, the sympathy faded, and party lines resumed their traditional stance: Anti-Israel on the left, pro-Israel on the right. Last week, left-wing presidents in Bolivia, Chile, and Colombia weighed in on the escalating war, and although their diplomatic actions were no surprise, they come permeated with wider global implications.

On Tuesday, October 29, Bolivian President Luis Arce cut all diplomatic ties with Israel citing alleged war crimes and human rights abuses in the Gaza operations. The decision followed a strong appeal on X (formerly Twitter) by Arce’s predecessor, former president Evo Morales, to sever ties because of the “horrific situation facing the Palestinian people.”

The break was announced in a press conference by Bolivian Minister of the Presidency Maria Nela Prada and Deputy Foreign Minister Freddy Mamani. Prada, as acting foreign minister, never condemned the October 7 attack and expressed only “deep concern over the violent events that occurred in the Gaza Strip between Israel and Palestine” and emphasized “solidarity and unwavering support for the Palestinian people.” Mamani justified the decision as “repudiation and condemnation of the aggressive and disproportionate Israeli military offensive in the Gaza Strip and its threat to international peace and security.” Hours following the press conference, Colombian President Gustavo Petro and Chilean President Gabriel Boric recalled their ambassadors from Tel Aviv, echoing similar allegations.

Arce’s actions were expected; Bolivian-Israeli relations have long depended on party politics. Morales’s presidency between 2006 and 2019 threw in support behind Iran and pursued a policy bent on isolating Israel in the region. He first severed ties in 2009 following IDF operations against Hamas in Gaza, and in 2014 labeled Israel a “terrorist state” and revoked longstanding visa agreements between the two countries. Only after his resignation in November 2019 were relations mended under right-wing Jeanine Áñez’s interim presidency that lasted until Arce’s inauguration in November 2020.

Upon closer look, Bolivia’s response to the current war appears less concerned with its appeal to human rights and caters more toward its partnership with Iran. Earlier this summer, Arce sealed what critics called “opaque” defense and security agreements with Tehran that shocked opposition members in La Paz and raised alarm in Argentina where officials still hold Tehran responsible for the 1994 bombing of the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires. The content and stipulations of the agreements aren’t transparent, but Bolivian Defense Minister Edmundo Novillo has shed light on possible military drone and maritime security deals.

Flirtation with Iran is no secret, and Bolivia follows Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Brazil in entertaining the Ayatollah. Nor has the Ayatollah concealed his motivations in Latin America. According to analyst Eldar Mamedov, Tehran’s allies in Latin America “validates the strategy of forging ‘south-south’ links in the addition to its ‘Look East’ policy and demonstrates its ability to poke the US in the eye in the Western Hemisphere.” It also goes one step further; the willingness to partner with Tehran engulfs any foreign policy under the Ayatollah’s tutelage and by default anti-Israeli and pro-Hamas and Hezbollah. Israeli Foreign Affairs spokesman Lior Haiat called Bolivia’s diplomatic break “a surrender to terrorism and to the Ayatollah’s regime in Iran.” “By taking this step,” Haiat tweeted, “the Bolivian government is aligning itself with the Hamas terrorist organization, which slaughtered over 1,400 Israelis and abducted 240 people, including children, women, babies and the elderly.”

While Arce maintained the traditional hard-nosed party line on Israel, Brazilian President Luiz Ignacio Lula de Silva attempted a delicate balancing act. As Rafael Kruchin noted, Lula, who presided over the United Nations Security Council in October, phoned both Israeli President Isaac Herzog and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to condemn the terrorist attacks and call for civilian protection and the release of hostages. But his rhetoric changed once the IDF entered Gaza. Lula, who helped broker the 2010 nuclear deal with Iran, became critical of Israeli air strikes on Hamas and, in one interview, made outlandish claims that Israel is currently murdering “millions of innocent people” in Gaza.

With human rights violations and war crimes at the fore, Jerusalem continues to expose another side of the coin, thus questioning the legitimacy of Acre, Petro, Boric, and Lula’s allegations and diplomatic intentions. The October 7 event itself was an Iranian-backed operation that targeted civilians. Days before the IDF infiltrated Gaza, leaflets fell over the strip advising civilians to seek the negotiated Rafah border crossing with Egypt while guaranteeing Hamas militants humanitarian aid if surrendered. With soldiers currently on the ground, Israel’s UN ambassador Gilad Erdan has been supplying the Security Council with abundant surveillance proving that Hamas detained foreign passport holders and civilians, built rocket and artillery sites within school grounds and hospitals, and, recently, utilized ambulances to transport personnel and arms. Against this evidence, the allegations and diplomatic responses from South America’s left only expose their blind party politics and Iran’s invisible hand in foreign policy.

Should the diplomats’ flight from Tel Aviv raise concern in Israel or Latin America? Recent bilateral relations with Bolivia had always been “devoid of content,” Haiat noted; and the same could be said to a certain degree of Chilean and Colombian relations. The left’s anti-Israel rhetoric has moved beyond constructive dialogue for a two-state solution and carries default implications of aligning with Israel’s enemies who fund terrorism and are bent on eliminating Jewish populations — in Israel and abroad. Iran’s foothold in Caracas and La Paz, as recent diplomatic maneuvers have exposed, should raise concern for its potential to destabilize the continent and the tremendous threat it poses to the vibrant Jewish populations in Argentina, Brazil, and Chile. But as the anti-incumbency trend in Latin America has shown over recent years, the prospect of government turnovers and renewed foreign policy — for or against Israel — is continually on the horizon.