This new year has started like previous ones – with Iran firmly at the top of the international security agenda. There has been no let-up in the long-running stand-off between the west and Tehran over the latter’s secretive nuclear programme.
Indeed, tensions have been rising and tempers fraying. On the western side, frustrations about Iran’s atomic obfuscation have led to a sharp escalation in sanctions against the Islamic regime. The US has just enacted a law that would interfere with payments earned by Iran from its own oil exports, while the European Union intends to impose an embargo on oil purchases from Iran at the end of this month. Given that EU nations account for a fifth of Iranian production, that is a vast hole for Tehran to fill.
Such steps are likely to inflict heavy blows on a tottering Iranian economy, and apply further pressure to a regime that has only recently faced down a bout of internal unrest. Tehran has responded by turning up the bellicose rhetoric. As well as trumpeting the test-firing of an anti-ship cruise missile, it has in recent days warned the US not to send an aircraft carrier back into the Gulf, and threatened to close the strait of Hormuz.