"Electing Iran to the committee, just days after its non-compliance was referred to the United Nations Security Council, would be beyond shameful and an embarrassment to the credibility of this body."

"[The decision represents] an affront [to the International Atomic Energy Agency and its critical screening work]." 

U.S. Ambassador Preston Wells Griffith III 

 

"[This objection by Washington is a] childish type of behaviour."

"Nuclear science, technology, expertise and industry have taken deep roots in the country and cannot be eliminated through military actions or assassinations."

"Iran will not surrender."

Behrouz Kamalvandi, deputy head, Atomic Energy Organization of Iran 

Diplomats attend the Board of Governor’s Meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) at the agency's headquarters in Vienna, Austria on September 14, 2026. (Photo by AFP)

 

As insane as it seems to anyone conscientiously following the news in the Middle East, the Islamic Republic of Iran which should rightfully be viewed as a pariah of a nation, dedicated to establishing itself as an  unparalleled power in the Middle East while posing a threat to the greater world order with its stealth infiltration in tandem with that of the Muslim Brotherhood in Western democratic nations with a goal to undermining the values inherent in free and civil society to attain a position of theistic control through jihad by both diplomatic and violent means, has been favoured with a seat on a board overseeing the work of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

 

This stunning turn of events staggers belief in the function of the United Nations, already under suspicion over its focus and support of the many facets of autocracy within its membership and its entanglement with coercive, exploitive states that persecute their own citizens. Iran is one of those most egregious of states, a theocracy that strangles internal dissent to its restrictive domination of peoples' lives. Its determination to develop nuclear weapons, allied with its technological advances in ballistic missile delivery systems and its formation of, training and financing of terrorist groups make it a dire threat to civilized society.

 

Yet, thanks to the cohesion of Muslim groups and the lobbying efforts of the 57-member Organization of Islamic Cooperation, alongside the Arab League -- a country whose minority Shiite brand of Islam with its  goal of supremacy over the majority Sunni nations neighbouring it, many of which, in the Persian Gulf, were treated to barrages of missiles and military drones in Iran's conflict with the United States -- supported Iran's candidacy for the position, against the efforts of the United States to deny it that status.

 

Key issues such as nuclear safety and security, concerning the International Atomic Energy Agency, and its spurned efforts by Iran to continue making routine checks at Iranian nuclear sites, leaving it virtually deadlocked, provided the backdrop to its general conference. On Tuesday, Tehran, with support from the very Persian Gulf neighbours which had been the recipients of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards' firing of missiles and drones, helped Iran succeed in claiming a seat on the IAEA committee.

 

Intel Brief: Iran War Solution Nowhere in Sight as U.S. and Iran Remain Entrenched  AP Photo

 

In a secret ballot, 44 countries supported Iran's nomination, as opposed to 35 voting to deny Iran that seat, while 42 nations abstained from the vote. Iran is the only non-Arab (it is Aryan) Muslim state in the Middle East, surrounded by Arab nations and one tiny Jewish nation. What they have in common excluding Israel, is Islamic religious devotion, the sectarian divide aside. Yet despite the threat that Iran poses to its neighbours, having sent thousands of missiles and drones into their territory up to a month earlier, the religious ties that bind won the day for Iran.

 

Iran, in fact, boosted by its Islamic bedfellows, has been appointed to a number of UN-body groups, one dedicated to the protection of  women's rights among them in a wildly inappropriate match. Earlier Iran had been appointed by its fellow Middle Eastern neighbours to the organizing body of the conference itself. In the meanwhile, a country that refuses entry to the very body it now sits on a board for, making the entire exercise one of bemusing sanctimony, leaves the International Atomic Energy Agency unable to fulfill its mandate.

 

The work of the IAEA has been roadblocked in the single country in the world whose secretive, illegal, and dangerous nuclear work poses a direct threat to humanity. Iran wants to possess nuclear weaponry, as a theocracy that believes in the return of the Hidden Mahdi, whose reappearance will mean the end of humanity, when only the faithful in Islam will rise to Paradise, while all others descend to a place of eternal agony as punishment for denying Islam. Their logic is to create conditions of civilizational dysfunction so severe it will hasten the reappearance of a religious symbol of total world destruction. 

 

This shows Iran's nuclear enrichment facility in Natanz, Iran, on April, 9, 2007. (AP Photo/Hasan Sarbakhshian, File)

 

"The Islamic Republican Guard Corps navy works more like a guerrilla force at sea."

"It is focused on asymmetrical warfare, especially in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz."

"So instead of relying on big warships and classic naval battles, it depends on hit-and-run attacks."

Saeid Golkar, Guards expert, political science professor, University of Tennessee, Chattanooga

 

"When it is very bumpy, they [armed forces onboard] cannot shoot."

"[They are also ill-equipped to go head to head with a ​warship, and would likely suffer] very heavy casualties [​in any direct assault on one]."

"Even if they tried to saturate the ship’s defences by attacking from multiple directions, they would be extremely vulnerable to the air support that would be called in."

"It is going to be ​much harder to eliminate ⁠the small boat threat than it was to destroy Iran’s larger naval vessels, which were big targets that were relatively easy to find and track and, at most, only had a limited ability to defend themselves from air attack." 

Jeremy Binnie, Middle East specialist, defence intelligence company Janes 

The IRGC speed boats are fast, light, and easily replaceable. NurPhoto via Getty Images

It all began when recreational boats were mounted with rocket-propelled grenades or machine guns, when Iran first began using small boats that were fast, maneuverable, and deadly when patrolling the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf. Those recreational craft underwent a  transformation when a range of specially designed small boats, along with miniature submarines and marine drones were built to the IRGC specifications, over the years. That 'mosquito fleet' of small boats has become a real and present threat in the Strait as a consequence of the U.S.-Israeli conflict in Iran.

 

The flotilla of small, fast boats whose purpose by the IRGC has been to harass local and international shipping through the Gulf, has turned now to threatening and firing upon global shipping in the Strait of Hormuz during the recent face-off between the U.S. and the Islamic Republic of Iran -- or what's left of it, aside from the IRGC. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is separate and apart from the regular Navy of Iran, which had been struck a cataclysmic blow in the opening days of the aerial bombardment. 

 

Over 90 percent of Iran's navy's fleet was destroyed, according to U.S. General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. They all, including the country's major warships, were sunk and sit now on the ocean's bottom. At the same time, an estimated 50 percent of the fast attack boats belonging to the Guards were sunk. Estimates of the total number of these small ships prior to the U.S. sinking of the fleet ranged from hundreds to thousands. They are still not now in short supply. 

 

Arrival of new shipment of IRGC fastboats. Photo via Mehdi H

 

The size of the boats make them mostly invisible on satellite images from where they're moored alongside piers, where the  excavation of deep caves along the rocky coastline shelters them, prepared for deployment at a moment's notice. During the current conflict, at least 20 vessels were attacked by the 'mosquito fleet', according to the International Maritime Agency. Analysts consider the attacks to have been by drones fired from mobile launchers on land.

 

As for the small boat arsenal which poses a major threat to commercial shipping both in the Gulf and the Strait, "It remains a disruptive force. You never quite knew what they were up to and what their intentions were", commented Admiral Gary Roughead, retired chief of U.S. Naval Operations. "The IRGC navy has always believed that it is at the forefront of the confrontation with the Great Satan", added specialist on the Guards navy, Farzin Nadimi from the Washington Institute think tank.

 

According to experts, these small boats can reach speeds of over 100 knots. Larger, more sophisticated warships were also recently developed by the Guards, and they too were targeted when the U.S. bombardments focused on bombing Iran's naval fleet as well as its fleet of warplanes. The largest drone carrier, the Shahid Bagheri, a converted container ship able to launch anti-ship missiles, was also hit by U.S. air strikes.

 

It is the swarms of small boats that pose an ongoing threat to commercial vessels which have no defences against such attacks. U.S. warships, on the other hand, can counter a potential swam of small boats with their high-caliber cannons and additional weaponry.  

 

60 percent of IRGC fast boats still threaten shipping lanes: WSJ