Isolated Iran sees Latin America as a place to push back US influence, from which it could maintain a terrorist threat against the United States in the event of a conflict, a senior US official warned Wednesday, AFP reported from Washington.

Iran views Latin America as a chance to break out of some of its international isolation and defy Washington’s major power status in its back yard, State Department official Thomas Shannon said in Washington.

“It’s a way to push back on us,” Shannon told a conference bringing together cabinet ministers and other officials from North and South America to promote greater economic integration.

Shannon, the assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, said it also posed a threat there as he repeated charges that Iran was behind bombings against Israeli and Jewish targets in Buenos Aires in the 1990s.

“And we urge their intelligence services and their police services to monitor this activity with great care, because we do not want Iran to become a factor of violence within the Americas,” Shannon said.