A Venezuelan Nuclear Threat?

Remember Cuba 1962? Who would have thought that that little country could possibly be a serious threat to the United States? Double-speaking diplomats convinced the JFK administration that there was no danger—until a U-2 fly-over revealed soviet rocket silos being built on the island nation in abundance. The U.S. was caught unprepared for that situation; and heavy-handed government means had to be used to get the soviets to tear down the silos and ship them back to the U.S.S.R.

A very similar situation is building up in Venezuela today. Covert Iranian government operations are going on there according to intercepted memoranda. The memoranda are passing between the science and technology ministers of the two countries. The memoranda say that “the two parties agreed to cooperate in the field of nuclear technology.” The leaders of these two countries, Ahmadinijad and Hugo Chavez, have met eleven times recently. I wonder what they are talking about.

An Iranian “tractor factory” has been established in Ciudad Bolivar. A shipment of 22containers of “tractor parts” was intercepted in Turkey and officials report that the containers contained equipment and materials for setting up an explosives lab.

An Iranian “gold mine” has been established on the border of Venezuela and Guyana where one of the world’s richest supplies of uranium awaits excavation. Regular flights of an Airbus 340 travel to Damascus and Tehran. What do you think might be in those flights?

Americans had better wake up. There is trouble brewing in our next-door neighbor, Venezuela.

This article was excerpted from the Wall Street Journal 15 Dec 2009, page A19.