Venezuela, Iran & others: a coalition? (New title)

[AdamG]

From 2008

In testimony before the House Armed Services Committee and in remarks to a private conference on missile defense over the weekend hosted by the Claremont Institute, Dr. William Graham warned that the U.S. intelligence community “doesn’t have a story” to explain the recent Iranian tests.

One group of tests that troubled Graham, the former White House science adviser under President Ronald Reagan, were successful efforts to launch a Scud missile from a platform in the Caspian Sea.

“They’ve got [test] ranges in Iran which are more than long enough to handle Scud launches and even Shahab-3 launches,” Dr. Graham said. “Why would they be launching from the surface of the Caspian Sea? They obviously have not explained that to us.”

Another troubling group of tests involved Shahab-3 launches where the Iranians "detonated the warhead near apogee, not over the target area where the thing would eventually land, but at altitude,” Graham said. “Why would they do that?”

http://www.marketwatch.com/Community...-plans-nuclear

Iran is only half the equation, and a weak half at that - more of an enabler.
Tehran can interdict the flow of Saudi oil, and Venezuela is next up by volume on the suppliers' list.

ANALYSIS | In a reciprocal action, the United States has revoked the visa of the Venezuelan ambassador to the United States after Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez refused to acknowledge diplomatic ties with the United States. Business Week reports this expulsion is just the latest in many bouts of political feuding between the United States and Venezuela.

Business Week reports Chavez threatened to cut off the oil supply to the United States in 2008 and then backed down. It was around the same time when he backed a Bolivian proposal to expel their American ambassador for alleging the United States' involvement with rebel groups.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ac/20101230/...es_may_be_next