IRAN: Tehran is adjusting to major changes in the balance of military power within the region, writes Tom Clonan
Iran, taking maximum advantage of the US military difficulties in neighbouring Iraq, along with Shia resurgence there, is engaged in a high-risk strategy of brinkmanship diplomacy with the EU troika over its recent resumption of uranium enrichment, intelligences analysts believe.
In turn, America's concerns about Tehran's nuclear enrichment programme are said to be informed by parallel political and military developments in Iran.
The recent election of hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president has copperfastened the status and influence of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Forces (IRGC) within Iran's military.
The IRGC, Iran's ideologically driven military elite, has direct responsibility for the development of Tehran's missile and non-conventional weapons programmes.
Iran is believed by western analysts to have sought to reconfigure its strategic defence planning in light of the major changes in the balance of military power within the Middle East.
Over the last decade the US has steadily increased its forward military presence throughout the Gulf region. American force projection in the region includes ground bases in countries such as Iraq and Qatar along with an increased air and naval presence throughout the Persian Gulf.
These developments to the south and west of Iran have occurred alongside a destabilisation of the Caucasus region to the north following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the establishment of a number of unstable republics, including Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan along Iran's borders.
Iran's defence planners also regard Turkey as an emerging threat to the north alongside a destabilised Afghanistan and problematic Pakistan to the east.
Confronted by a slowly evolving security and political encirclement in recent years, Iran is seen as having its complex defence situation and to have reinvigorated and flexed its diplomatic and military muscles.
Despite possessing a large standing army consisting of regular forces alongside the IRGC and numbering almost a million troops, Iran's conventional weapons systems and air force consist mostly of outdated former Soviet-style equipment and munitions.
Designed to compensate for serious shortcomings in its conventional forces, deterrence is believed to have become the keystone of Iran's strategic defence concept.
In more than doubling its defence spending in recent years, Tehran's defence priorities have therefore been directed towards promoting the development of missiles and non-conventional weapons - including nuclear warheads - designed to offset its conventional military weaknesses.
Under the stewardship of the IRGC, Iran has recently made rapid progress in developing viable missile systems - crucially capable of delivering non-conventional warheads.
Iran's Shahab 3 missile, which is based on North Korea's No-Dong missile, has a range of 1,500km and would be capable of carrying a conventional or non-conventional warhead to population centres in countries such as Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Israel.
Recent statements by Iran's Defence Minister Ali Shamkhani suggest that Iran has successfully test-fired a modified missile, the Shahab 4, with a range of up to 2,000km, which in theory would place a number of European cities within range of Iranian warheads.
These developments lend urgency to the current diplomatic attempts to ensure that Iran's uranium enrichment programme is restricted to entirely peaceful means. This is especially so given the recent admission by Pakistan's information ministry that Pakistani nuclear secrets and technology were recently sold to Iran.
The latter reality, alongside recent quantum leaps in Iranian missile capability - achieved with North Korean assistance - might well accelerate, it is feared, the development of a viable Iranian nuclear weapon far in advance of the latest US projections of up to years.