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A secret document unveiled this morning by an opposition Venezuelan congressman discloses the extraordinarily risky decision by Venezuela’s ailing dictator Hugo Chávez to transfer all of Venezuela’s $29 billion in gold and cash reserves from Swiss, British, and U.S. banks to accounts in China and Russia. Such an unprecedented move could destroy international confidence in Venezuela, wipe out citizens’ savings, and suffocate an already faltering economy.

That the regime would take such an unusually dangerous move shows that Chávez’s cronies are worried that he may lose his bout with cancer and they may have to cede power. Evidently, they are more concerned with their own fate than for the well-being of the Venezuelan people. It is not too late to halt this plan, if the people can be rallied to oppose the looting of the nation’s savings. This is an opportunity for democratic politicians to show they can lead their nation out of the mess created by 12 years of Chavismo.

Any responsible person would accept that Venezuela’s international reserves should not be moved until the people understand how this decision will impact their lives, jobs, and savings. According to experts I have consulted, every Venezuelan will suffer if these funds are moved to less reliable banks. Venezuela’s currency may be devalued, shortages of imported goods will worsen, and companies that rely on foreign exchange will be strangled. Of course, the very poorest people, who Chávez claims to champion, will perhaps suffer the most. Like the rest of the country, they are being abandoned by cynical individuals who covet wealth and power that happens to belong to someone else.

It is clear that Chávez’s men want access to Venezuela’s $29 billion in gold and cash because they are worried about losing power. The fact that this decision was manufactured in secret during Chávez’s stay in Cuba shows that Castro and Chávez’s cronies want to preserve their access to Venezuela’s riches. Patriotic members of the military should be concerned that they are left without a future and options while Castro and Chávez’s inner circle protect their selfish interests.

This precipitous decision to take Venezuela’s international reserves out of secure accounts in Europe and the United States and to move them to China and Russia will likely lead global capital markets to conclude that Venezuela is not a reliable country. Venezuela will no longer have the “international reserves” that are required to sustain any modern economy. The ability of the state-owned oil company, PDVSA, and the republic to generate capital and attract investment will be seriously affected. And, placing these precious reserves in banks belonging to Venezuela’s biggest creditors in China and Russia may suit Chávez’s friends in those countries, but it is an unacceptable risk for the Venezuelan people.

Why notoriously corrupt leaders would want to get their hands on billions in gold is not a very complicated question. However, it is important to note that one of the reasons cited explicitly by Chávez’s decision document is the possibility that Venezuelan funds or dollar-denominated transactions could be frozen by the United States. Surely, Chávez’s advisors know that U.S. laws allow such sanctions only in the case of narcostates, sponsors of terrorism, or mass murderers. We know that Chávez’s brother has pledged an armed struggle to keep power and his army chief has said he would never accept the election of an opposition president next December 2012. But, are Chávez’s would-be successors planning Qaddafi- or Assad-style massacres? If they would go that far, why would they even run the risk of holding a campaign and elections?

The idea that Chávistas would resort to brutal repression or would cancel next year’s presidential elections is unthinkable to many. But, just yesterday, few would have imagined that Chávez and his cronies would have risked the country’s economy and people for his own political advantage and selfish personal interests. If Chávez succeeds in treating the country’s international reserves as a petty cash box or pension fund for his inner circle, Venezuela’s fate will be forfeited to another generation of dangerous leaders.

Iran’s offer to cooperate with Argentina in the investigation of the 1994 bombing of the Jewish Community Center (AMIA) in Buenos Aires is shocking, in light of Tehran’s apparent complicity in that attack. Alberto Nisman, the independent prosecutor in the terrorism case, reacted to the offer by challenging Tehran to surrender the Iranian officials who organized the bombing. By contrast, the rather obsequious reaction of Argentina’s foreign minister, Hector Timmerman, raises troubling questions about the true nature of the relationship between the Ahmadinejad and Kirchner governments.

Monday marked the 17th anniversary of the car-bombing, which leveled the AMIA center in the heart of Argentina’s capital, killing 85 people; two years earlier, a few blocks away, the Israeli embassy was destroyed in another attack, which claimed 29 lives. Argentine and U.S. authorities have concluded that both bombings were the work of a Hezbollah cell coordinated and supported by the Iranian embassy. Iranian officials posted in Buenos Aires at the time, including Mohsen Rabbani, and Tehran’s current defense minister Ahmad Vahidi, have Interpol warrants pending against them for the crime. The prosecutor Nisman has theorized that the attacks were related to a decision by then President Carlos Saul Menem to terminate Argentina’s cooperation with Iran’s nuclear program around 1992.

That troubling story will not go away. Just last week, U.S. congressional leaders asked the Department of State to investigate whether Iran and Argentina have renewed nuclear cooperation in a deal brokered and paid for by Venezuela. Their July 15 letter cited “reports that in 2007 Mahmoud Ahmadinejad allegedly asked [Venezuelan leader] Hugo Chávez to intercede with President Nestor Kirchner to change Argentine policy to allow Iran access to Argentine technology” to aid Iran’s “nuclear program.”  The letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, sent by the chairman of the U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen; chairman of the Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere Affairs, Rep. Connie Mack; and subcommittee member, Rep. David Rivera, referred to Venezuelan documents that are now in the hands of the State Department.

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Over at Foxnews.com, my colleague Roger Noriega has his take on events in Venezuela. He previews a possible descent into chaos — a battle royal between Chavistas, narco-generals, Cuban drones, and, we hope, democrats. Thus far, those democrats appear to be in scant evidence as Chavez’s short sojourn in Cuban hospital (aaah, the healthcare!) turns into an extended drama.

But there are other democrats silent, including the notably reticent Obama administration. The United States has a keen interest in Venezuela, not just because it is the source of 10 percent of our oil imports and because it is a source of deadly instability to our south, but also because Iran has established an important beachhead in the country that threatens the hemisphere and our territory in ways that Tehran cannot from the Middle East. Perhaps Obama will say something at his presser today. Perhaps we are really doing something to aide Chavez’s opposition. Somehow, on both counts, I doubt it.

Good news on international cooperation from Moscow this morning: Russia will help Venezuela build its first nuclear plant. In light of revelations from AEI’s Roger Noriega about Venezuela’s secret cooperation with Iran, this is troubling indeed. And there’s more. News agency Ria Novosti reports that Russia may sell the S-300 missiles it had planned to sell to Tehran to Venezuela instead. One wonders why Chavez needs the S-300, except possibly for the same reasons the Iranians had hoped to secure the advanced air defense systems. But there’s another question: having canceled the deal with Iran, are the Russians merely searching for a reasonable cutout to make the deal nonetheless? Venezuela has become a vital beachhead for Iran, and Chavez and Ahmadinejad are tight (Chavez is headed to Iran right now for yet another visit). One might reasonably suspect that any weaponry headed for Caracas could easily find its way to Tehran.

Image by Broken Sphere/Wikimedia Commons.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know why Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez would want a nuclear bomb. Although most observers would dismiss the notion of Chavez building such a weapon, a man who used to help build them for the United States didn’t think the idea was so crazy.

Last Friday, the FBI revealed the arrest and indictment of two U.S. citizens accused of plotting to help Venezuela obtain a nuclear bomb. Accused nuclear scientist Pedro Leonardo Mascheroni, who was convinced that he was talking to a representative of the Chavez regime (rather than an FBI undercover agent), offers the following rationale for such a dangerous program:

A deterrence against the U.S. based on conventional weapons is highly inadequate … Venezuela cannot develop deterrence against a U.S. invasion using conventional weapons … The only option for Venezuela is to develop nuclear deterrence … Venezuela would show the world that [it] is a mature nuclear power able to deter a superpower … What we do when we are in Venezuela … is our business, not that of the U.S. government.

Chavez could not have said it better himself.

The U.S. federal indictment continues:

Defendant MASCHERONI discussed how in his program Venezuela would build and test nuclear bombs in secret and would have two nuclear reactors—one open, above ground reactor used for producing nuclear energy and the other, a secret underground nuclear reactor used for producing and enriching plutonium. In his program, Venezuela would build an above-ground micro-fusion facility for developing energy, and an underground micro-fission facility where Venezuela would conduct undetectable tests of ‘micro bombs.’

Justice Department officials have stated that there is no evidence that the Venezuelan government obtained any of the sensitive technology offered by Mascheroni and his co-indicted spouse. However, those who are paying attention to the extraordinarily tight and secretive ties between Chavez and troublesome regimes in Iran, Cuba, Russia, and China might wonder if Mascheroni’s vision is being implemented by a band of rogues at work in the Western Hemisphere while Washington sleeps.

One can hope that the FBI is not the only U.S. agency with its guard up when it comes to Chavez and the bomb.

Image by Agência Brasil.