Chavez ready to shelter duplicate Iranian nuclear facilities in Venezuela

debkafile‘s Iranian sources disclose that Hugo Chavez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are working on a wide-raging plan to replicate Iran’s key nuclear installations in Venezuela, possibly in the framework of a new program there on the Iranian and North Korean models.
The French news agency AFP, reporting from Tehran Sunday, disclosed Chavez’s suggestion to Iran to establish in his country a “nuclear village” to produce nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. But, according to debkafile‘s Iranian sources, the conversation between the two presidents Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 5-6, when they visited Shiite shrines in Meshhad, went as far as to discuss the relocation or replication of key elements of the Iranian nuclear industry to Venezuela, both to keep them safe and to guarantee they would keep on ticking over if Iran was attacked by the US or Israel.
Their talks have advanced far enough to get Washington worried about the prospect of yet another hostile nuclear program coming into being, this one at America’s back door.
Chavez eagerly embraces the plan as another chance to rile the Americans, while the Iranian president stopped trusting Damascus as Tehran’s nuclear back-up partner when Israel demolished the nuclear facility under construction by North Korea in northern Syria two years ago and its president began to be wooed by the Obama administration.
While establishing a joint team cagily assigned with developing “nuclear cooperation for peaceful purposes” a covert track between Iran and Venezuela is progressing much faster on costing the replication of Iranian nuclear plants in the South American country as compared with their transfer, lock, stock and barrel.