As foreign minister of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro travelled to Damascus in 2007 for a highly publicised meeting with then-president of Syria, Bashar al-Assad, en route to Tehran.
Maduro was ostensibly in the region to strengthen his country’s ties with others similarly hostile to Washington. But behind closed doors, his visit had another purpose: a secret meeting with a senior Hizbollah commander, integral to its overseas operations.
The previously unreported encounter took place at a hotel in central Damascus, said three people with knowledge of the meeting, and would mark the first known instance of Maduro meeting directly with a member of the Lebanese militant group.
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