With Iran increasingly isolated among its Gulf neighbors, recent reports say Tehran has been deepening its ties in the South Caucasus with the Republic of Georgia.The former Soviet republic, which was until recently seen as an aspiring European Union and potential NATO member candidate, has slowly moved closer to Tehran.”Iran has built a vast influence infrastructure in Georgia, which includes entities sanctioned by the U.S. government for links to extremism and viewed in Washington as fronts for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC),” Giorgi Kandelaki, former member of the Georgian Parliament, told Fox News Digital. IRAN BACKLASH FORCES GULF ALLIES TOWARD WASHINGTON AS REGIONAL TENSIONS RISEKandelaki, co-author of a recent report with the Hudson Institute titled Georgia’s Iranian Turn: Tehran’s Rapid Expansion of Influence in a Once-Committed U.S. Ally, said that Tbilisi’s turn toward Iran is bad for Georgians but also bad for U.S. interests in the region.”Georgia has an overwhelmingly pro-U.S. public opinion committed to Western values with it also being viewed as a traditional U.S. ally in Washington. This reality presents a terrible precedent and reversing this trajectory is in the interest of both the U.S. but also Georgian society,” he added.While Georgia has remained diplomatically neutral, the Hudson report details the budding ties between the two countries and how Iran uses Georgia as a network for intelligence infrastructure, penetrating Georgia’s religious, educational and cultural institutions to impact society.BLOODY NYC KHAMENEI VIGIL REVEALS ANTI-US PROTEST NETWORK LINKED TO IRANAs far back as 2007, Iran opened the Georgian branch of…
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