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Iran has again been agitating over the disputed islands of Abu Musa, Greater and Lesser Tunbs, which lie in the Strait of Hormuz and are also claimed by the UAE. On 4 November, according to Iranian news reports, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) inaugurated a naval base in the city of Bandar Lengeh, in the southern province of Hormozgan, north of the islands.

The European Parliament (EP) has awarded its prestigious Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought 2012 jointly to imprisoned Iranian lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh and Iranian film director Jafar Panahi, who has also spent time in jail for his work. The prize, awarded annually since 1988, “honours exceptional individuals who combat intolerance, fanaticism and oppression to defend human rights and freedom of expression”.

A European satellite provider’s decision to take 19 Iranian state television and radio channels off air – following a two-year campaign by human rights organisations – has angered Tehran, which used them to spread its influence through Europe and the Middle East

Around 10m tonnes of goods transit Iran each year, providing some £3bn in revenues – a figure Tehran would like to quadruple by 2025. Sanctions have only intensified government efforts to make the country an indispensable part of the regional network.

Four oilfields in central Iran will start production in the next six months, according to Iranian press reports. The Shana news agency said on 26 September that the four – Cheshmeh Khoush, Sarvestan, Khesht and Saadat Abad – are in the final stages of development and will come on line the end of the current Iranian calendar year (March 2013).

Ian Fleming’s villain Auric Goldfinger reminded James Bond: ‘Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times, it’s enemy action.’ As a third Gulf hydrocarbons company this year falls victim to a cyber attack, speculation is rife over who is to blame.

Iran has imprisoned the daughter of former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and arrested his son. According to news wires, Faezeh Hashemi was arrested on 22 September and sent to jail for a six-month term, imposed earlier this year, for “spreading propaganda against the regime”.

In a move to limit western influence, as well as to counteract Stuxnet and other cyber attacks, the Iranian government is putting in place the technical foundations for a long-mooted self-contained national intranet network that would be detached from the worldwide web.

Oman Air’s maiden flight to Iran landed in Tehran on 1 September. The daily service from Muscat will operate on Embraer E175 regional jets, which have 71 seats, including 11 in business class.

Tensions over Iran’s nuclear programme remain high. Efforts to reach a diplomatic solution seem to have flagged after P5+1 talks in Moscowin June ended in disappointment (GSN 928/6).A 30 August report from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) raised particular concerns that Iran has increased enrichment capacity at the underground Fordow plant near Qom, and that, since February 2012, there has been a flurry of activity intended to sanitise Parchin, a military complex 30km fromTehran which theIAEA has been trying to access.The IAEA also reported a growing stockpile of enriched uranium.

Iran is scrutinising its relationship with Asian customers as it struggles to generate hard currency, prevent economic collapse and head off competition from Iraq.

The region’s 129 paralympians came back from the London 2012 Paralympic Games with 31 medals, 24 of those won by Iran, which came 11th in the medal table. It was Iran’s best medal haul to date.

Iran will hold presidential elections on 14 June 2013, the Interior Ministry said on 7 September, the first such vote since a violent crackdown on protests over Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s disputed re-election in 2009.

The summit of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) that took place in Tehran on 30-31 August provoked a flurry of press coverage, government spin and academic debate, most of it post-event and reflective. It runs somewhat contrary to the movement’s name that almost all of the discussion has focused on who stood for Iran, and who against it – there has been scant mention of the 700-paragraph closing document, or indeed of NAM’s relevance or aims more than two decades after the end of the Cold War.

Established by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1979, shortly after the Islamic revolution, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has an estimated 120,000 personnel fulfilling functions related to internal security, defence and regime survival.