Iran's industry and mining minister Ali-Akbar Mehrabian declared that more than thirty industrial projects will be inaugurated between Iran and Venezuela in 2008. Plans have been in the making since September 2007, when Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad met with Morales to sign several trade and cooperation agreements, including Iran's intent to open a Spanish language satellite television channel and invest $1 billion in Bolivia's oil and gas industry.

Now, Bolivia's leftist president Evo Morales announced last week that Iran plans to open a television station "for all of Latin America" in Bolivia's Andean foothills.

Washington is becoming increasingly concerned, but lacks a creative vision to isolate and weaken the "anti-imperialist alliances" between those independent Latin American countries and the boiling Islamic Republic. One day after Morales' announcement, a U.S. congressional delegation met with him in La Paz, where they proceeded to warn Morales against expanding ties with Iran. Referring to the pending expiration of a trade deal that grants duty exemptions to imports from Bolivia and other Andean countries, Congressman Jerry Weller (R-IL) said, "there is a very high level of concern regarding the activities of Iran in Latin America. If this concern continues to grow in our Congress, it will become more difficult to extend these preferences in the future."

The U.N. nuclear monitoring agency presented documents yesterday that indicate a focused nuclear weapons program in Iran occurring after 2003 - in direct contradiction to the reports published by the NIE last fall. Iran again denied ever engaging in such weaponization, dismissing the new information as "forgeries." Intelligence documents continue to confirm Iran's deliberate rejection of U.N. Security Council demands that Iran suspend its uranium enrichment.