Safety smokescreen for Conviasa ban

The European Union has imposed an “operating ban” against the Venezuelan airline Conviasa.  This is the same airline that former ambassador Roger Noriega  said “conducts regular flights between Caracas and Damascus and Teheran. The Hezbollah networks use these flights and others to ferry operatives, recruits, and cargo in and out of the region.”  Amb. Noriega also suggested that Conviasa has been used to traffic cocaine from Venezuela to West Africa.

The new Conviasa ban has been attributed in public to questions about airline safety, but anti-money laundering insider Kenneth Rijock has pointed out on his blog that the ban may actually have been imposed due to the transport of nuclear materials from Venezuela to Iran with a stopover in Europe, or due to bulk gold smuggling by the airline to help buoy a faltering Iranian economy.  From Mr. Rijock on Apr. 4:

DID VENEZUELAN AIRLINE MOVE NUCLEAR MATERIAL THROUGH EUROPE ?

…The ban fails to specify exactly what operating conditions, ramp inspections, or other events caused this action, but the grounds may be much more disturbing than flight safety deficiencies.

Any one of these may have been the reason to ban Conviasa from EU airports:

1. Seats on Conviasa’s curious long-haul operation between Caracas, Damascus and Tehran, have a history of being inaccessible to civilian passengers. It has served as a conduit for Iranian nationals,  traveling for any number of reasons, including evasion of international sanctions, to gain access to the Western Hemisphere. Visas are freely available at the Venezuelan Embassy in Tehran for official travelers; I have seen a few of them on brand-new Iranian passports.
2. Anti-Terrorism experts believe that agents of the Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps, especially the Quds Force, its international wing, have entered Venezuela in that manner. Remember also that there is a Hezbollah Venezuela, and this is probably the only direct, open access for members of specially designated global terrorist organisations to travel from the Middle East to Latin America. The arrest and detention, at the US-Mexican border, of non-Spanish speaking Middle Eastern nationals suspected of terrorist affiliations, carrying valid Venezuelan passports, validates this belief. Hamas, ETA, whomever the terrorist group du jour happens to be currently in favour with the Chavez regime.
3. These wide-body A340 aircraft have been engaged in heavy cargo airlift of military materiel either way, eastbound or westbound. Most experts have heard rumours of missiles to Venezuela; small arms to Syria and Iran; what else has been shipped into Iran, evading the international sanctions ? These aircraft are exempt from normal customs procedures in Venezuela, so frankly, anything goes.
4. Gold has been known to have been shipped in bulk to Iran; we can also assume that bulk cash, in the form of US Dollars, is also traveling from the Chavez regime to Iran. Remember, due to the sanctions, Iran is in dire need of “Greenbacks” to purchase goods and services in the global marketplace for cash. They are getting some of those needs met from Iraqi sources, but their international purchases from suppliers willing to do business surely do not involve credit.
5. My best guess is that the EC does not want a nuclear accident at one of the EU airports, due to a mishap involving a Conviasa aircraft carrying Uranium to Iran, or even a nuclear device or component to Venezuela, whose leadership has longed to have the nuclear option. Is that really why Conviasa is now banned from EU airports ?

Should a Conviasa aircraft make a forced landing, or suffer an accident between Caracas and the Middle East, whether through equipment malfunction, or pilot error, we need to see what it is carrying on board, preferably with inspectors carrying radiation-measuring equipment, before its cargo is released. I wonder what will then happen to the Conviasa board of directors and the pilot in command.

South Africa is Iran’s lead energy buyer

While the U.S., Canada, Europe, and Australia have joined together in sanctions against Iran, South Africa has not.  In 2010, South Africa bought $22.9 billion in fuel, crude, natural gas, and minerals from Iran.  The quantity easily outstrips purchases by China, the country most often singled out for counterbalancing Western sanctions.  From a Jan. 26 report from the Congressional Research Service using data from the World Trade Atlas:

Source: The World Trade Atlas, adapted by Susan Chesser, Knowledge Services Group, CRS.

The report has been followed by a Feb. 8 Associated Press article about South Africa’s involvement with Iran:

South Africa’s close ties to Iran under scrutiny

JOHANNESBURG — The West’s increasing pressure on Iran has meant scrutiny for South African businesses that operate in the Middle Eastern nation accused of having nuclear ambitions.

South African-Iranian political ties have long been close, and that has meant close business ties. A politically connected South African telecommunications company has been accused of pushing Pretoria to support Iran’s nuclear power program. A South African energy and chemicals company is reviewing its Iranian investments. Iranian oil makes up nearly a third of South Africa’s oil imports…

The only good thing about the data is that Germany has slipped in the rankings of Iran’s biggest customers.

2011: Iran’s nuclear march unfazed by sanctions

In its November report, the International Atomic Energy Agency revealed that:

• The Iranian military has procured nuclear and dual-use material and equipment
• Iran has acquired information on how to create nuclear weapons through a secret network
• Iran has tested nuclear weapon components

The advance in Iranian efforts to use nuclear program for military purposes strongly suggests that the sanctions regime is not having the impact necessary to stop their acquisition of the bomb.  Sanctions may have damaged their economy and currency, but that is irrelevant because Iran has shown that it will continue funding its nuclear program regardless of economic conditions.

Pres. Obama’s decision to appoint lightweight David Cohen as undersecretary of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence indicated a lack of seriousness about enforcing serious sanctions against Iran to bankrupt its nuclear program.  In 2011, Cohen has succeeded mostly in alienating the U.S. Senate by stabbing New Jersey Democrat Bob Menendez in the back.  If only we would treat our foreign enemies that way.

Democrat to Europe: Prove it isn’t Iran crude

During an Oct. 13 hearing on Iran sanctions, Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) described his proposal to make the European Union certify that any refined fuel products it sells to the United States did not originate from Iranian crude oil.

The concern of the power establishment is that an outright embargo on Iranian crude would limit global supply, damage the fragile economic recovery, and ultimately enrich Iran through soaring oil prices.  But the current sanctions regime hasn’t done much to deter or delay Iran from acquiring the hydrogen bomb.  Sen. Menendez’s proposal is an effort to split the difference, and get Europe to do the legwork of finding alternate suppliers to Iranian crude.  In a question to a State Department flunky (to which he later received a boilerplate answer), Menendez explains his reasoning:

The full two hour hearing can be viewed on C-SPAN’s website.

Perhaps Europe can explore for oil off the shores of America where environmentalists won’t let the U.S. do it, refine it, and sell it back to the U.S. as a certified non-Iranian product.  Or the U.S. could expand its own oil production and cut out all the middlemen.  Just saying…

Germany among Iran’s top 3 energy buyers

According to an August report on Iran sanctions from the bipartisan Congressional Research Service, Germany is the world’s third largest importer of Iranian fuel, oil, natural gas, and other energy products.  Germany pays $400 million a year to Iran for energy.

This provides further confirmation that the U.S.-backed sanctions regime against Iran is weak unless Europe, especially Germany, can be brought aboard with an Iranian energy boycott.  Without German cooperation, Iran will be able to continue diverting oil profits toward its illicit nuclear program.

Zarate blasts Obama’s Iran sanctions pause

During an Aspen Institute panel discussion on terrorist financing in July, former counter-terrorism official Juan Zarate rebuked the 2009 to 2010 “pause” in economic sanctions pressure while Obama administration sought engagement with Iran.

Reporter Erin Burnette asked Zarate and former under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence Stuart Levey about the wisdom of easing up on the sanctions regime while trying to engage Iran.  Stuart Levey said that top Obama advisors underestimated how long it would take from the time they began seeking engagement until the time a new round of international sanctions would be approved, which was not until July, 2010.

That delay gave Iran a year and a half of essential time to develop their nuclear program without significant financial pressure.  In this video, Juan Zarate calls that pause in the financial pressure “a major strategic mistake.”  The momentum from sanctions beginning in 2005 had been working, and Washington could have kept applying financial pressure simultaneously while pushing for diplomatic engagement.

The timing of the pause was most unfortunate, Zarate argues, because the U.S. already knew about Iran’s “secret” nuclear site at Kom.

In addition to pointing out the Obama administration’s strategic blunder on Iran sanctions, Zarate also lets it slip in the final seconds of the video that Pres. Obama kept the well-respected Stuart Levey “leashed.”

Articles of interest

• Wanting money, their Hezbollah masters instructed them to burn their jeep to a crisp, file a bogus insurance claim, and wire the payout to Lebanon… more>>

• Jihadists capture Zinjibar immediately taking over two banks and, thirsting for zakat, the city tax bureau… more>>

• Muhammad Mustafa, president of the Palestine Investment Fund says Gaza’s economy must be based on self-reliance, asks for $1 billion to get started… more>>

• The year—2011. The organization—a beacon of hope in the darkest of times.  Or a Hamas front group, but whatevuh… more>>

• Marie Curie he is not, but Ahmadinejad is rather passionate about uranium. Enter Zimbabwe… more>>

El Adel: no price too high for nukes

Saif el Adel has been named the new, acting head of al Qaeda, according to a reliable insider source.

CNN’s Peter Bergen has the news article here explaining the details.

Long War Journal plumbs farther into el Adel’s background, particular el Adel’s extensive ties to and presence in Iran.

One item of interest from the Long War Journal analysis describes el Adel’s willingness to pay any price in order to procure Russian nuclear devices:

Throughout 2002 and 2003, the CIA collected disturbing intelligence on al Qaeda’s pursuit of lethal weapons while holed up inside Iran. In his autobiography, At the Center of the Storm, former Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet writes:

From the end of 2002 to the spring of 2003, we received a stream of reliable reporting that the senior al Qaeda leadership in Saudi Arabia was negotiating for the purchase of three Russian nuclear devices. Saudi al Qaeda chief Abu Bakr relayed the offer directly to the al Qaeda leadership in Iran, where Saif al Adel and Abdel al Aziz al Masri (described as al Qaeda’s “nuclear chief” by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed) were reportedly being held under a loose form of house arrest by the Iranian regime.

Al Adel told Abu Bakr “that no price was too high to pay if they could get their hands on such weapons,” according to Tenet. But al Adel “cautioned” against “scams,” saying that “Pakistani specialists should be brought to Saudi Arabia to inspect the merchandise prior to purchase.”

El Adel may start pressing the flesh among Arab bankrollers if he wants to keep his new job, restore al Qaeda’s financial health, and get enough money for his old dreams of a nuclear bomb.  And the West will need to keep as much of a financial squeeze on al Qaeda as ever.

Menendez suggests Cohen weakness

In a follow-up to this post about the confirmation hearings David Cohen, the nominee to be the Treasury Department’s undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) wants some reassurance that Cohen is committed fully to enforcing CISADA, a U.S. sanctions law against Iran.

When questioned about why more hadn’t been done to enforce the law, Cohen’s answer could be translated “we’re working on it.”  Froom Haaretz on May 5:

U.S. Treasury nears decision on expanding Iran sanctions

The law, aimed at curbing Iran’s nuclear program, effectively requires banks to choose between dealing with the U.S.-led financial system or to continue doing business with Iran.
By Reuters

The United States Treasury is close to a decision whether to blacklist more banks that appear to be defying sanctions against Iran, including an institution in Turkey, a senior Treasury official said on Tuesday.

David Cohen, nominated to be Treasury’s undersecretary for terrorism and financial crimes, told a U.S. Senate confirmation hearing that he will vigorously enforce the Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability and Disinvestment Act (CISADA)
 
The law, aimed at curbing Iran’s nuclear program, effectively requires banks to choose between dealing with the U.S.-led financial system or to continue doing business with Iran.

Members of the Senate Banking Committee questioned Cohen on why Treasury had not sanctioned any banks under CISADA, which was passed in July 2010 to enforce tougher UN sanctions against Iran.

“We are pursuing the leverage” against banks dealing with Iran, Cohen said. “Our first option is to get them to stop. Our second best option is to apply sanctions. Without getting into the details of any particular investigation, we are getting close to a decision point on several institutions,” Cohen did not name any of the banks, but said that one institution in Turkey was effectively violating the sanctions.

“We are committed to enforcing the law,” Cohen added. “Generically, we have a financial institution (in Turkey) that is not responsive to our overtures and it is engaged in activity that is sanctionable under CISADA. We will pursue that very vigorously.”

Senator Robert Menendez, a Democrat from New Jersey, said he was concerned that Treasury had not adequately enforced the CISADA law.

“I am seriously concerned that as one of the prime movers of that legislation, that a sanctions regime that ultimately goes largely unenforced or to low-level players, sends the message of a toothless tiger,” Menendez said.

He added that he wanted a sense that Cohen, who is now serving as acting undersecretary, would pursue sanctions under CISADA before he would support Cohen’s nomination.

UN funds rogue nuclear ambitions

First we pay the Taliban to “reintegrate” with the government of Afghanistan.  Then we consider arming Libyan rebels who include Al Qaeda.  Meanwhile, we fund “technical” and “peaceful” nuclear aspirations of rogue regimes.  Will the news of Western governments and international organizations supporting our enemies never cease?  From the Daily Beast on Mar. 22:

Iran, Sudan, Syria, and other countries the U.S. has named state sponsors of terrorism have received millions of dollars in U.N. nuclear technology aid—and Hillary Clinton won’t stop the flow of cash. Laurel Adams of the Center for Public Integrity reports.

The State Department is refusing to block U.N. nuclear technology aid to countries that are on the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism, including Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s regime.

The reason, says Hillary Clinton’s department, is that such a clampdown would hinder other countries that have nothing to do with terrorism.

The U.S. provides $20 million a year to help finance the International Atomic Energy Agency, which promotes peaceful use of nuclear energy. But some IAEA funds have gone to countries that could potentially use nuclear technology to build weapons, the Government Accountability Office warns in a new report.

Neither the State Department nor the IAEA have sought to limit the so-called technical cooperation aid to terror-linked nations such as Iran, Sudan, Syria, and Cuba, or countries that are not party to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, such as India, Israel, and Pakistan, the congressional watchdog says.

The former head of the program told investigators that requests for technical assistance are evaluated strictly on technical merits, thwarting efforts to assess national-security concerns.

“State officials told us that the U.S. did not systematically try to limit TC projects in Cuba, Iran, Sudan, and Syria—which the department designated as sponsors of terrorism,” the report says. “These four countries received more than $55 million in TC assistance from 1997 through 2007.”

During the same time frame, India, Israel, and Pakistan received $24.6 million in technical assistance, even though none is a party to the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Nuclear equipment and technology, even if geared toward peaceful purposes, also can be used to develop nuclear weapons. Yet the former head of the TC program told the investigators that requests for technical assistance are evaluated strictly on technical merits, thereby thwarting efforts to assess national-security concerns.

The GAO has suggested repeatedly that the State Department withhold the U.S. contribution to IAEA that would go to countries accused of aiding terrorists.

“The United States has applied several types of sanctions limiting foreign assistance and trade to states it has designated as sponsors of terrorism and to other countries. To avoid the appearance of an inconsistent approach and to foster greater cohesion in U.S. policy toward such nations, we believe that it is fair for Congress to consider requiring State to withhold a share of the U.S. contribution,” the GAO says.

Withholding funds would undermine the Obama administration’s ability to convince other member countries to contribute to the fund, and since the funding is not traced to specific projects, it would punish all recipients in the program, the State Department said in response.

The IAEA provides minimal information on project proposals, usually just project titles, which further hinders efforts by the Energy Department to assess the risk of proliferation in countries requesting assistance.

Jorisch: Germany helps Iran get the bomb

Not to be outdone by their French neighbors, Germany’s business ties with Iran appear to be growing.  Counter-terror expert Avi Jorisch argues that the German links help banks that are under sanction by the United States for their ties with Iran’s nuclear program.  From Ynet via The Terror Finance Blog:

India is poised to assist Iran in sidestepping international sanctions by using the German financial system to facilitate the transfer from India to Iran of billions of dollars annually for oil sales. The United States and the European Union should take immediate action to prevent this abuse of the financial sector. Failure to take a strong stance will allow a rogue regime to fill its coffers with the hard currency it needs to repress its people, facilitate terrorism, and build a nuclear bomb.

On March 29, Germany’s foreign and economic ministries ratified an arrangement that would allow India to transfer an estimated $12.65 billion dollars to the German Central Bank to pay for Iranian oil. The money would then be routed to Iran through the European-Iranian Bank (Europäisch-Iranische Handelsbank, or EIH), which has been blacklisted for proliferating weapons of mass destruction.

According to the Indian press, New Delhi and Tehran have been trying to find a way to conduct business for some time, as sanctions levied by the US, Europe, and the United Nations have made it difficult for Iran to move its funds internationally.

Until recently, India and Iran were using a relatively unknown clearing house based in Tehran to move billions of dollars annually. In late 2010, the US government realized that Iran was able to circumvent sanctions easily using the Asian Clearing Union (ACU), and that India was the major culprit. Since 2008, India and Iran have transacted business involving approximately $30 billion dollars using the ACU. Washington put significant pressure on the Indian government, and transactions between Tehran and New Delhi have ground to a halt.

Supporting Iran’s terror agenda

For decades, Germany has served as the Islamic Republic’s largest trading partner on the European continent.