December 29, 2025, Palm Beach, Florida, USA: President Donald Trump welcomes Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida. Original photo credit: Amos Ben Gershom/Israel Group/Zuma Press/Europa Press.
By Valeria Duarte Galleguillos – Jul 22, 2026
Continental intervention by the United States and Israel is intensifying at an accelerating pace. The sequence of events described in the audio recordings leaked three months ago in the Hondurasgate scandal has materialized rapidly. In less than 90 days, Mexico, Colombia, and Honduras faced media attack campaigns, disinformation operations, social media account hackings, and targeted attacks against electoral systems.
The actions described in the recordings coincide with public statements and accusations subsequently made by the affected governments themselves. Colombian president Gustavo Petro, Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum, and former Honduran president Manuel Zelaya each publicly denounced various episodes of interference, disinformation campaigns, and attacks against the digital and political infrastructure of their respective countries.
Hondurasgate is one of the most extensively documented political interference scandals in Latin America in the 21st century. The leak of 37 audio recordings from the Hondurasgate.ch platform, published exclusively by Canal Red América Latina, exposed an international operation of geopolitical control driven by the United States and Israel over various countries of Latin America and the Caribbean. Far from being an isolated episode or a matter of the past, the audios describe a systematic political, economic, and military strategy that continues to develop and is progressively intensifying across the region.
Colombia and Mexico in the US crosshairs
The second installment of Hondurasgate considerably expanded the scope of the revelations. The new audios revealed the existence of a coordinated communications plan directed from the office of US President Donald Trump, with the support of Republican Party politicians, to build a media network aimed at politically destabilizing the governments of Mexico and Colombia, as well as Mel Zelaya and Xiomara Castro in Honduras.
According to the recordings, this media destabilization strategy was financed by Javier Milei and by funds from public institutions of the government of Nasry Asfura, current president of Honduras.
The leaked audios also reveal US interests in consolidating a permanent scheme of influence over Latin America through the manufacturing of “internal enemies” that would justify future interventions against countries governed by progressive forces. According to the recorded conversations, this strategy relies on a network of political operators tasked with coordinating the logistics of destabilization processes—acting with broad margins of impunity and with sufficient resources to corrupt state institutions—in exchange for facilitating economic contracts, territorial control, and geopolitical advantages for the United States and Israel.
The audio recordings presented former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández—convicted in the United States for drug trafficking and pardoned by Trump—as the kingpin of this model, having acted as an agent in the service of the US and Israel.
Colombia: PetroLeaks, Operation Jupiter, and the electoral dispute
Colombia’s case is, to date, the most extensively documented within the scheme described by Hondurasgate.
The operations known as Jupiter and PetroLeaks reportedly developed a media intervention strategy targeting Colombian politics through a communications apparatus of unprecedented scale, with the objective of influencing public opinion and weakening the government of president Gustavo Petro.
In a public statement, Petro affirmed that the available information points to a business network with simultaneous operations in Colombia and the United States, whose economic resources were reportedly used to fund digital platforms and communication strategies aimed at intervening in the Colombian public debate.
This acussation was shared by the director of Colombia’s Financial Information and Analysis Unit (UIAF), Wilmar Mejía, who filed a criminal complaint over the alleged existence of a criminal network behind the PetroLeaks portal. According to the complaint, the platform is administered from the United States with the purpose of spreading disinformation campaigns against the Colombian government and the Pacto Histórico party of President Petro.
The UIAF complaint maintains that the structure behind PetroLeaks could constitute the continuation or expansion of the same influence networks described in Hondurasgate, now organized around so-called Operation Jupiter: a mechanism designed to weaken progressive governments through the coordinated use of irregular financing, digital propaganda, and media manipulation.
These media operations preceded the Colombian electoral process and, according to the investigation, sought to prepare the conditions for a broader political intervention. The audio recordings show that, as in Honduras, Donald Trump would end up publicly backing the right-wing candidate for whom the Colombian electorate was supposed to vote.
The Israeli friend: Black Cube
One of the most novel elements raised by Hondurasgate is the incorporation of Israeli private companies within intelligence and electoral security systems.
In this context, president Gustavo Petro denounced the existence of an “algorithmic fraud” operated from the United States through private intelligence companies. Among those he mentioned was Black Cube—an Israeli firm that, according to his statements, “supplied rigged algorithms and other support to the Bautista brothers.”
Black Cube was founded in 2010 by former Israeli intelligence officers Dan Zorella and Avi Yanus. The company is composed primarily of former members of Israeli state intelligence and security units, including former Mossad agents, and has conducted private intelligence operations in various countries around the world.
Mexico: disinformation campaigns and the electoral battleground
In Mexico, the events described in Hondurasgate began to unfold practically simultaneously with the publication of the first audios. One of the episodes that marked the beginning of this sequence was the discovery of CIA agents operating in Mexican territory without authorization from the federal government but with the backing of an opposition governor.
The incident represented a violation of national sovereignty that given its gravity, should have dominated the front pages of the international press and resulted in political and judicial accountability for the officials involved. Instead, just days later, the issue virtually disappeared from the media.
In its place, another narrative began to take hold. Social media was flooded with rumors about a supposed “blacklist” of Morena party leaders allegedly linked to drug trafficking. Within days, the public debate shifted away from the presence of foreign agents on Mexican territory toward an intense digital campaign built on rumors and highly viral content.
Mexico has yet to fully enter the electoral period—a circumstance that represents an advantage for strengthening institutional protection mechanisms and reinforcing the security of its democratic system before the formal process begins.
Mexico is preparing for an election that will determine governorships across much of the country’s north and in strategically important states with access to the Pacific Ocean—regions of decisive geopolitical weight for the bilateral relationship with the United States.
At the same time, political pressure from Washington has not eased. Extradition demands against various Morena political figures and the constant narrative around security and drug trafficking have maintained a political landscape of permanent confrontation.
Warning signs, however, remain. Black Cube, the Israeli private intelligence firm mentioned in the audios and denounced by Gustavo Petro, had already operated in Mexico since 2018, during the government of Enrique Peña Nieto. Its involvement occurred in the context of the dispute between oil company Oro Negro, Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex) and a group of international investment funds. In that litigation, Oro Negro contracted Black Cube’s services for corporate intelligence work—marking one of the first documented instances of the Israeli company’s presence in Mexico.
Honduras: from audio leaks to cyberattack
If Colombia represents the most extensively covered case and Mexico the scenario where several of the operations described in Hondurasgate began to unfold, Honduras is where the leak takes on a particularly significant dimension, as several of the crimes mentioned in the audio recordings appear to have direct correlation with subsequent events.
On July 17, former president of Honduras Manuel “Mel” Zelaya stated through his official X account that the cell phone of former president Xiomara Castro had been hacked, allowing unauthorized access to her social media accounts.
As a result of the attack, all previous posts on the account were deleted, and three messages were posted—which were also subsequently removed.
One of them shared a video of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accompanied by the message: “Netanyahu is an adorable guy.” Another post attempted to present Xiomara Castro as the instigator of the coup against her husband Mel Zelaya during the 2009 coup, claiming it was Xiomara herself who coordinated the coup with Romeo Vásquez Velásquez. A third post attempted to link the Zelaya family to drug trafficking organizations through the dissemination of a 2017 video accompanied by an altered audio track.
The content of these messages coincides with one of the strategies described in Hondurasgate. In the recordings attributed to Juan Orlando Hernández, reference is made to the dissemination of supposed “dossiers” against the Zelaya family with the purpose of damaging their political credibility and eroding their public image.
The sequence of events has led to the interpretation of the digital attack as part of a broader information warfare strategy in which social media manipulation, the dissemination of altered material, and the use of psychological operations constitute tools designed to weaken governments and political leaderships through permanent disinformation campaigns.
Zionist spy companies
The international dimension of Hondurasgate incorporates a relatively recent element within contemporary geopolitical disputes: the growing role of Israeli companies specializing in private intelligence, cybersecurity, and technological surveillance.
Israeli participation is no longer limited exclusively to arms sales. In recent years, it has extended to the development and production of spyware, intelligence systems, digital surveillance tools, and algorithmic analysis platforms used by both governments and private entities.
The cases recorded in Latin America do not constitute an isolated phenomenon. Recently, Slovenia’s Foreign Minister alleged that Israeli interference operations had occurred during that country’s electoral process.
Among the companies named, Black Cube appeared again—accused of conducting covert operations and clandestine recordings aimed at harming the government of Prime Minister Robert Golob before elections, a circumstance that ultimately benefited the conservative opposition politically.
Weeks earlier, Slovenia’s intelligence agency (SOVA) had confirmed that Janez Janša, the main opposition leader, had held meetings with three Black Cube operatives.
A similar episode occurred in Hungary during the 2018 legislative elections. According to various investigations, agents linked to Black Cube used false identities to infiltrate civil society organizations and covertly record opposition leaders—reproducing an operational pattern subsequently observed in other international settings.
To these tools can be added Pegasus, one of the world’s most well-known digital spyware programs, designed to infiltrate cell phones and extract information remotely.
In Mexico, the first acquisition of Pegasus took place during the government of Felipe Calderón under the argument of strengthening the fight against drug trafficking. More recently, Spanish president Pedro Sánchez was also a victim of phone surveillance via Pegasus.
An investigation by the international consortium coordinated by Forbidden Stories, conducted by 39 journalists from 14 European outlets with technical support from Amnesty International’s Security Lab, reconstructed the internal workings of the Moroccan intelligence apparatus based on the testimony of three former agents of the kingdom’s domestic secret service. The new sources described the chain of command that ordered the attacks and the objective they pursued—documented in three reports drawn up between May and July 2021—to force Spain to recognize Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara.
The operation achieved its goal. In March 2022, 10 months after that cyberattack, Sánchez sent Mohamed VI a letter—released by the Moroccan Royal House—that ended four decades of state consensus, which until then had pointed toward a solution agreed within the United Nations framework.
Taken together, these precedents show that contemporary geopolitical competition is no longer waged solely through traditional military or diplomatic mechanisms. In this context, Israel is the vanguard of state and private intelligence services at used by the US and carrying out digital manipulation operations, cyber espionage, electoral interference, and coordinated disinformation campaigns. That is why the Hondurasgate phenomenon transcends the Honduran national sphere and reveals itself as the new paradigm of hybrid warfare and political interference conducted by the US and its proxies.
‘Hondurasgate:’ A Symptom of Deeper Crises in Honduras and a Warning for Latin America
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/CB/SL
Cameron Baillie is an award-winning journalist, editor, and researcher. He won and was shortlisted for awards across Britain and Ireland. He is Editor-in-Chief of New Sociological Perspectives graduate journal and Commissioning Editor at The Student Intifada newsletter. He spent the first half of 2025 living, working, and writing in Ecuador. He does news translation and proofreading work with The Orinoco Tribune.
