With all the focus on Syria in recent weeks, the usual Doctor Evil of the region, Iran, has been getting a break. No doubt they have been spending their time testing nukes, building mega rockets disguised as minarets or planning to crash the moon into America with the help of a gravity ray.
Maybe not. But what they have been doing is uncovering a “nest of spies and terrorists”. (Why do these people always sit in nests?) And for the Iranians, these are the juiciest types of terrorists: Zionist ones.
According to Tehran, they have unearthed a dissident group funded, trained and armed by Israel. It is this sort of group that has been blamed for the assassination of Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan, a high-ranking scientist at the Natanz uranium enrichment plant. Four other nuclear nerds have also been hit since 2007 in an apparent attempt to retard the Islamic Republic’s atomic developments.
The nest of spies and traitors story is a bit thin on detail, since Iran is saying that national security and “on-going operations” preclude it from providing specifics. What they are saying is that the arrests came in the “border and central provinces” of the country.
The usual fertiliser is provided by Israel’s long-standing policy of “no comment” on intelligence matters, coupled with the Iranian delight of seeing the Star of David in every shadow.
Meanwhile, President Ahmadinejad keeps up posturing as an EU oil sales embargo approaches in July. It’s a tricky one for the Euros because some of their more fiscally inept states, like Greece, Spain and Italy, have grown used to Iranian oil and now have to compete in a rising market for other sources.
And this gives Ahmadinejad the possibility of cranking out more untranslatable smack talk about his country’s ability to withstand total financial isolation: “Whoever wishes to abuse Iran’s rights, the young people of Hormuzgan will punch them in the mouth to the extent that they won’t be able to find their way home,” he said at a stump speech this week.
No doubt more than a punch in the mouth is being inflicted upon the arrested Zionists at the moment.