Red Dawn Alert: Cold War allies Russia, Nicaragua joint military exercises and bases

[Perilous Times]

Russia, Nicaragua to hold joint military exercise - Lavrov

Russia and Nicaragua are preparing for joint military exercises, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Monday after a meeting with the Nicaraguan president in Managua.

Lavrov, who arrived to the Nicaraguan capital on a one-day official visit on Sunday, said the two states are developing military and technical cooperation and "are preparing joint military drills."

He added that Russia would continue its humanitarian aid to Nicaragua.
The Nicaraguan leader, Daniel Ortega, said, in his turn, that the two states are also set to boost efforts against drug trafficking and organized crime.

"We have military and technical cooperation to jointly strengthen the potential of our army and police in fighting against drug trafficking and organized crime," he said.

MANAGUA, February 15, 2010 (RIA Novosti).

[Ryan Ruck]

Welcome PT!

I've suspected for a while we'd start seeing Nicaragua being brought back into the Russian (now TAA) fold just like during the Cold War. How soon before Russia starts rebuilding its assets there?

[Malsua]

Central America is looking for someone to hold up their strings, you get showered upon with toys and cash.

[American Patriot]

Welcome to the site, PT. Or at least welcome to the realm of non-lurkers!

I have been bitching... I mean pointing this out for 9 years or so now. It's going to happen. It's simply a matter of when.

[vector7]

PT

Excellent point!!!

Looking just to our south we've done a decent job at keeping some of our neighbors armed...











With TAA nations arming the rest of Central and South America while we begin to decline as a superpower...









When America is at her weakest a coordinated first strike scenario happens, the US Air Force and Navy are dealt severe blows.



Some major cities are destroyed.

Shortly after CTSO member forces arrive on the East Coast...
























A coalition of Mexican, Central American forces penetrate several points to our south.










































And finally on the West Coast a Chinese led invasion force arrives...





























I'll let your imagination take care of the rest...

[Malsua]

Wow, that's a lot of Barret's running around. I just want one.

[Ryan Ruck]

Don't worry Mal. If you're a good enough shot, you'll be able to have one on the second day of fighting.

[Malsua]

Don't worry Mal. If you're a good enough shot, you'll be able to have one on the second day of fighting.

See that's the thing.

Grab 500 people off the street, I'm better than 498 of them.

Grab 100 people at the range, I'm shooting somewhere in the middle of the bunch.

Grab 100 Marine snipers and I'm probably in the bottom 10. I have good breathe control and good trigger discipline but folks that do it for a living are going to be better than I am.

[American Patriot]

See that's the thing.

Grab 500 people off the street, I'm better than 498 of them.

Grab 100 people at the range, I'm shooting somewhere in the middle of the bunch.

Grab 100 Marine snipers and I'm probably in the bottom 10. I have good breathe control and good trigger discipline but folks that do it for a living are going to be better than I am.

You'd be surprised.

Marine snipers are good. I know one personally, and very well. My Dad.

But... there's more to being a sniper than just shooting.

[vector7]

Perilous Times, I like your Blog, excellent work!!!

Friday, February 19, 2010

Latin America File: Russian FM ends regional tour in Mexico City, US State Dept. gives green light to Russian-Mexican plan to suppress drug cartels


- Moscow Presents Mexico City with Its Own Version of US Merida Initiative, Offers to Sell Helicopters, Weapons; Russian Military “Advisers” Next?

- 200,000 People Flee Drug War in Ciudad Juarez since 2008, 30,000 Seek Shelter in Neighboring El Paso, Texas; Mexican City's Once-Prosperous Economy in Danger of Collapsing

On February 16 Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov held talks with Mexican counterpart Patricia Espinosa in Mexico City, wrapping up a four-nation tour of Latin America, which included stopovers in Cuba, Nicaragua, and Guatemala. Cuba and Nicaragua, of course, are reliable vassal states in the Communist Bloc.

While rubbing elbows with President Daniel Ortega in Managua, Lavrov announced that the two Cold War allies will hold joint military exercises. The date and place of these drills was not stated but, with the expectation that Russian troops could arrive in Central America in the near future, we published this news under a “Red Dawn Alert.” If a Soviet-Sandinista drill had taken place during US President Ronald Reagan’s watch, then the world would have trembled on the brink of nuclear war. Twenty years later, the Obama White House and the MSM cannot be roused from their self-delusions.

In any case, emerging from the Russian-Mexican tete-a-tete was an agreement to start direct flights between Moscow and Cancun. The 14-hour flight to the popular resort destination on the Yucatan Peninsula will offer Russian tourists another vacation hotspot in addition to Cuba. Both countries also emphasized their interest in signing an Investment Promotion and Reciprocal Protection accord, as well as advancing cooperation agreements in energy, nuclear power, maritime and air transportation, and customs clearance.

Espinosa repeated Mexico’s invitation for Russia to participate in events commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Mexican Revolution, which transformed the USA’s southern neighbor into the world’s first socialist republic in February 1917. Mexico City later became a haven for Russian revolutionary, Leon Trotsky, who was attempting to dodge Joseph Stalin’s assassins. The Bolshevik killers eventually caught up with Trotsky, who succumbed to a pickax in the head in 1940.

Pictured above: Espinosa and Lavrov at a previous meeting in Moscow, on October 8, 2008. At the time they discussed reforming the international financial system or, that is, making the world less dependent on the US dollar.

Many decades later, the Soviet strategists still have sinister plans for Mexico. State-run Novosti reports that while visiting Mexico City, Lavrov reiterated Moscow’s readiness to establish joint Russian-Mexican efforts to suppress the drug cartels, whose insurrection also threatens US national security, especially along the porous US-Mexican border.

Under the terms of the Merida Initiative, Washington pledged to supply weapons and other military equipment to the armed forces of Mexico and Central American allies like Honduras. In terms of combating international terrorism, narcotics trafficking, and money laundering, the Merida Initiative parallels Plan Colombia and the October 2009 US-Colombian military pact. In a New Year’s speech, President Felipe Calderon declared that his government’s top priority for 2010 is suppressing the cartels. The US government, though, has been slack in expediting the arrival of badly needed counter-insurgency hardware.

The presentation of a Russian version of the Merida Initiative, therefore, dovetails nicely with the Soviet strategy for destabilizing Mexico prior to attacking the USA. We have elsewhere documented that the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the main source of South American coke, and the Mexican drug cartels are recipients of arms supplied by the Russian Mafia. The latter is a well-known front for Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), itself a repackaged version of the Soviet KGB’s overseas department, and the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Russian Armed Forces (GRU).

Most troubling of all, the US State Department, long infiltrated by communist agents, has given Moscow the green light to arm the Mexican military. State Dept. spokesman Mark Toner recently soothed: “There are no grounds for anxiety. I mean, Mexico is a close neighbor, friend, partner with the United States. I would just say it’s welcome to pursue bilateral relationships with any country it wants to, including Russia.” When reporters asked Toner whether the strengthening of ties between Russia and Mexico would adversely affect US-Russian relations, Toner said: “No, I don't believe so.”

Lavrov, too, downplayed Moscow's geopolitical interest in Latin America, as well as its marketing campaign for Russian-built weapons:

We have recently increased supplies of Russian arms in various regions of the world, including Latin America; our interests are purely commercial.

Russia is still behind the United States [in terms of sales], but we’re seeing certain rather serious progress. The Mexican government is interested in acquiring different types of weapons, including helicopters for coastal monitoring, and other equipment to fight drug trafficking and organized crime, that I hope will help our Mexican friends to combat this scourge.

The epicenter of Mexico’s narco-insurgency is Ciudad Juarez, a once-prosperous city whose population of 1.5 million has contracted by 200,000 since mid-2008. Fearing for their lives, wealthy and middle class families, as well as skilled workers have fled the war zone for other cities such as Guadalajara and Monterrey. Nearly 30,000 residents have sought shelter over the border to El Paso, Texas.

About one quarter of the city’s houses is vacant. Many shops and restaurants are shuttered. Mounds of garbage fill streets where the only parked cars are bullet-riddled ones. Civilians are scarcely seen in streets patrolled by soldiers and elite police units. Drug gangs in league with corrupt law enforcement officers run extortion rackets.

Although factories continue to operate, US businessmen are curtailing investment in the region and the exodus of skilled workers threatens to create a labor shortage. In 2008 the region handled US$50 billion in trade, but now faces a bleak future.

Drug killings in Ciudad Juarez exploded in early 2008 when Mexico’s most-wanted drug lord, Joaquin “Shorty” Guzman, dispatched his henchmen to wrest the city’s drug corridor from the local cartel headed by Vicente Carrillo Fuentes. From the vantage of Latin America’s cocaine kingpins Ciudad Juarez is strategically situated at the midpoint of the US-Mexican border and boasts highway and rail links deep into the target country. Not so coincidentally, from the vantage of Russia’s military planners, the US Army’s second-largest installation in the Continental USA, Ford Bliss, is located nearby.

Since 2008 more than 4,500 drug operatives--working for half a dozen feuding cartels-- civilians, soldiers, and police have been shot dead and/or decapitated in the city’s bloody turf wars. A dozen drug murders occur every day. Across Mexico 18,000 people have died since Calderon launched his crackdown in 2006. Casualty estimates vary and it is therefore likely that we have quoted different figures in different posts.

Having fomented Mexico’s narco-insurgency, the Soviet strategists now offer “solutions” consisting of an expanding net of bilateral relations and opportunities to legitimately insert Russian military “advisers” into Mexico. At the same time, the drug cartels can be expected to intensify their war against the government, while the beleaguered populace once again demands United Nations intervention, such as was issued by Ciudad Juarez business leaders last November. If either scenario comes to pass, then you can be assured that we will issue another “Red Dawn Alert.”

posted by Perilous Times at 4:40 AM 4 comments links to this

[Perilous Times]

For April Independence Day march-past and Chavez praise-fest. From February 12, 2010 edition of state-run Voice of Russia:

Army units from Russia, Belarus, Vietnam and China will participate in the April Independence Day military parade in Venezuela marking the country's 200^th independence anniversary, President Hugo Chavez announced Thursday.

Have a nice day, folks.

WWOD? (What would Obama do?)

[Malsua]

WWOD? (What would Obama do?)

Cheer and waive a Che flag while watching in awe?

[vector7]

WWOD? (What would Obama do?)

Invite them all to share in the Marxist Utopian Dream by sending military brigades to help restore order during the Revolution.

[Malsua]

Obama would probably just send a check backed by US taxpayer dollars ushering in a worker's paradise.

[vector7]

Red Dawn - One Clenched Fist

[vector7]

Guatemala seeks to expand ties with Russia — foreign ministry



© RIA Novosti.Yuriy Nikolayev

Related News

• Venezuelan MPs approve Junin 6 oil deal with Russia — local TV
• Russia boosts arms sales to Latin America — Lavrov
• Russian foreign minister arrives in Cuba to improve trade
• Guatemalan leader's visit to Russia delayed

04:3221/03/2010

Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom will arrive in Russia on Sunday on a three-day visit to discuss the expansion of bilateral ties and joint investment in various business projects.

It is the first visit of a Guatemalan head of state to Russia in the history of Russian-Guatemalan relations, which dates back 65 years.

"We regard the visit of Alvaro Colom to Russia as an historic event and we are certain that it will give a new boost to our bilateral relations," the Guatemalan Foreign Ministry told RIA Novosti.

"The Guatemalan economy is one of the leading economies in Central America. Besides, the country has free-trade agreements with the United States, Mexico and Canada. Russia could benefit from the opportunity to use our country as a foothold to promote its goods in the region," the ministry said.

Guatemala has expressed interest in establishing cooperation with Russia in oil refining and mining, telecommunications, transport and tourism.

Alvaro Colom earlier said it would be a mistake for Guatemala or other Latin American countries to neglect relations and cooperation with such a prominent partner as Russia.

The leftist Guatemalan leader will meet with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Monday.

The presidents are expected to issue a joint statement and sign an agreement on the protection of joint investment, among other documents.

MEXICO, March 21 (RIA Novosti)

[vector7]

Red Dawn Alert: Cuba’s top general arrives in Moscow; Putin visits Caracas, offers to sell US$5 billion in weapons, build rail lines



- Venezuelan General Visits Belarusian Military Academy; Minsk to Build Trucks, Tractors, and Apartments in Venezuela

- Pending Russian Upgrades for Nicaragua's Soviet-Era Armament Worry Costa Rica, VP Refutes Newspaper's Accusations

- Central America’s Communist and Social Democratic Leaders Woo President Lobo, Offer Recognition of Honduran Government

- Bomb Blows Up at US Consulate in Nuevo Laredo, No Casualties in 2nd Attack on US Diplomatic Facilities in Mexico

The Soviet strategists are moving ahead with plans to revitalize their military relationship with Communist Cuba and neo-Sandinista Nicaragua, as well as greatly expand their military cooperation with Red Venezuela. Together, this communist troika, which we call the Havana-Caracas-Managua Axis, along with the communist regimes in Bolivia and Ecuador, constitutes a not insignificant military threat to the national security of the USA’s allies in the region, especially Honduras, Panama, and Colombia. The pro-business, pro-Washington regimes in Peru and Chile, the latter installed in March, are also targets of subversion by domestic chapters of Hugo Chavez’s Bolivarian agents.

Today Cuba’s top general Alvaro Lopez-Miera (pictured above) led a military delegation to Moscow. Lopez-Miera, who is Chief of the General Staff of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Cuba, was welcomed at the airport by first deputy chief of the Russian General Staff, Lieutenant General Alexander Burutin. Later today Lopez-Miera and Burutin will visit the Russian General Staff Military Academy and inspect a brigade that has been restructured under the Russian military’s ongoing modernization program.

Tomorrow Lopez-Miera will hold talks with his Russian counterpart Army General Nikolai Makarov, where they will analyze bilateral military cooperation and the prospects for new agreements in the same field. On April 14 Lopez-Miera will visit Russian armament companies where there will be demonstrations of air defense systems that Havana is eyeing for its own protection against a hypothetical US invasion.

For his part, Makarov visited Cuba last September to discuss the modernization of the Cuban armed forces under Russian auspices. In October 2008 the chief of Russia’s air defense battalions, General Alexander Maslov, flew to Cuba to assess the readiness of the island’s air defenses, while Novosti reported that in the same year Russian bomber crews surveyed a site on the island that could serve as a potential refuelling base. During the First Cold War (1945-1991), the Soviet Union was Cuba’s primary benefactor, a role delegated of late to Venezuela.

Meanwhile, both Russia and Cuba are rapidly transforming Venezuela into another Communist Bloc satellite. In February President Chavez appointed Cuba’s Vice President Ramiro Valdez to head a commission tasked with fixing Venezuela’s power grid, which is beset with regular outages. On April 2 Russia’s KGB-communist dictator, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, materialized in Caracas where he discussed bilateral cooperation on oil exploration and drilling, nuclear energy production, and defense, although no new arms agreements were apparently signed.

“Our delegation has just returned from Venezuela and the overall volume of orders could exceed $5 billion,” Putin expounded hopefully to Russian news agencies upon returning to his homeland. Putin added: “This figure includes $2.2 billion in credit lines for Russian arms received by Chavez during his eighth visit to Moscow in September, including T-72 tanks and the S-300 advanced anti-aircraft missile system.” Chavez was elected president of Venezuela in 1998.

Chavez has frankly admitted that his growing, Russian-built arsenal is aimed at countering a planned increase in the number of US counter-narcotics troops in neighboring Colombia, Washington's closest ally in South America. In response to the Soviet-Venezuelan strategic partnership, US State Department spokesentity P.J. Crowley blathered: “We’re hard pressed to see what legitimate defence needs Venezuela has for this equipment. If Venezuela is going to increase its military hardware, we certainly don't want to see this hardware migrate to other parts of the hemisphere.”

In addition to beefing up Venezuela’s armed forces, Russia has also pledged to install 30,860 miles of railroad lines in that country in a project that will be completed by 2013. Putin agreed to assist Chavez in this massive construction project during his Caracas stopover. “This agreement is being immediately real, with a factory for railroad lines, we have already signed the agreement,” explained Venezuela’s Minister of Public Works and Dwellings, Diosdado Cabello. Additionally, Venezuela intends with Russian oversight to build a second factory to weld railroad lines. Russian engineers are currently in the Venezuelan state of Aragua supervising the construction of two plants that will assemble under license Kalashnikov automatic rifles and their cartridges.

Over the weekend, Chavez tied his past and pending Russian arms acquisitions to the establishment of his Bolivarian Militia, a Cuban-style outfit that will arm students, farmers, and workers to repel a hypothetical US invasion. “We are getting ready, so nobody can make a mistake with us,” Chavez boasted on his televised weekly rant, Alo Presidente, exhorting Venezuelans to complete the “transition to the socialist model.”

The Soviet strategists, as we previously blogged, are also arming Venezuela by way of Belarus, whose president, “ex”-communist Alexander Lukashenko, rules the country with an iron fist, maintaining a Soviet-era command economy and suppressing political dissidents and ethnic Poles. During his mid-March trip to Caracas, preceding Putin’s by only several weeks, Lukashenko promised to “strengthen” Venezuela’s military but, according to the MSM, offered no details, saying only that “Venezuela should be able to live peacefully without worrying about potential foreign threats.”

On March 15, as Lukashenka inaugurated his visit, Chavez disclosed that Venezuela was ready to begin selling 80,000 barrels of oil per day to Belarus from the start of May. The two communist states also signed 20 agreements that will lead to the construction of two plants in Venezuela that will produce MAZ trucks and tractors, as well as apartments for 15,000 Venezuelan families. Belarusian specialists will oversee these building projects. Belarus’ Minsk oblast and Venezuela’s state of Aragua signed an agreement on twin-town relations. Aragua, as noted above, is the site of the Russian-built Kalashnikov factories.

On April 7 Belarusian-Venezuelan military cooperation received a boost when the chief of Venezuela’s military academy, Brigadier General Alexis Lopes Ramires, arrived in Minsk to tour that country’s military academy. The Venezuelan delegation acquainted itself with the forms and procedures of Belarusian military training, as well as with the academy’s curriculum. Incidentally, the independent Belarusian media linked above reports that the military equipment Lukashenko promised to Chavez includes Tor M-1 missile defense units, which can detect aircraft and cruise missiles, even under “intense” electronic jamming.

During the 1980s the Sandinista People’s Army boasted the largest armed forces in Central America. Anti-communists, both in the region and the USA, feared that Nicaragua would attack and overrun Honduras, Costa Rica, and El Salvador, then in the throes of an insurgency backed by Cuba and the Soviet Union. In 1984 Robert Gates, currently US Defense Secretary but then CIA's No. 2 official, advocated air strikes against Ortega's Marxist government.

Twenty years later, the Soviets are still around but feign death, the Sandinistas are again openly ruling, the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front is no longer a guerrilla army but the governing party, and Nicaragua’s neighbors are casting wary glances at the second Sandinista regime, which promptly cozied up to Moscow after Ortega’s re-election in 2006.

On April 8 Nicaraguan Vice President Jaime Morales, a former Contra rebel, rebutted assertions published in Costa Rican newspaper Al Dia that his country constitutes a threat to its southern neighbor. “Costa Rica has always said it has no army, but has a better equipped police that any army. You do not have tanks, helicopters or aircraft, but has a super well-armed police, and very large also,” he opined in televised remarks. He added: “Nicaragua only seeks to defend its sovereignty against drug trafficking and other external threats, but not to attack or to have confrontations with neighbors [because] they are our brothers. These are myths, rumors and gossip.”

Nothing was stated in this article from Inside Costa Rica about Russia’s pledge to upgrade Managua’s Soviet-era military hardware or renovate the Soviet-built runway at Punta Huete. However, any review of Nicaragua as a regional threat must be made in that light. Morales observed that Costa Rica’s center-left president-elect, Laura Chinchilla, has expressed her “good intention to have a fraternal closeness” with Nicaragua. “President Ortega,” Morales assured of his former personal enemy, “wants to have the best relations with all countries [more so] if there is a demonstration and an approach of a lady as that of the president of Costa Rica.”

Last July Honduras’ post-coup president, Roberto Micheletti, accused Nicaragua of provocatively moving troops to its northern border, allegedly to support Chavez’s direct statements about invading Honduras to “protect” Venezuelan diplomats.

Meanwhile, Nicaragua’s past/present Marxist dictator is playing nice with his center-right counterpart in Honduras, Porfirio Lobo, who was inaugurated in January after Micheletti stepped down. This past Friday Ortega greeted Lobo at Augusto Sandino International Airport in Managua. The World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and Inter-American Development Bank have resumed lending to Honduras, but the country remains suspended from the Organization of American States (OAS). Incidentally, last month Chilean socialist Jose Miguel Insulza was re-elected secretary general of the OAS.

Between June 28, when he was ousted from the presidency, and September 21, when he snuck back into Honduras, Nicaragua was home base for Manuel Zelaya, a compliant lackey of Chavez. During his exile Ortega and Brazilian President Lula da Silva championed Zelaya’s reinstatement. Changing his tune on April 9, Ortega intoned piously: “Unity is a vital need for Central America. Central American leaders must respond to the Central American Integration System, to strengthen the political, economic and social unity in the region.” Jacinto Suarez, who is in charge of foreign relations policy for the ruling Sandinista National Liberation Front, declared: “This is of great significance. It re-establishes communication between the two countries.”

On Sunday Ortega and Lobo were scheduled to fly to Guatemala City where they were to meet Guatemala’s center-left President Alvaro Colom and Salvadoran President Mauricio Funes. Normalizing ties with Honduras was the main item on the menu. Although putatively center-left in orientation, Funes represents the ruling Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, whose Politburo is dominated by hard-core Marxists. Honduras’ withdrawal from the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas last November was a blow to the Latin American Red Axis, which is committed to regional integration at the expense of capitalism and US influence.

Finally, Mexico’s Moscow-backed narco-insurgents are again targeting US interests. On Saturday morning an explosion occurred at the US consulate in Nuevo Laredo in the northeastern state of Tamaulipas. There were no casualties from the homemade bomb. Mexican authorities are conducting an investigation, while the US State Department decided to close its consulates in Nuevo Laredo and in the state of Coahuila. This is the second attack on US consular staff in Mexico within one month. On March 13, three people connected to the US consulate in war-wracked Ciudad Juarez were killed by gunmen, presumably linked to the country’s powerful drug cartels.

In conclusion, ask your neighbour if he appreciates the neo-communist threat south of the Rio Grande and, apart from some dim awareness of “nutjobs” like Chavez, you will likely receive an uncomprehending stare.

posted by Perilous Times at 6:36 PM 1 comments

[American Patriot]

Holy shit.

That just confirmed some stuff I was writing.

[vector7]

The Washington Times
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Iran boosts Qods shock troops in Venezuela

Bill Gertz



Iran is increasing its paramilitary Qods force operatives in Venezuela while covertly continuing supplies of weapons and explosives to Taliban and other insurgents in Afghanistan and Iraq, according to the Pentagon's first report to Congress on Tehran's military.

The report on Iranian military power provides new details on the group known formally as the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps-Qods Force (IRGC-QF), the Islamist shock troops deployed around the world to advance Iranian interests. The unit is aligned with terrorists in Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel, North Africa and Latin America, and the report warns that U.S. forces are likely to battle the Iranian paramilitaries in the future.

The Qods force "maintains operational capabilities around the world," the report says, adding that "it is well established in the Middle East and North Africa and recent years have witnessed an increased presence in Latin America, particularly Venezuela."

"If U.S. involvement in conflict in these regions deepens, contact with the IRGC-QF, directly or through extremist groups it supports, will be more frequent and consequential," the report says.

The report provides the first warning in an official U.S. government report about Iranian paramilitary activities in the Western Hemisphere. It also highlights links between Iran and the anti-U.S. government of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who has been accused of backing Marxist terrorists in Colombia.

• Click here to view the report. (PDF)

The report gives no details on the activities of the Iranians in Venezuela and Latin America. Iranian-backed terrorists have conducted few attacks in the region. However, U.S. intelligence officials say Qods operatives are developing networks of terrorists in the region who could be called to attack the United States in the event of a conflict over Iran's nuclear program.

Qods force support for extremists includes providing arms, funding and paramilitary training and is not constrained by Islamist ideology. "Many of the groups it supports do not share, and sometimes openly oppose, Iranian revolutionary principles, but Iran supports them because they share common interests or enemies," the report says.

Qods force commandos are posted in Iranian embassies, charities and religious and cultural institutions that support Shi'ite Muslims. While providing some humanitarian support, Qods forces also engage in "paramilitary operations to support extremists and destabilize unfriendly regimes," the report says.

The report links Qods force operatives and the larger IRGC to some of the deadliest terrorist attacks of the past 20 years: the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut in 1983, the bombing of a Jewish center in Argentina in 1994, the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia and many insurgent attacks in Iraq since 2003.

Qods forces in Afghanistan are working through nongovernmental organizations and political opposition groups, the report says. Tehran also is backing insurgent leaders Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Ismail Khan.

"Arms caches have been recently uncovered [in Afghanistan] with large amounts of Iranian-manufactured weapons, to include 107 millimeter rockets, which we assess IRGC-QF delivered to Afghan militants," the report says, noting that recent manufacture dates on the weapons suggest the support is "ongoing."

"Tehran's support to the Taliban is inconsistent with their historic enmity, but fits with Iran's strategy of backing many groups to ensure that it will have a positive relationship with the eventual leaders," the report says.

In Iraq, Qods forces are supporting terrorists through Iranian embassies. The report says the outgoing Iranian ambassador to Iraq, Hassan Kazemi-Qomi, is a member, as well as the new ambassador in Baghdad, Hassan Danafar.

Iranian support for Shi'ite militants in Iraq has included the supply of armor-piercing explosively formed projectiles, as well as other homemade bombs, anti-aircraft weapons, rockets, rocket-propelled grenades and explosives.

The report says the elite Iranian fighters are controlled by Iran's government, despite efforts by the group to mask Tehran's control.

"Although its operations sometimes appear at odds with the public voice of the Iranian regime, it is not a rogue outfit," the report says. "It receives direction from the highest levels of the government and its leaders report directly, albeit informally, to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei," the report says.

Kenneth Katzman, a Middle East specialist with the Congressional Research Service, said the report's identification of Qods force operatives in Venezuela is significant.

"The new information on an increased Qods Force presence in Venezuela … amplifies the warnings of some experts about an increasingly close, anti-U.S. relationship between Iran and the government of Hugo Chavez," Mr. Katzman said.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates recently played down the growing Iranian influence in the Chavez government. Asked about Iran's ties to Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador, Mr. Gates said, "I think it makes for interesting public relations on the part of the Iranians, the Venezuelans."

"I certainly don't see Venezuela at this point as a military challenge or threat," Mr. Gates said during a visit to the region.

The report also states that Iran could conduct a test of a long-range missile by 2015 and now has missiles that can strike all of Israel.

"Iran continues to develop a ballistic missile that can range regional adversaries, Israel and central Europe, including Iranian claims of an extended range variant of the [620-mile-range] Shahab-3 and a [1,242-mile] medium range ballistic missile, the Ashura," the report says.

The report notes that Iran has the largest missile force in the Middle East, with about 1,000 missiles with ranges of between 90 miles and 1,200 miles. The missile program was developed and expanded with extensive help from North Korea and China, the report says.

The missiles have grown in sophistication with increased accuracy, warhead lethality and advanced technology that includes solid propellent for quick launches and anti-missile-defense capabilities for warheads.

The report says Iran is developing its military forces with some asymmetric weapons, including armed unmanned aircraft and coastal anti-ship missiles that can hit targets throughout the Strait of Hormuz, where up to 40 percent of the world's crude oil passes.

Iran's military is growing but "would be relatively ineffective against a direct assault by well-trained, sophisticated military such as that of the United States or its allies," the report says.

However, Iranian special forces, like the Qods force, "would present a formidable force on Iranian territory," the report says.

The report provides no new details on Iran's covert nuclear program that was described as geared toward developing nuclear weapons. Iran's purchase of advanced Russian S-300 air defense missiles, which so far have not been delivered, are for use at nuclear sites, the report says.

The U.S. is leading a U.N. Security Council effort to sanction Iran for its presumed attempts to develop an atomic weapon in violation of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

[American Patriot]

The unit is aligned with terrorists in Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel, North Africa and Latin America, and the report warns that U.S. forces are likely to battle the Iranian paramilitaries in the future.

Oh REALLY?

How about we all arm up and let them know we're not going to take their shit and US forces include all Americans....

The report provides the first warning in an official U.S. government report about Iranian paramilitary activities in the Western Hemisphere. It also highlights links between Iran and the anti-U.S. government of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who has been accused of backing Marxist terrorists in Colombia.

And Obama likes this guy?