On 2-3 April 2009, Hugo Chávez paid his seventh official visit to Iran since he came to power. Both countries are strongly committed to creating a bilateral alliance based on common oil interests, military cooperation, ideological affinities between the presidents and open hostility against the United States and its allies. According to the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, “Cooperation between Iran and Venezuela can be a model for anti-imperialist campaigns.” 2 Iran...

Dear President Lula, Why? Why would such a respected world leader welcome an international outcast like Iranian President Ahmadinejad to Brasilia on May 6? Why would you confer your considerable international legitimacy on such an individual - within weeks, no less, of a walkout by dozens of nations during Ahmadinejad's hate-filled speech in the halls of the UN in Geneva? Why would your nation, which has admirably forsworn nuclear weapons, seek at this moment expanded ties with Iran, which...

Iran increases its political and economic presence in Latin America, defying the United States and attempting to undermine American hegemony. It also foments radical Shi’ite Islamization and exports Iran’s revolutionary ideology, using Hezbollah to establish intelligence, terrorism and crime networks, liable to be exploited against the United States and Israel. Overview 1. Since Ahmadinejad was elected president of Iran in August 2005, there has been a marked improvement in the...

‘Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad must love the tropics’, commented ironically The Miami Herald. He has spent more time in Latin America than President Bush. Since his inauguration in 2005, Iran’s foreign policy focus has shifted from Africa to Latin America in order to, as Ahmadinejad puts it, ‘counter lasso’ the US. Iran’s Goals in Latin America Farideh Farhi argues that while Iran’s increased attention to Latin America as a region is a...

Tehran, (EFE) Iran and Venezuela endorsed a new “roadmap” for their close bilateral relations by which they intend to increase economic exchanges and strengthen their political activities over the next decade. The signing of the new “10-year strategic accord” Saturday capped the official three-day visit of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to Iran during the course of an international tour that will also take him to Japan and China. “The group of documents that...

When President Barak Hussein Obama was running for office he advocated the decriminalization of drugs including Marijuana. (Youtube-barack obama on marijuana decriminialization (2004) 2004). On another occasion while blazing the campaign trail, the future president of the United States noted his marijuana use. He noted that his frequent inhalation was, “The Point” (Barack obama “I inhaled frequently” “That was the point” 2006). This issue had American...

Two new reports show that, while America seems understandably fixated on Mexico's internal drug war, there's mounting evidence that Iran and its terrorist proxy Hezbollah are burrowing into the country. In a blog posting Friday, Todd Bensman of the San Antonio Express-News reported that Mexico welcomed Iranian emissaries late last month. They agreed to expand "political, economic, and cultural" ties. Mexico's newfound embrace of Iranian investment appears to be an outgrowth of the...

I am pretty sure that I remain the only American reporter to have traveled to leftist President Daniel Ortega’s Nicaragua to find out what the Iranian government is doing there. I apologize if I missed something out there. While I appreciated having the exclusive at the time, more than a year after my travels I continue to wonder why there there is such a persistent lack of curiosity from my mainstream press corps colleagues. The press, quite rightly, has swarmed like migrating...

Former Dearborn, Michigan, resident Mahmoud Youssef Kourani was a secret Hezbollah agent sent to infiltrate America in February 2001. He stole over the Mexican border into California with a skill set that court records would later describe as “specialized training in radical Shiite fundamentalism, weaponry, spy craft, and counterintelligence,” picked up in Lebanon and Iran. Kourani got caught in 2004 and thrown in federal prison for raising money and recruits for Hezbollah, which...

Iran is increasing its military and espionage presence rapidly throughout Latin America, according to U.S. and Israeli officials, turning the region into a major base for terrorism and subversion. The disturbing trend has been building for several years and has deep roots in a presence that Hezbollah, Hamas, and other terrorist groups have had in South America for at least two decades, experts say. Now, though, it’s becoming quite open, with Iran using its consulates to erect front...