Busy, Busy Iran

"While the Iranian economy remains under pressure, its stabilization and improvement in key areas has enhanced Iranian negotiating leverage. We fear that this has made it more difficult for Washington and its partners to reach a final agreement that peacefully prevents Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapons capability."
Foundation for Defense of Democracies study, Washington

"The vast majority of the expertise and the basic materials arrive in Gaza from Iran via Sudan. Most of the rockets coming from Gaza today are homemade, but utilize Iranian expertise."
Israeli intelligence

An Iron Dome launcher fires an interceptor rocket near the southern city of Beersheba in 2012. Photograph: Nir Elias/Reuters

According to a former Israeli deputy minister of defence, Iranian technical arms specialists shipped [20 km-range] grad missiles "dividing them into four parts in order to smuggle [them] through the tunnels ... then they sent to Gaza experts who helped them to develop the longer-range rockets."

The Islamic Republic of Iran is extremely busy these days. Nothing much has been heard of late of their nuclear and rocketry scientists spending quality time in Pyong Yong with Kim Jong-un's prize nuclear installations, so it can safely be assumed they've been busy within their own underground bunkered nuclear shops, closed off for inspection by those nosy IAEA investigators.

The program, under the wing of the Republican Guard at the behest of Iran's Supreme Leader, is also busy with its elite Republican al Quds brigades steering Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, alongside Hezbollah, to victory over the Syrian Sunni rebels still hoping to unseat the regime and take back a Syria that will mete out equal treatment of opportunity to prosper for Syria's Sunnis.

Then there's the latterly-opened conflict theatre drawing in the al Quds brigades and Hezbollah in Iraq with the Islamic State terrorist thugs breathing hot and heavy down the Shiite necks there running toward Baghdad. Which just goes to demonstrate how much in demand Iran is, yet it has patched up its differences over the Sunni-Shiite divide with Hamas enough to continue supplying its weaponry.

All of which pungently destructive activity is a mere diversion for the multi-talented-involved Republic; it also diplomatically entertains Russia, the United States, China, Britain, France and Germany in the delusional fiction that it has any interest at all in assuaging their concerns over its nuclear future.

"There are still significant gaps on some core issues which will require more time and effort", chirpily declared a joint statement issued by the EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton and Iran's affably-unflappable foreign minister. The core issues, needless to say, being Iran's refusal to surrender any of its centrifuges nor its future as a nuclear-weapons storage depot in the Middle East.

Ayatollah Khamenei has made it abundantly clear he plans for Iran to expand its centrifuge stock significantly and who is the international community, exactly, to tell him otherwise? President Hasan Rouhani, the smiling moderate, informs the world that Iran has no intention of parting with its nuclear blenders "under any circumstances". Clear enough?

Iran's steady work on developing an intercontinental ballistic missile, along with all of its other nefarious intrigues and schemes should, surely, be more than enough evidence that this is not a regime amenable to reason and clarity, but one dedicated to repeating what works best for it in negotiating with Western interests; delaying tactics and obfuscation delivered with tact and charm, because it works.

Besides which, the Supreme Leader has declared Western demands "stupid and idiotic". But that's all right, to keep things sweet between the P5+1 and Iran, another $2.8-billion is to be released in sanctions relief topping off the previous $4-billion to $7-billion that has restored the country to its previous comfortable economic position, pre-sanctions imposition.

All's well in Iran's world strategic protocol of deceit and nefarious crimes against humanity; its deliverables and expert steerage has enabled the carnage that now envelopes Iraq, Syria and Gaza. And its nuclear aspirations have been thrown just minimally off track; no problems there, either.