Word: iran
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Indeed, rather than distance themselves from Iran, the Syrians recently gave the greenlight for Iran to expand its embassy in Damascus, already Iran's largest in the region. And the close ties between Iran and Syria were visible last month at a Quds Day celebration at the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp in Damascus in September. The holiday has its origins in the aftermath of the Islamic revolution in Iran, when Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini declared the last Friday of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan to be a day to protest the Israeli occupation of Jerusalem. The keynote speaker...
Still, in the short term, Abdullah's visit is at least a sign that the leaders of the Arab Middle East have backed away from a regional confrontation. However, with Israel threatening to shut down Iran's nuclear program the old-fashioned way - by military strikes - if an alliance of Western nations can't do so through negotiations, it's unlikely that peace will hold for long...
That suits Chávez's fondness for the international spotlight. Still, security experts say he's flirting with something more serious than anti-yanqui bravado. Chávez, who recently agreed to sell Iran 20,000 barrels of gasoline a day, backs the country's claim that it's enriching uranium only for peaceful purposes. But if the international community decides Iran is making an atomic bomb - something IAEA inspections may determine later this month - it would complicate any Venezuelan plans to export uranium to the country, since it would be widely viewed as aiding and abetting a rogue...
When Venezuela's Mining Minister Rodolfo Sanz walked into a televised Cabinet meeting this week, President Hugo Chávez impishly asked, "So how's the uranium for Iran going? For the atomic bomb." Chávez was joking, but few were laughing outside Caracas and Tehran. Ever since Chávez announced last month that he was seeking Russia's help to develop nuclear energy in Venezuela - and especially since Sanz turned heads a couple of weeks ago by disclosing that Iran is helping Venezuela locate its own uranium reserves - the South American nation and its socialist, anti...
...concern should Venezuela be? Chávez delights in getting a rise out of the U.S., and his alliance with Iran and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is largely a calculated affront to Washington - his version of Cuba's Cold War partnership with the Soviet Union. It's little coincidence that Sanz made his announcement the same day the U.S. and its allies called Iran on the existence of a secret nuclear-fuel plant near the Iranian city of Qum. The U.S. and the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) fear that Iran is on the verge of bolting the global...