Given the U.S.’s deployment earlier this month of an aircraft carrier battle group to the Persian Gulf and comments that it may send up to 120,000 troops to the Middle East to deal with any untoward action by Iran, Tehran has been busy trying to build safety buffers through its allies. Having put in place a strategy to try to exploit existing divisions between the U.S. and Europe, Iran has now reached an agreement with the Federal Government of Iraq in Baghdad to expand co-operation between the two countries in the economically vital oil sector, including, critically, the sale of Iranian oil under the guise of Iraqi oil. This trick was first used when the last full-scale international sanctions were ramped up in 2012 but the scope of the new deal far outstrips that arrangement. On the face of it, the most obvious signal of this is the plan […]