Mark Lavie is reporting the AP has obtained secret Israeli government reports that "Venezuela and Bolivia are supplying Iran with uranium for its nuclear program."
Why does this sound familiar?
The British Israeli Government has learned that Saddam Hussein Ahmadinejad recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. South America.
First it was uranium from Niger, now it is from Venezuela? This is interesting given the fact that:
Venezuela is not currently mining its own estimated 50,000 tons of untapped uranium reserves, according to an analysis published in December by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. The Carnegie report said, however, that recent collaboration with Iran in strategic minerals has generated speculation that Venezuela could mine uranium for Iran.
Sketchy claims aside, Israel faces another problem Bush didn't have. Iran has something Iraq didn't have... and it's not an "n" word. It's more like "SCO."
Unlike Iraq, which had relations with Russia and others in spite of sanctions, Iran has strong diplomatic and economic relations with both Russia and China, in part due to its longstanding diplomatic relationship as a non-voting member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). SCO doesn't get a lot of press in the US. However, it would be a huge mistake to think that SCO is inconsequential.
For starters, the SCO 6 member nations (Russia, China, Uzbekistan, Kyrgystan, Tajikistan, and Khazakstan) represent about 1/4 of the world's population, 2 nuclear powers, and major gas and oil producers as well. If you include the 4 observer countries, (Pakistan, India, Iran and Mongolia) SCO represents 1/2 of the world's population and includes 4 nuclear power, plus an OPEC member. The economic clout is substantial, but the geopolitical impact is even greater. The land mass covered by SCO stretches from the Baltic to the Pacific, from the Artic to the Indian Ocean. If you check the map, the only country in the land mass covered by SCO that is NOT a member is.... Afghanistan.
Why is this important? Because there is strength in numbers. Consider little Uzbekistan. If that pissant little country was a state it would be ranked lower than West Virginia in terms of GDP. Bill Gates could buy everything in that country and have money left over. Yet, back in 2005, Uzbekistan expelled the US from its air base. Ironically, we are now in talks to re-establish those bases because Kyrgystan, another SCO member, is threatening to kick the US out of those bases. With the war heating up in Afghanistan that means we would lose ANOTHER staging site. How big is Kyrgystan? Bill Gates could buy everything in that country with about a year's worth of income. How the hell do these little countries wind up dictating terms to the US?
The answer is simple. They know people. That means you pick a fight with them, you answer to their friends. Because of the strategic relations embodied in SCO, force doesn't need to be projected through its largest members to be effective. Think that is just an abstraction? When was the last time you remember the US losing military bases somewhere? Few things are more concrete than where you land when you get evicted.
This bring us to Iran, and why all the Israeli saber-rattling has a limited shelf-life. Less than a month from now, SCO could vote to give Iran full membership. That has consequences.
The leaders of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization meeting at Yekaterinburg (scheduled for June 15-16) are expected to announce whether Iran will be allowed into the regional security bloc as a full member.
China and Russia have major commercial interests in Iran, which could swing the vote in Tehran's favor.
According to RIA-Novosti, China wants Iranian oil and gas, and to sell weapons and other goods to the country, while Moscow hopes to sell more weapons and nuclear energy technology to Tehran.
Full membership would provide Tehran with a mutual assistance guarantee in the event that it came under attack by a foreign state.
That's the corker, if the hawks in Israel attack Iran after it gets full membership in SCO, Russia and China could rain down some serious fire. The only question is how much of that fire will be economic and will it be directed only at Israel... or will it also be directed at the big country that gives tiny Israel so much clout?