Blowback Chronicles: The Tehran-Managua Axis

According to the model (Rome/Berlin/Tokyo), you need three members for a proper axis (aka, "axis of evil"), despite the fact that an axis typically is a single line between two points. Two members should be the primary partners, and at least one should be in East Asia. With Iraq now safely a Western-style democracy, Iran and North Korea have been interviewing potential new partners. It looks like Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, after considering such contenders as, well, most of the world, has finally settled on Daniel Ortega's Nicaragua.

The relationship between Iran and Nicaragua goes back to the 1980s, when Ortega was a former scrappy revolutionary fighting a US-backed right-wing counter-revolution, and Ahmadinejad was a soldier-engineer-student fighting a US-backed invasion by Iraq's then-dictator, Saddam ("The Hammer") Hussein. US President Ronald Reagan, famous for thinking out of the box before thinking out of the box was cool, funded the Nicaraguan counter-revolutionary freedom fighters known as the "Contras" by selling weapons to Iran (via Israel) for the war against Iraq that he was also supporting. A case study in success now referred to in NSA circles as the "Moebius Gambit," but more widely known as the "Iran-Contra Affair," Reagan's operation projected Oliver North and John Poindexter to fame and fortune, first in congressional hearings, and later on FoxNewsChannel, the History Channel, and in the US government's Total Information Awareness program.

Iran and Nicaragua have engaged in a barter trade deal, while Iran and North Korea support each other's nuclear ambitions. Adding Nicaragua to the partnership opens axis access to the volatile anti-US Latin American region, including particularly Venezuela's populist former-commando Hugo Chavez and Cuba's long-time post-revolutionary dictator, Fidel Castro.

Axis of Evil (NDAQ: EVIL) shares rose on the news.

tags technorati : Axis of Evil, Iran, Nicaragua, Ortega, Ahmadinejad, North Korea