Iran's armament industries are more advanced than Venezuela's defense production capability and Iran has been keen to lend its experienced personnel and offer their special knowledge to any nation that requests it and has the requisite "revolutionary credentials."

Venezuela and Iran have made pronouncements indicating they agree on most political issues, including relations with the United States and Russia, free market economy or capitalism, Palestine, oil trade and the West and Central and South America.

Chavez visited Libya, Algeria, Spain, Turkmenistan, Belarus, Italy, Syria and Iran before ending his tour last week in Russia, where he signed extensive arms acquisition deals. During a meeting with President Dmitry Medvedev, he declared Russia was "a superpower again" while Venezuela stood at the center of a new power emerging in South America.

This was a reference to attempts by Chavez to forge an alliance of countries that are critical of any U.S. military presence in South America, particularly troop deployments on Colombian bases in the war on drug cartels supplying cocaine and heroin to North America.

The Venezuelan position is in line with Iran's own frequent tirades against "world devouring imperialism" -- the West.

Details of military and security cooperation between Venezuela and Iran have not been revealed, but Chavez hinted it would include "nuclear cooperation." The Venezuelan's announcement drew a sharp response from France, which warned that such collaboration would contravene U.N. Security Council resolutions.

Chavez has said Iranian nuclear technology transfer to Venezuela is already in the cards but has not revealed details of those transfers. Neither has Iran commented on the news, but industry sources said significant military cooperation between the two countries was already in place. Last week, Chavez described the Iranian regime as a strategic ally of Venezuela.

The only hint so far of what might be afoot came in a strongly worded French Foreign Affairs Ministry statement in reaction to reports of Iran-Venezuela nuclear cooperation.

The ministry said France does not question Venezuela's right to the peaceful use of nuclear energy, but any country benefiting from Iranian nuclear technology will be infringing U.N. Security Council Resolution 1737 plus other U.N. resolutions.

Adopted in December 2006, the resolution calls on all U.N. members to refrain from purchasing nuclear-related items or equipment from Iran whether directly from Tehran or indirectly through other sources.

Analysts said international compliance with that and another four U.N. resolutions on the issue would be hard to achieve and would require a gigantic global policing and investigation effort, for which international resources were simply not available.

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