Chavez Signs Anti-US Cooperation Pact with Iran Providing Bases in Venezuela

[Ryan Ruck]

Chavez Signs Anti-US Cooperation Pact with Iran Providing Bases in Venezuela

While the leaders of the Non-Aligned Movement nations were making speeches at the 14th conference of their movement in Havana in mid-September, three groups of intelligence experts were off in a well-guarded corner next door to talk about matters far from the conference’s main theme of how to develop backward economies and societies.

Iranian, Cuban and Venezuelan teams were putting their heads together on ways of translating their leaders' hostile rhetoric and slogans into effective war action against the United States.

DEBKAfile’s Exclusive intelligence and counter-terror sources disclose that the three teams were made up of intelligence officers and civilian officials on the staffs of the three rulers; their job is maintaining clandestine ties with underground and terrorist organizations.

After the NAM conference ended, the Iranian and Venezuelan teams moved their talks to Caracas where Ahmadinejad continued his talks with Chavez on Sept 17 and 18.

Interestingly, Iran’s Islamic revolutionary leaders have maintained warm ties of cooperation and mutual assistance with Castro’s Cuba since they came to power in Tehran in 1979. They admired his revolutionary zeal and consistent anti-US policies. Tehran also exploited Cuba’s economic straits to deepen its penetration of the country with a view to setting up an Iranian base in Cuba for its continental operations.

But the relationship suffered ups and downs, especially when Castro declined to give Iranian agents a free hand for subversion and espionage against the United States. In 2003, the Cuban ruler was furious when Iranian diplomats, without asking for permission, installed in their homes in a farm on the outskirts of Havana jamming equipment against television programs bounced from the United States through satellite to Iran. They were trying to stop Iranian opposition-backed television broadcasters in Los Angeles calling on Iranians to rise up against the Islamic regime. Castro made the Iranian diplomats evacuate the farm and remove their gear.

Castro is too old a hand to be manipulated in matters of subversion and terrorism. Chavez in contrast is just as anti-American but also rated by Tehran an easier mark. Although he needs to be handled with kid gloves as head of an oil-exporting country, the Iranians have noted that the Venezuelan leader is also open to cooperation in the politics of oil.

On Sept. 18, he insisted that Ahmadinejad attend a ceremony celebrating the gushing of the 7th Aya Well of the Kuchouy Oil Field developed by a Venezuelan-Iranian partnership. This was to be a landmark on the road to a merger between the two oil industries. Tehran is not too happy about this partnership but is going along with small, symbolic steps while extracting from Caracas – and eventually it hopes from Havana – forward facilities for running Iranian clandestine agents in North and South America.

DEBKAfile’s Iranian sources report that Ahmadinejad also talked persuasively to Chavez about making a show of deploying a few Iranian-made 2,000-km range Shahab-3 missiles – first in Venezuela then in Cuba – as a menace to the United States.

Chavez has not given Tehran his answer. But both he and Castro will think twice about granting this request, for fear of crossing one line too many for the Bush administration to swallow. However, Iranian ambitions to harm American know no limits.

The three-cornered meeting in Havana between the Ahmadinejad, Chavez and Raoul Castro at the beginning of the week reached a number of decisions in principle although they remain to be fleshed out with operational details. Castro was reluctant to make final decisions because he said his brother would soon be back at the helm.

They did agree that anything decided during the Iranian and Venezuelan presidents’ Caracas talks would be put before the Cuban ruler. They also decided that their intelligence teams would meet again during the UN General Assembly session in New York later this week. After discovering this plan, Washington refused the Iranian president’s “aides” – presented as journalists - entry visas to New York on Tuesday, Sept. 19.

The three-way talks have thus far yielded a solid decision for Iranian intelligence agents, some of them sabotage specialists, to be sent soon to Cuba and Venezuela. They will operate in the guise of road network and industrial development experts. Their real mission will be to conduct surveys on the practicability of using Cuba and Venezuela as bases for subversive activities against the United States and other parts of Latin America.

Iran is also busy creating similar bases in E. Africa, favoring Sudan and Somalia.

At the Havana NAM conference the Iranian president and Sudan’s Omar Bashir were seen deep in conversation. Tehran believes that the Sudanese ruler will come round now to accepting expanded military and intelligence collaboration between the two countries, whereas in 2003, he threw Iranian agents out of Sudan together with all their development specialists. Bashir is now seeking support for his Darfur policy which aims to remove pro-Western military elements from Sudan.

Iran is on the way to harnessing two more countries to its clandestine anti-US campaign: Somalia and Yemen. In Mogadishu, the Islamic Courts movement headed by Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys is strengthening its grip on Somalia. Like Iran’s Islamic rulers, this group also preaches jihad and martyrdom (suicide attacks) for the sake of Islam.

The Somali movement therefore provides fertile ground for recruiting terrorists for suicide missions on behalf of Iran and al Qaeda alike as part of their subversion and terror campaigns across the African continent.

Mogadishu’s new rulers, whose number includes a group of middle-ranking al Qaeda commanders, are busy training an army to support their regime. Al Qaeda and Iranian Revolutionary Guards instructors are building up a corps of suiciders to attacks US embassies and Israeli targets across the continent.

The Yemeni ruler, Abdallah Salah, and his army chiefs are opposed to giving Iranian agents free rein in their country, but in the last two years, Tehran is paying Shiite extremist groups in Yemen to bring the regime under increasing pressure by acts of murder and sabotage.

Iran’s Islamic rulers believe they are in real danger of an American air attack on their nuclear installations some time in November or December this year. They are therefore pushing hard for new allies in Latin America, Africa and Arabia and points of vantage for hitting back at the United States and its centers of influence on three continents as an effective deterrent to an American attack.

Well, won't that be nice when Iran decides to station a few of its longer range missiles in Venezuela?

[MinutemanCO]

Iranian, Cuban and Venezuelan teams were putting their heads together on ways of translating their leaders' hostile rhetoric and slogans into effective war action against the United States.

If you tie this together with a neat little bow with the SCO information I've posted in the thread above, you have a pretty clear alliance of anti-US forces that spans the globe. They achieve a level of power as yet unprecedented.

[vector7]

Hugo Chávez's Military Buildup and Iranian Ties

October 19, 2010 1:05 PM



Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez is visiting Tehran today, along with his sidekick, Bolivian president Evo Morales. It’s Chávez’s ninth trip in the past 18 months but this one’s special because he’s stopping over on his way back from Moscow, where he announced a nuclear deal with the Russians. The Venezuelan strongman’s itinerary and business agenda hardly allays fears over the Venezuela-Iran-Russia partnership that some see as a growing threat in Washington’s backyard. It’s an alliance that features not only nuclear cooperation and energy resources, but also conventional arms and terrorism.

Last Friday’s announcement from Moscow that Chávez and Russian president Dmitry Medvedev had reached an agreement for Russia to build two 1200-megawatt nuclear reactors in Venezuela got worldwide play. However, the deal has been in the works for over two years, or since 2008, when many in the international community criticized Russia’s incursion into Georgia, and Russia thumbed its nose at the West by offering Venezuela access to nuclear power. Moscow’s deal with Caracas follows on the heels of its construction of a similar reactor in Iran that it completed this August.

Iran has been seeking uranium from Venezuela (as well as Bolivia), while both Iran and Venezuela want nuclear technology and more conventional weaponry from Russia. In exchange, Venezuela is offering money and mineral wealth— uranium and gasoline for Iran; gold, oil, uranium and natural gas for Russia. It appears that Moscow is sending T-72 and T-90 tanks that will replace the aging French MX-30s. Putin assured Caracas that Russia will soon deliver the first 35 tanks out of the 92 Venezuela has ordered. In addition, Venezuela intends to buy 10 Ilyushin Il-76MD-90 planes, two Il-78MK refueling aircraft, as well as five S-300 missile systems. Iran also sought the S-300 but Medvedev banned the sale for fear of violating U.N. Security Council Resolution 1929, concerning sanctions on Iran. The S-300 missiles and their attendant Smerch multiple rocket launchers are considered far more powerful than the Tor M-1 missile systems that both Venezuela and Iran have previously purchased in the past five years. Caracas has also confirmed plans to purchase up to 10 Mi-28NE attack helicopters on top of the 10 Mi-35M helicopters purchased in the past half-decade.

Since 2005, Venezuela has spent $4.4 billion on Russian weaponry, making it Latin America’s biggest consumer of Russian military hardware.

This new purchase will be completed through a credit of an additional $2.2 billion Moscow is granting Caracas. A total of $6.6 billion worth of new weaponry is an awful lot for a country that has not fought a war since its independence from Spain in 1821. While Chávez has said that he is arming his citizen militias, known as Bolivarian Circles, rumor has it that the weapons may also be going to agents and fighters from the Colombian FARC, Hezbollah and Cuban security and intelligence services, whose numbers, according to many think tanks and U.S. security sources, have swelled in Venezuela. Interpol confirmed evidence that Venezuela has funneled well over $300 million to the FARC and has built an ammunition plant to supply AK-103s, the FARC weapon of choice. In tandem with Venezuela’s military buildup, Chávez’s avowed support for the FARC is a real worry for Colombia as well as Washington, which sees Colombia as its closest regional ally.

Venezuelan money has also been flowing into Iran. In July 2010, the EU ordered the seizure of all the assets of the Venezuelan International Development Bank, an affiliate of the Export Development Bank of Iran, one of 34 Iranian entities implicated in the development of nuclear or ballistic missile technology. Even as Caracas denied that the bank had any ties to Iran’s nuclear program, it had already been sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department.

While these budding alliances between Moscow, Tehran and Caracas are of serious concern to the international community, it is unclear what will come of the nuclear deal with Russia. Among other things, since Venezuela isn’t meeting its OPEC quotas, it doesn’t seem to have the money to pay for the reactors; moreover, as I wrote last week, there is evidence that Chávez may find himself out of office with the 2012 elections.

Indeed, it’s not clear how these commercial, military and energy accords will play domestically. Chávez rationalizes that the nuclear program is necessary in a country like Venezuela that regularly suffers energy shortages. But those shortages result from a lack of investment in infrastructure. After all, in addition to enormous oil and natural gas reserves, Venezuela has some of the greatest hydroelectric dams in the world—which are poorly maintained and often not working properly. And now instead of fixing things at home, Chávez is spending Venezuelans’ patrimony abroad in order to project power, not Venezuela’s, but his own.

[vector7]

Latin America File: Chavez sends thugs to attack, kidnap business leaders, nationalizes more industries; Uribe warns against nuclear Venezuela


- Israel Frets Russia Will Make Good on 2007 Contract, Evade UN Sanctions by Delivering S-300 Anti-Missile System to Iran Via Venezuela

Pictured here: Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez consoles Argentine counterpart Cristina Kirchner at the wake of her husband, the late President Nestor Kirchner, in Buenos Aires, on October 28, 2010.

The descent of Venezuela into the hellhole of Bolivarian communism continued last week with the kidnapping and attempted murder of Venezuelan business leaders who are outspoken critics of President Hugo Chavez’s nationalization drive.

On Thursday, October 28 gunmen in Caracas opened fire on a car carrying leaders of Venezuela’s national business federation Fedecamaras, wounding one of them before hijacking the vehicle. Noel Alvarez, president of Fedecamaras, and Albis Munoz, a former president of the same organization, were in the hijacked vehicle. Alvarez relates his ordeal: “When we braked, they began shooting at us without saying a word. The former president [of the federation] Albis Munoz was hit by three bullets. They made us get out of the car and began to hit us. They drove us around Caracas for two hours, and then they released us.”

The gunmen dumped Munoz at a hospital, where she was later pronounced to be in stable condition. Alvarez and Fedecamaras treasurer Ernesto Villasmil were deposited at a motorway off-ramp.

Chavez’s interior minister, Tareck El Aissami, assured reporters that police had their best detectives on the case, and pledged the investigation would be “transparent and objective.” “All the evidence, including the recovered vehicle and interviews with those affected, everything points to the motive of robbery, although we do not rule out other hypotheses,” soothed El Aissami, leaving open the possibility of a political motivation, which is certainly the conclusion at this blog.

While it is true that Venezuela has witnessed a crime wave of late and that Caracas has one of the highest murder rates in the world, it is also true that Alvarez is a prominent opponent of Chavez’s Cuban-style communism. “But I do want to say that this forms part of the climate of insecurity that we have in Venezuela, and the government has the responsibility to try to establish greater security,” Alvarez admonished after his release. In June, President Chavez called Fedecamaras “one of the biggest obstacles to progress” in Venezuela and the business federation’s leaders “enemies of the nation.”

Over the weekend, Chavez plunged further into his latest expropriation binge by nationalizing Venezuela’s largest privately owned steel producer Siderurgica del Turbio SA. The company exports steel products to countries throughout Latin America, as well as to Africa, Asia, and Europe. Chavez has ordered the National Guard to “safeguard” the company’s seven plants. Telephone calls to the company’s headquarters in Caracas went unanswered late Sunday, shortly after the president announced the expropriation.

In early October, Chavez announced the nationalization of Industrias Venoco, the country’s largest independent automotive lubricants company. The Venezuelan dictator, whose communist regime has nationalized more than 300 companies in just the last two years, explained that the expropriation includes Venoco subsidiaries Nacional de Grasas Lubricantes and Aditivos de Orinoco. Chávez accuses Venoco of overcharging for lubricants and other oil derivative products.

Intriguingly, Venoco is almost entirely owned by Franklin Duran, who in 2008 was found guilty in a Miami federal court of being an unregistered agent of the Venezuelan government. Duran’s conviction stemmed from the so-called Suitcase-gate scandal, in which US government prosecutors proved that Duran transported US$800,000 from Chavez to Argentina, to aid the presidential campaign of then-candidate Cristina Kirchner. Center-leftist Kirchner, who is now president, denied any involvement in the case, while Duran is completing a four year prison sentence.

Incidentally, Cristina’s husband, Nestor, Argentina’s previous president, died of a heart attack on October 27, prompting a eulogy from Chavez. According to Venezuela’s top commie thug, Nestor, who was secretary general of the Lenin-inspired Union of South American Nations when he died, “left a legacy of dignity.”

Venezuela’s strategic alliance and nuclear partnership with Russia has also provoked concern among US allies in the region, including former Colombian president Alvaro Uribe. Last Tuesday, speaking after receiving an award from Spain’s International Memorial of Victims of Terrorism, Uribe declared: “Venezuela’s arms race is very dangerous both for the security of its own citizens and Venezuela’s neighbors. The Venezuelan government has signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, but has not signed its additional protocols.” Last month, Caracas and Moscow announced a deal under which Russia will help the South American country to build its first nuclear power station. Chavez, a long-time nemesis of Uribe, claims that his country only seeks to “diversify energy sources.”

Uribe was presented with the award by John Frank Pinchao Blanco, a police officer who was kidnapped by the Revolutionary Armed Forces in Colombia in 1998 and held captive until his escape in 2007. The former president dedicated his award to the Colombian police and armed forces. Uribe also commented that the proposed legalization of marijuana in California is a threat to regional security.

Meanwhile, Israel, which is on Chavez’s “Bad List,” along with the USA, is worried that Iran will eventually obtain, via Venezuela, the S-300 anti-missile systems that Russia, backing out of a 2007 contract, has now promised it will not hand over to Tehran. “This is a real possibility, considering the close ties between Venezuela and Iran,” an Israeli official familiar with the deal told The Jerusalem Post.

Venezuela and Iran are close allies. Indeed, Chavez has visited counterpart Mahmoud Ahmadinejad eight times, most recently last month, when he inked a number of agreements aimed at increasing their strategic partnership. The S-300 is one of the most advanced multi-target anti-aircraft-missile systems in the world, with a purported ability to track up to 100 targets simultaneously while engaging up to 12. It has a range of about 200 kilometers and can take out targets at altitudes of 90,000 feet.

[vector7]

Venezuela’s proposed S-300 purchase: a case of annoying the neighbours


By Adam Dempsey, Research Associate in Residence, UK Defence Forum

Russia's search an alternative buyer for S-300 air-defence missile batteries originally earmarked for Iran appears to have been hastily resolved. On 18th October Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez announced to journalists in Kiev, Ukraine, that his country intends to purchase five S-300s. The deal is expected to cost Venezuela $800 million. Russia's compliance with United Nations Resolution 1929 vindicates international consensus that Iran would use the S-300s to protect nuclear facilities. As it is highly unlikely that Venezuela has a similar nuclear programme the sale of the S-300s to Caracas should be comparatively easy. Yet why would Venezuela need to make such a purchase?

An overview of the S-300 suggests that Venezuela will be purchasing one of the most formidable air-defence systems currently available. The S-300 is capable of engaging six incoming targets simultaneously at ranges of up to 300km. According to the Federation of American Scientists the S-300 is also able to counter intensive air raids at low-to-high altitudes. The system can also be used to target low altitude objects such as cruise missiles and possibly to intercept strategic ballistic missiles.

Should Iran have completed the purchase of the S-300s the dynamics of the Middle East security environment would also have changed. As Iran's outdated air defences remain in place both the United States and Israel can retain the option of a pre-emptive strike on Tehran's nuclear facilities. Whilst the deployment of S-300s would do little to deter a larger-scale American bombardment it is likely that Tel Aviv would reassess its options. Yet this makes Chavez's decision to purchase the S-300s all the more mystifying.

Not only is it blindingly obvious that Chavez faces little in the way external security challenges, relations with his fiercest local rival have recently improved. Caracas's diplomatic ties with Bogota improved almost as quickly as they were severed after the then-President Alvaro Uribe's declaration to the Organisation of American States that Venezuela was harbouring terrorists. By mid-August full relations had been restored and on the 3rd November Chavez signed trade agreements with his counterpart Juan Manuel Santos.

Colombia's position as Venezuela's second largest trading partner was a likely determinant of restored diplomatic relations. Of even greater significance are suggestions that Colombia may not ratify a military accord with the United States. Signed in October 2009, the accord built upon existing cooperation to allow the US military access to specific Colombian facilities. Chavez's response was that the accord permitted the United States to increase its regional military presence and carry out covert activities against countries politically at odds with Washington.

What Chavez overlooked was that the accord actually granted the US access to facilities to undertake mutually agreed activities with Colombia. Further, the accord did not alter the personnel ceiling of 800 military and 600 civilian staff allowed to use the facilities. Yet Chavez appeared quick to label Santos's decision not to process the accord as a victory for 'rationality, common sense and responsibility.' Whilst improved diplomatic relations may have played a part, it is likely that a High Court decision requiring the accord to be ratified by Congress was more influential.

Whilst any kind of attack on Venezuela remains inconceivable, the question still remains: why does Chavez need to make as bold a purchase as the S-300? Should the deal be completed Venezuela will be consolidating ever closer military ties with Russia. In September 2009, for example, Russia granted Venezuela a $2.2 billion loan for the purchase of military equipment. The deal includes 92 T-72 main battle tanks and 12 9K58 Smerch multiple rocket systems. It is speculated that Venezuela has also purchased 12 Tor-1 air-defence systems with Russian loans. Whilst the Tor-1 is less formidable than the S-300, the purchase of the latter seems extreme considering Venezuela does not need such an extensive air-defence capability.

Instead, Chavez's proposed purchase of the S-300s should be regarded as a rather expensive addition to his anti-Washington rhetoric. From the outset of his presidency Chavez has presented himself as a talisman for those who accuse the United States of neglecting its own backyard. In the case of Venezuela, Chavez has used the excesses of the corrupt oil industry to embark upon social and economic programmes that challenge the influence of Washington over his country. Closer military ties with Russia also serve this purpose. Whilst joint Russian-Venezuelan naval exercises in the Caribbean in 2008 can be viewed as Moscow's response to Washington's support for Georgia, the opportunity to annoy the United States would not have been lost on Chavez. Purchasing weapons originally meant for Iran merely adds to that!

What the sale of the S-300s to Venezuela means for Russia will be the subject of further analysis coming soon.