An earlier article concluded that Iran possessed some of the means needed to revive its imperial ambitions, but that it would clearly take longer than it imagined to achieve a significant military nuclear capability and the sovereign strategy that this will enable.

The report to its Board of Governors by the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, dated 18 February 2010, on ‘Implementation of the NPT Safeguards Agreement and of relevant provisions of Security Council resolutions in the Islamic Republic of Iran’ took an important step by officially addressing ‘possible military dimensions’ of the Iranian nuclear programme.⁽¹⁾ Moreover, the report concluded that ‘altogether, this raises concerns about the possible existence in Iran of past or current undisclosed activities related to the development of a nuclear payload for a missile.’ The pursuit by the Islamic Republic of Iran of a nuclear weapon capability is thus confirmed by the UN agency. Iran is therefore seeking to revive its imperial ambitions, but it will soon find that it has a long way to go industrially before it will be capable of exercising credible and lasting deterrence.

Even before the Islamic Republic of Iran achieves a nuclear deterrent capability, it is important to understand why it is expending such efforts to achieve this. The obvious question to ask is ‘what territory is it intended to protect?’ The answer was provided by Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, chairman of the Guardian Council and provisional Imam for Friday prayers in Tehran; in a sermon on 18 April 2008, he said: ‘In a not so distant future, we should have available the most powerful military equipment in the world so that no one would even consider invading our borders. These borders would include not only those of Iran itself but those of Islam ... Iran must defend oppressed Muslims everywhere so that our enemies do not dare to attack Afghanistan, Palestine and Iraq.’⁽²⁾