Free Republic

President Obama’s recent decision to drastically cut future military spending puts the United States in a weakened position vis-a-vis despot regimes and terrorist organizations who are always looking for gratuitous opportunities to attack U.S. interests, according to Congressman Allen West. West says that “there is a sense of weakness that we are conveying, and there is a window of opportunity that people like Iran are seeing.” According to a recent Wall Street Journal report, Obama’s proposed cuts to the military budget “could shrink by over 30%” in the next decade- The Administration projects outlays at 2.7% of GDP in 2021,...

Iran may get Russian S-300 interceptors after all - via Venezuela Russia appears ready to sell Venezuela the same five advanced S-300PMU-1 air defense missile battalions it withheld from Iran because of international sanctions. Military sources report Venezuela's ruler Hugo Chavez, offered to buy them when he met Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in Moscow Thursday, Oct. 14. Israel immediately turned to Washington to try and block the transaction. Clearly, the highly-sophisticated interceptors are bound for their original client, Iran, through its good friend Chavez. This time, the deal will be much harder to stop. Our military sources stress that Iran...

June 22, 2008: A new battlefield for the war on terror has developed in Venezuela. There, leftist president Hugo Chavez has not only established close diplomatic relations with Iran (and Cuba, North Korea and radical groups throughout the region), but has allowed Iran to set up operations in South America. Regular commercial flights from Iran to Venezuela (via Syria, to accommodate Hizbollah) carry people, cash and whatever else Iran wants to move. No questions asked, no visas required. Several U.S. counter-terrorism operations have gone to work, trying to find out what Iran is up to, and how to block any...

Russia defied the United States yesterday by announcing plans to sell military hardware to Iran and Venezuela. The head of the state arms exporter said that he was negotiating to sell antiaircraft systems to Iran despite American objections. Russia has already delivered 29 Tor-M1 missile systems under a $700 million (£386 million) deal with Iran in 2005. Russia's strategic aircraft, the Tu-160 or White Swan, world's largest supersonic bomber. A pair of them touched down in Venezuela this week as Moscow announced big new arms sales “Contacts between our countries are continuing and we do not see any reason to...

Having experienced the Cuban Missile Crisis at the CIA, Langley, ion 1962, I have little enthusiasm for a repeat. But we may get one. A German newspaper is running a disturbing report: BERLIN – The Iranian government is moving forward with the construction of rocket launch bases in Venezuela, the German daily Die Welt wrote in its Friday edition. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is Teheran’s most important South American ally. Iran is building intermediate- range missile launch pads on the Paraguaná Peninsula, and engineers from a construction firm – Khatam al-Anbia – owned by the Revolutionary Guards visited Paraguaná in...

Russia's S-300 air defense systems, which Moscow refused to deliver to Iran following a new round of UN sanctions against the Islamic Republic, could be sold to Venezuela instead, a Russian arms trade expert said on Friday.

Iran initiated a close relationship with Venezuela when Venezuela’s president, Hugo Chavez, hosted the 2000 OPEC meeting in Caracas. (Shireen T. Hunter, Iran’s Foreign Policy in the Post-Soviet Era: Resisting the New International Order [Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2010], p. 233, not available on line, quoted here.) Since then, Iran and Venezuela have consorted with Cuba and Colombia to create terrorist havens and missile bases with missiles capable of carrying nuclear payloads in South America that have the southern half of the USA in their range. Thousands of Arab and Iranian terrorists have infiltrated our southern border for a decade...

Those of us who remember the tension in 1962 as President John F. Kennedy decided how to respond to the presence of Soviet missiles in Communist Cuba, with the overwhelming threat of nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union a real possibility, had a sense of déjà vu as we read the story [1] in Die Welt (the German newspaper) yesterday about the new possibility of a Venezuelan missile crisis looming on the horizon. Writing at the Fox News website, Reza Kahili notes [2] that Die Welt’s report: Confirms that the bilateral agreement signed in October [between...

The Looming Iran Venezuela Crisis The knowledge of cooperation between Iran and Venezuela in turning much of Latin America against the international interests of the United States, Israel, and the West has been growing increasingly obvious for quite some time. Also glaringly obvious has been the complete lack of a plan to address this situation and preventing the coming cascade of opposition to American interests in our hemisphere. Not paying much mind to Iran in the Middle East is one thing, ignoring their infectious presence on our borders is completely different. We have sat complacently watching as Iran’s President Ahmadinejad...

BRINGS BACK MEMORIES, AND NOT GOOD ONES – AT 9:45 P.M. ET: Hudson New York (http://www.hudson-ny.org/1714/iran-missiles-in-venezuela) publishes a thorough article warning of a possible Iranian military move...in this hemisphere: Iran is planning to place medium-range missiles on Venezuelan soil, based on western information sources, according to an article in the German daily, Die Welt, of November 25, 2010. According to the article, an agreement between the two countries was signed during the last visit of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to Tehran on October19, 2010. The previously undisclosed contract provides for the establishment of a jointly operated military base in Venezuela,...

Iran Just Shipped Missiles to Venezuela. Hello? Is This Thing On?A massive security threat just blossomed, and you'd be hard-pressed to find an MSM or administration official who cares. December 23, 2010 - by Mike McDaniel Recent revelations about hostile incursions into South America have raised alarm in those who care about U.S. interests and security, particularly in America’s hemisphere. They have also raised questions about whether the Monroe Doctrine — America will tolerate no hostile incursions in her own hemisphere — is dead. These revelations have been, for the most part, ignored by those who care little for American...

German paper says Iranians paid cash to build mid-range missile launch pads on Paraguana Peninsula; Iranian engineers visited site in Feb. BERLIN – The Iranian government is moving forward with the construction of rocket launch bases in Venezuela, the German daily Die Welt wrote in its Friday edition. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is Teheran’s most important South American ally. Iran is building intermediate- range missile launch pads on the Paraguaná Peninsula, and engineers from a construction firm – Khatam al-Anbia – owned by the Revolutionary Guards visited Paraguaná in February. Amir al-Hadschisadeh, the head of the Guard’s Air Force, participated...

Half a century ago this October, for almost two weeks, the world dangerously slid toward war as the United States and U.S.S.R. played a nuclear chess match. The confrontation focused on whether Soviet missiles, secretly installed in Cuba, would be voluntarily withdrawn by Moscow. It was the closest the two Cold War adversaries would ever come to nuclear war. Washington was committed to not endangering its national security by the placement of missiles drastically reducing the distance required for Moscow to launch a surprise nuclear strike against the United States while also reducing U.S. reaction time to such a first...

The FBI is looking for Ghazi Nasr Al-Din and believes he could be in South Florida. He was just added to the bureau’s seeking information terrorism list. The agency wants to talk to him about his fundraising efforts with Hezbollah contributors. Hezbollah is an Islamic militant group. Nasr Al-Din is 5 foot 7 and weighs about 175 pounds. He has black hair, brown eyes and an olive complexion. He speaks Arabic and Spanish and he has dual citizenship in Lebanon and Venezuela. If you see him call the FBI’s toll-free tip line at 1-800-CALL-FBI (1-800- 225-5324) or contact your local...

Steve Cooper reports “that once again these WikiLeaks show the defiance of the Russians and their continued weapon sales to rogue nations like Venezuela. The Venezuelan links to Iran, Hezbollah and Al Qaeda are no secret. This is just another trail that links Moscow to Al Qaeda via one of their proxies”. As I have said and repeated many times on radio and in articles that Russia and China are not our friends… please be aware of this fact by looking at their actions and not their words.  Cooper further reports “that Hillary Clinton is a total failure as Secretary...

The authorities in Yemen have seized a boat in their territorial waters filled with a large quantity of explosives, weapons and money, according to American officials briefed on the interdiction. The officials said Monday that there were indications that Iran was smuggling the military contraband to insurgents inside Yemen, although they declined to provide details. The captured weapons included surface-to-air missiles used to shoot down civilian and military aircraft, C4 military-grade explosives, 122-millimeter shells, rocket-propelled grenades and bomb-making equipment, including electronic circuits, remote triggers and other hand-held explosives, the statement said. If the weapons turn out to include the Iranian-made...

Sunday's Der Spiegel had a massive expose on the continuing efforts of Bashar al-Assad to build a nuclear weapons plant, which included evidence that Iran is constructing such a plant for Syria in Qusayr, less than two kilometers from Syria's border with Lebanon. The issue came up in the State Department's Monday daily briefing. Disturbingly, spokeswoman Marie Harf said that the United States did not plan to raise the issue in the Iranian nuclear talks, claiming that those talks only deal with Iran's nuclear capabilities and not with Syria's. According to findings of Western intelligence agencies, however, the situation...

Iran is planning to place medium-range missiles on Venezuelan soil, based on western information sources[1], according to an article in the German daily, Die Welt, of November 25, 2010. According to the article, an agreement between the two countries was signed during the last visit o Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to Tehran on October19, 2010. The previously undisclosed contract provides for the establishment of a jointly operated military base in Venezuela, and the joint development of ground-to-ground missiles. At a moment when NATO members found an agreement, in the recent Lisbon summit (19-20 November 2010), to develop a Missile Defence...

The diplomatic ties between Iran and Venezuela go back almost 50 years and until recently amounted to little more than the routine exchange of diplomats. With the election of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2005, the relationship dramatically changed. Today Mr. Ahmadinejad and Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez have created a cozy financial, political and military partnership rooted in a shared anti-American animus. Now is the time to develop policies in this country to ensure this partnership produces no poisonous fruit. Signs of the evolving partnership began to emerge in 2006, when Venezuela joined Cuba and Syria as the only nations...

The Iranian government is moving forward with the construction of rocket launch bases in Venezuela, the German daily Die Welt wrote in its Thursday edition. Iran is building intermediate- range missile launch pads on the Paraguaná Peninsula, and engineers from a construction firm – Khatam al-Anbia – owned by the Revolutionary Guards visited Paraguaná in February. Amir al-Hadschisadeh, the head of the Guard’s Air Force, participated in the visit, according to the report. Die Welt cited information from “Western security insiders.”