If it worked in Niger, why not try it in Venezuela?

Washington May Soon Try to Pin the Venezuelan Uranium Tail on the Iranian Nuclear Donkey

By Larry Birns and Michael Lettieri

Washington is no stranger to flimsy pretexts when it comes to justifying its ill-conceived, and at times illicit, Latin American initiatives. The contra epoch, the Bay of Pigs invasion, the Cuban missile crisis, Ollie North, former U.S. ambassador John Negroponte’s skullduggery in Honduras, and countless acts of chicanery aimed at Havana, Santiago, Grenada and Guatemala come to mind.

A spate of articles tying Hugo Chávez to Iran’s covert nuclear program suggests that Washington may now be finding it increasingly difficult to resist further calumniating Venezuela by working to forge a new weapon for its anti-Caracas jihad. The only problem is that the basis for such a charge would be a complete concoction, more worthy to be put to work in Iraq, where anything goes, than in Latin America. Such a scenario would intimate that ties exist between alleged Venezuelan uranium supplies and the Iranian nuclear program. In other words, Caracas would be presented as a terrorist nation, illicitly involved in trafficking bootleg uranium to the pariah Iranian regime in exchange for nuclear devices and maybe other considerations.

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Larry Birns is Director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA) and Michael Lettieri is a Research Fellow for the organization. Founded in 1975, COHA is an independent, non-profit, non-partisan, tax-exempt research and information organization.