1962 Redux: Foreign Missiles in the Americas

Hudson New York, part of the Hudson Institute, a conservative think-tank, provides this alarming news, based on a November 25 article in Die Welt. I cannot immediately locate a translation of the original.

Iran is planning to place medium-range missiles on Venezuelan soil, based on western information sources, according to an article in the German daily, Die Welt, of November 25, 2010. According to the article, an agreement between the two countries was signed during the last visit o Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to Tehran on October 19, 2010. The previously undisclosed contract provides for the establishment of a jointly operated military base in Venezuela, and the joint development of ground-to-ground missiles.

Link HERE, original article in Die Welt HERE.

There was a similar report published in a Venezuelan newspaper back in 2006, which appears to have been an impenetrably complex exercise in disinformation.  Or not.

In a rational world, assignment editors at The New York Times and the Washington Post would have tasked reporters with finding out what this is all about, if anything.  If true, it's front page news; if untrue, it's still an interesting story centered on who and why.