December 12, 2005: The Revolutionary Guard has formed a special internal security assessment task force, probably because the ruling religious clique is afraid to trust the regular armed forces. The task force's mission seems to be to consider vulnerabilities to terrorism, and perhaps evaluate the security of critical infrastructure in the event of more conventional attack.

Longer term, the clerics running Iran face even more serious problems. Iran is running out of oil, and oil revenue is expected to start shrinking in the 2020s. Moreover, the clerics urged Iranians to have many children for the last two decades, and this means that pensioners will go from 7 percent of the population now, to 30 percent in another forty years. Political reforms, to unleash economic growth, is not acceptable to the ruling clerics. But developing nuclear weapons, and seizing nearby Arab oil fields does appear to be a more palatable option, both economically and theologically.

December 11, 2005: The UN continues to be unable to stop the Iranian nuclear weapons program. The Iranians continue to stonewall the UN nuclear investigators, believing that eventually the UN will tire of the effort and go away. leaving Iran with its nukes, and no economic and weapons embargo.

December 9, 2005: The Iranian navy activity turned out to be part of large scale military training exercises, that did get announced, and publicized. However, several dozen journalists were killed when the air force transport they were being flown in, crashed.

December 8, 2005: The Iranian president again outraged the world, or at least Europe, by denying that the nazis killed millions of Jews, and asking that Israel be moved to Europe. In response to the uproar, Iran said these beliefs have been common in Iran for a long time, so what's the big deal.