President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will soon be making a trip to Baghdad. This would not be happening if Iran were not close to consolidating its geopolitical interests in Iraq. What's more, the U.S. State Department cautiously gave its nod of approval to this visit.

Meanwhile, Iraqi Shiite leaders have been traveling to Iran, as did Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul over the weekend. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, in an interview published Monday in the Arabic language daily al-Hayat, said that Syrian interests would be best served through an understanding between the United States and Iran, and that he finds Arab fears over Iran's growing role in the region irrational.

The Iranians have also been engaged in some  changes internally, trying to get all the factions of the clerical-led conservative establishment on the same page called: the Strategic Council for Foreign Affairs (SCFA), meant to serve as an advisory group to improve the country's capabilities in making major foreign policy decisions. It is not an executive body and is not supposed to interfere with the function of the Foreign Ministry or the Supreme National Security Council (SNSC).

US intelligence estimates that Iran can overcome its technology problems in eight months, which means a breakthrough in February or March 2007. From that point, Iran will be able to move forward with the assembly of tens if not hundreds of P2 centrifuge clusters. The work can be scattered across the country out of the purview of international inspectors. The projected timeline for the Islamic Republic to attain a nuclear bomb however is around 2009-2010.

Plus Putin spoke to a gathering of senior diplomats today, saying that Russia and the United States need to relate on a more equitable footing.