Western intelligence agencies have been watching Venezuela’s dealings with Iran with increasing alarm. Iran and its allies (including Syrian President Bashar Assad) get gasoline from Venezuela, which in return buys Iranian know-how — perhaps in housing, but surely in arms and other sinister stuff.
Trade between Iran and Latin America rose to $3.6 billion in 2011. With the exception of Brazil, the largest trading partners (Argentina, Ecuador, Bolivia and Venezuela) were largely motivated by anti-Americanism.
But the 1994 Buenos Aires bombing (and an Iranian-backed deadly attack on the Israeli embassy there two years earlier) has for years clouded those blossoming relationships. Argentinians, in particular, want to see justice for victims of South America’s largest terror attack. …
The US reaction has been near-nonexistent. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said merely that she’s “skeptical,” adding that Iran’s record “underlines the concern that its engagement on this matter be focused on achieving justice promptly.”
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