Jaime Suchlicki, Director of the University of Miami's Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies, has a paper summarising the Russia-Venezuela-Cuba-China-Iran relationship entitled, "The Cuba-Venezuela Challenge to Hemispheric Security: Implications for the United States."
Most of it will not come as news to regular readers of this blog, but I thought it worth reviewing principally because it aggregates in one place a timeline of certain undeniable facts that hold regardless of what one's political orientation is, not to mention the recent $3.2 billion trade deal between Venezuela and Cuba, as well as Bret Stephens' take of the Venezuela-Iran relationship in the Wall Street Journal. With regard to Venezuela's role, Suchlicki outlines the following:
In the past two years, Hugo Chávez has purchased over $6 billion in Russian weapons.
According to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, cocaine flowing through Venezuela grew fourfold (from 60 to 260 metric tons) between 2004 and 2007.
In July 2009, Colombian authorities revealed that they had seized a FARC arms cache containing powerful Swedish-made antitank rockets that, according to the serial numbers, were originally sold to the Venezuelan military. Chávez's regime denied providing the weapons to the guerrillas.Recently Venezuela's Mining and Basic Industries Minister Rodolfo Sanz, acknowledged that Iran is "helping Venezuela to explore for uranium." "Venezuela will soon start the process of, developing nuclear energy for peaceful purposes," he added, "not to build a bomb."
As part of a mineral survey in Guyana this year, U308 Corp., a Canadian uranium exploration company, recorded a substantial source of uranium in the Roraima Basin, which straddles the border between Guyana and Bolívar. Iranian companies and others with Middle Eastern backgrounds operate mines in this region.
The VenIran "tractor factory" in Bolívar attracted international scrutiny when Turkish customs inspectors intercepted twenty-two containers bound for the Venezuelan facility on December 28, 2008. Labeled "tractor parts," the containers instead carried an "explosives lab" and nitrate and sulfite chemicals that could be used to manufacture explosives.
Access the full paper here.
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