Chavez loves Ahmedinejad and the feeling seems to be mutual

The New York Times reports that last night, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran and Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez announced that their countries would invest in each others economies and together in third countries. The two oil producers also claimed that they would collude to reduce petroleum supplies in order to push oil prices up from their 19-month low, according to the Times report. Iran and Venezuela are the world’s fourth and fifth largest oil producers, respectively.

In an address before the National Assembly, President Chavez referred to the Iranian leader as a “brother” and “revolutionary.” As the Times reminds the reader, the two leaders have already worked out separate agreements over the past several months to look for new oil fields, build an oil refinery and housing for poor people, and produce bicycles and tractors together.
Meanwhile, at home the Chavez administration said it would nationalize Venezuela’s electricity industry and its largest phone company. There are also plans to replace municipal governments with communal councils in Venezuela which critics say would effectively eliminate the regime’s domestic opposition.

The Times reported that Venezuela has long had close ties with fellow oil producers in the Middle East, namely the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia.

Alberto Garrido, author of “Chávez’s Wars,” a book about Venezuela’s ties to the Middle East, reportedly told the Times, “The Venezuelan left has for decades considered alliances with Muslim countries as one of the ways to create a new civilization through the toppling of American values.”

The reader may recall that the terrorist known as Carlos the Jackal was a Venezuelan Marxist who admitted in a French television interview that he was responsible for some 1,500-2,000 deaths Israeli civilians on behalf of the Palestinian cause. In 2003, from his prison cell in France where he is serving a life sentence multiple murders, he published a book entitled Revolutionary Islam in which he suggested that his fellow revolutionaries though they may be Leftists and atheists should convert to radical Islam because it is the only force capable of destroying imperialism and capitalism.