Hugo Chavez is amidst an 11-day trip to Russia, Belarus, Syria, Algeria, Libya, and Iran.
A loud, anti-American, "tour of tyrannies."
In an interesting dispatch from the BBC, it was reported that during his visit to Tehran,
"Venezuela has agreed to export petrol to Iran, in a sign of closer ties between two of America's most vocal adversaries. At the end of a two-day visit to Iran, President Hugo Chavez said Venezuela would supply 20,000 barrels of petrol a day to the country.
Iran is a major oil exporter but lacks domestic refining capability."
Keep in mind that Venezuela also lacks significant refining capacity. As a matter of fact, it's forced to refine more than half of its daily production abroad in the U.S., Europe and the Caribbean.
Therefore, Chavez is willing to further strain Venezuela's limited domestic refining, in order to satisfy his anti-American ideological zeal.
That's akin to when Castro's Cuba first announced in 2001 that it was importing sugar from Brazil to satisfy domestic consumption.
Such economic inefficiency by tyrants guarantees their eventual ouster.
And the free world will be the better for it.
