The Tehran-Caracas Nuclear Axis

Bret Stephens über die radioaktive Zusammenarbeit Venezuelas und Irans:

Perhaps the most interesting Iranian venture is a supposed gold mine not far from Angel Falls, in a remote area known as the Roraima Basin. The basin straddles Venezuela’s border with neighboring Guyana, where a Canadian company, U308, thinks it has found the „geological look-alike“ to Canada’s Athabasca Basin. The Athabasca, the company’s Web site adds, „is the world’s largest resource of uranium.“

In 2006, Chávez publicly mocked suspicions of nuclear cooperation with Iran, saying it „shows they have no limit in their capacity to invent lies.“ In September, however, Rodolfo Sanz, Venezuela’s minister of basic industries, acknowledged that „Iran is helping us with geophysical aerial probes and geochemical analyses“ in its search for uranium.

The official basis for this cooperation seems to be a Nov. 14, 2008 memorandum of understanding signed by the two countries‘ ministers of science and technology and given to me by a credible foreign intelligence source. „The two parties agreed to cooperate in the field of nuclear technology,“ reads the Spanish version of the document, which also makes mention of the „peaceful use of alternative energies.“ Days later, the Venezuelan government submitted a paper to the International Atomic Energy Agency on the „Introduction of a Nuclear Power Programme.“ (Online readers can see the memorandum for themselves in their Farsi and Spanish versions. One mystery: The Farsi version makes no mention of nuclear cooperation.)

Iran would certainly require large and reliable supplies of uranium if it is going to enrich the nuclear fuel in 10 separate plants—an ambition Ahmadinejad spelled out last month. It would also require an extensive financial and logistical infrastructure network in Venezuela, not to mention unusually good political connections. All this it has in spades. [Weiterlesen…]