Terrorist team-up: Iran is the new locus of the clash between East and West. But with its ties to Venezuela, the Middle Eastern power is extending its dangerous influence to the Western Hemisphere.

On September 17, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visited the oil-rich South American nation of Venezuela. The visit further cemented the already-cozy relations between the two nations. Earlier, on July 30, Iran awarded Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez with the Islamic Republic Medal, Iran's highest award. On that occasion Ahmadinejad was effusive in his praise for the Venezuelan leader. Chavez, he said, "has resisted imperialism for years and has defended the interests of his and other Latin American countries."

The budding alliance between the two nations solidified with the recent reciprocal visit of Ahmadinejad to Venezuela. The two nations announced that they would set up a munitions plant and an automobile plant in Venezuela and would cooperate to build housing and explore for oil and other energy resources. "Iran is generously transferring technology to us," Chavez announced shortly before the Iranian president arrived. For his part, Ahmadinejad signaled that the relationship between the two nations was strategically important for Iran. Claiming that Iran and Venezuela are both "heroic nations" with "two revolutions that are giving each other a hand," Ahmadinejad noted: "Today we have thoughts, objectives and interests in common.... We must be united to be able to make these ideas reality with the aim of achieving justice and peace in the world."

Despite the pleasant talk coming from the Iranian and Venezuelan leaders, the emerging partnership between Iran and Venezuela is a new and menacing threat to the stability and security of the United States. Islamo-Fascist Iran is the most dangerous state in the Middle East, and Marxist Venezuela, led by Fidel Castro cohort Hugo Chavez, rivals Cuba as most dangerous state in the West. Both have vast reserves of oil and treasuries bursting at the seams with ready cash, both have ties to terrorism, and both are bent on the destruction of the United States.

From the Soviet Playbook

Ahmadinejad has said that he thinks Iran should "lead the world." If he is serious and not just posturing, then Iran has to find a way to check U.S. military and diplomatic power when and if it is brought to bear against Iranian interests and pretensions. The situation is not unlike that faced by the Soviet Union in the 1950s. Faced with a U.S. presence in Europe, the Soviet Union needed a Western Hemisphere base from which it could threaten U.S. interests. Castro's takeover of Cuba gave the Soviets such a base, and they quickly began constructing missile sites on the island, leading to the Cuban missile crisis.

Iran today is in an even more vulnerable situation. The United States has troops, weapons, and unlimited basing capability in Iraq and more of the same on the other side of Iran in Afghanistan. Moreover, U.S. naval power can turn the Persian Gulf into a U.S. lake at a whim. From Iran's perspective, it needs a foothold in the West to counter U.S. theater supremacy in the Middle East. In this sense, Venezuela gives Iran what Cuba gave to the Soviet Union, though in Iran's case, missiles aren't needed.

Venezuela has another weapon: oil. According to the U.S. Energy Information Agency, the United States imports 1.4 million barrels of oil per day from Venezuela, making that nation our fourth largest supplier of oil. Venezuela's Chavez has long viewed oil as a weapon. According to Nikolas Kozloff, senior research fellow at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, before coming to power Chavez said, "Oil is a geopolitical weapon and these imbeciles who govern us don't realize the power they have, as an oil-producing country." Moreover, Chavez has threatened to use his oil weaponry in the past. According to Kozloff, Chavez has warned "that if it occurs to the United States, or to someone there, to invade us, that they can forget about Venezuelan oil."

Venezuela cannot afford to cut off exports to the United States unless it can find an alternative market for its oil. This is, in fact, just what Chavez is trying to do. Under his leadership Venezuela has been seeking an oil deal with China. This has been made easier by Chavez' cozy relationship with Iran. That nation already has lucrative oil contacts with Beijing and has been willing to help Venezuela get similar access to China. On January 31, 2005, the Financial Times reported: "A team of traders from Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), the state-owned oil company, is to be trained in London by Iranian advisers in how to best place oil in Asian markets." That this move is not merely a business decision is reflected in the fact that Venezuelan oil has to be sold to China at a discount to offset the cost of shipping. "Sending oil to China might not be economically viable, but Chavez's motives are not always economic," an unnamed diplomat in Caracas told the Financial Times.

Because Iran is not a major supplier of oil to the United States, it can't employ its own oil as a weapon against the United States. But in Hugo Chavez, Iran has found an ally that has dreams of using oil to dam age U.S. interests. If Venezuela can begin selling enough oil to China to offset exports to the United States, then it's a safe bet that Chavez will threaten to shut off the U.S. spigot whenever Iran gives the word.

Terrorist Nations

While oil is the main strategic weapon available to an Iran-Venezuela partnership, it is by no means the only one. A strong partnership between the two nations increases the ability of both to train, host, and direct terrorists and their activities. Both nations maintain ties to terrorism. Venezuela under Chavez supported FARC, the Colombian Marxist terrorist organization. According to Thor Halverssen, a Venezuelan and president of the Human Rights Foundation, writing in the Weekly Standard, "FARC leaders are welcomed in Venezuela and treated as heads of state. The prominent FARC leader Olga Marin, for example, spoke on the floor of Venezuela's National Assembly in the summer of 2000, praising Hugo Chavez as a hero of the rebel movement and thanking the Venezuelan government for its 'support.'"

Very little needs to be said about Iran's sponsorship of terrorism, especially with its well-known ties to Hezbollah, a dangerous organization that has carried out attacks around the world. In fact, Hezbollah even has operatives in the United States. According to terrorism expert Matthew Levitt, a senior fellow with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and a former FBI analyst, "FBI officials testified in February 2002 that 'FBI investigations to date continue to indicate that many Hezbollah subjects based in the United States have the capability to attempt terrorist attacks here should this be a desired objective of the group.'"

The group has carried out attacks in the Western Hemisphere before. In 1992, Hezbollah bombed the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires, and in 1994, it carried out an attack on the Jewish Community Center in that same city that left 100 innocent people dead and another 250 wounded. The attack was ordered by Iran. According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, "The decision in principle to strike at the Jewish community center was made in August 1993 at a meeting chaired by Iranian spiritual leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Other participants included [the Iranian] President Rafsanjani, Intelligence Minister Ali Fallahian, Khamenei's intelligence and security adviser, Muhamed Hijazi, and the country's foreign minister at the time, Velayati."

Clearly Iran presents a substantial strategic threat to the United States, and the developing relationship between Iran and Venezuela does much to heighten the risk.