Chavez and Iran

.Hugo Chavez's Iran Uranium Offer: A New Security Threat?
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Delicious Digg Facebook Fark Newsvine Reddit StumbleUpon Technorati Twitter Yahoo! Bookmarks .Print ..By TIM PADGETT Tim Padgett – Fri Oct 9, 2:30 pm ET
When Venezuela's Mining Minister Rodolfo Sanz walked into a televised Cabinet meeting this week, President Hugo ChÁvez impishly asked, "So how's the uranium for Iran going? For the atomic bomb." ChÁvez was joking, but few were laughing outside Caracas and Tehran. Ever since ChÁvez announced last month that he was seeking Russia's help to develop nuclear energy in Venezuela - and especially since Sanz turned heads a couple of weeks ago by disclosing that Iran is helping Venezuela locate its own uranium reserves - the South American nation and its socialist, anti-U.S. government have become a new focus of anxiety over regional if not global security.


But how big a concern should Venezuela be? ChÁvez delights in getting a rise out of the U.S., and his alliance with Iran and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is largely a calculated affront to Washington - his version of Cuba's Cold War partnership with the Soviet Union. It's little coincidence that Sanz made his announcement the same day the U.S. and its allies called Iran on the existence of a secret nuclear-fuel plant near the Iranian city of Qum. The U.S. and the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) fear that Iran is on the verge of bolting the global Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and developing not just nuclear energy but a nuclear weapon, a charge Tehran denies. Venezuela's ties to the Islamic Republic, as a result, have taken on dimensions beyond just tweaking Uncle Sam's nose. (See the 10 worst-dressed world leaders.)