In today’s Business Day of South Africa, Paul Moorcraft of the British Centre for Policy Analysis raises some troubling questions about South Africa’s nuclear program (thanks to Joel Pollak for the link). contentions readers may recall that Gabriel Schoenfeld raised questions about a break-in at South Africa’s Pelindaba nuclear facility back in December, a story which appeared on page A29 of the Washington Post.

Moorcraft cites a new book by the journalist A.J. Venter:

Venter also sheds new light on the extent of SA’s post-apartheid deals in missile and nuclear technology. He makes the startling claim that SA, which dismantled its six nukes under international auspices, is considering renewing its nuclear arsenal. Intelligence Minister Ronnie Kasrils, “a card-carrying, outspokenly anti-Israel Jewish member of the South African Communist Party”, in Venter’s words, allegedly briefed his intelligence staff in Pretoria that a nuclear-armed SA would propel the country to the forefront of African politics and “be able to look after itself in the event of serious trouble”.

Kasrils is more than just an “outspokenly anti-Israel” member of the African National Congress. He is the most high-profile and prolific slanderer of Israel in South Africa. I wrote about Kasrils, in the broader context of South Africa’s troubling direction towards an anti-Western foreign policy, in last summer’s Azure. It appears that Iran is looking in the most unlikely of places to gain the materials necessary for strengthening its nuclear capability:

Venter’s evidence bolsters the conventional wisdom that Iran is hell-bent on acquiring nuclear weapons. In the intelligence world, threat is calculated as capability plus intention. The crude statements by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad about destroying Israel grafts open intention on to the feared future capability. Iran has been shopping all over the world, so the South African connection, although worrying to western intelligence, is relatively small compared with the bigger players, such as Pakistan and North Korea.

As Pollak rightly surmises, “Perhaps we now know why Kasrils and other senior South African government officials have been visiting Iran in recent months.”