The new space base will act as headquarters from which the Iranian military can monitor Tehran’s future “expeditionary space missions,” according to Iran’s defense minister, who was quoted Monday in Iran’s Fars News Agency.

Tehran will also unveil sometime between the end of January and early February “the latest home-made fighter jets,” Fars reported.

The Mehr News Agency quoted Iranian Brigadier General Ahmad Vahidi, who serves as the regime’s minister of defense and armed forces logistics, saying that the new space base will oversee Iranian space cargo missions.

“In upcoming days and Fajr (victory of the Revolution) anniversary ceremonies, an observatory called Imam Sadeq (AS) will be unveiled, with the mission of observing outer space cargo missions of the country,” Vahidi said.

Asked if Iran will “dispatch” any “living creatures” into space, Vahidi reportedly said, “God willing, this will be done in the coming days.” Several reports indicate Iran’s goal is to send monkeys into space.

The news troubled Iran experts.

“Obama may want Iran to unclench its fist, but launching a monkey into space–demonstrating the technology Iran would need to build an intercontinental ballistic missile–is Ayatollah Khamenei’s way of giving Obama the middle finger,” said Michael Rubin, a former Pentagon adviser on Iran and Iraq. “Let’s just hope that the monkey comes back this time as something other than chelo kabob.”

Vahidi also elaborated on the imminent unveiling of several more conventional weapons systems, according to Fars:

Iran has also taken wide strides in designing and manufacturing different types of light, semi-heavy and heavy weapons, military tools and equipment. Tehran launched an arms development program during the 1980-88 Iraqi imposed war on Iran to compensate for a US weapons embargo. Since 1992, Iran has produced its own tanks, armored personnel carriers, missiles and fighter planes.

Meanwhile, Iran is considering suspending multilateral negotiations over its contested nuclear arms program, according to reports.

This could be a stalling tactic, according to experts.

Ahmad Hashemi, a former senior Iranian official, wrote in the Times of Israel last week that Iran “wants the bomb.”

Hashemi went on to explain how the regime uses negotiations as a stalling tactic meant to buy it more time to perfect its nuclear work.

Additionally, Iranian officials met with Russia’s minister of internal affairs Monday to discuss ways the two countries can increase bilateral ties and security cooperation.

Reports in Intelligence Online last week highlighted by the Open Source Center indicated Iran is stepping up its cooperation with China.

Tehran’s Ministry of Intelligence and National Security is said to have signed an “agreement with the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, (namely with the 12th bureau of the 3rd department) to develop listening posts,” according to the January 16 report.

“Iran is involved in the Chinese space station project and technology cooperation is also underway on China’s Tolou (Rising Sun) military satellite project, which will partly be used for telecoms interceptions,” the report said.

“We have to make sure our threat of military action … is credible to them [and] I’m still not sure it is,” said retiring Sen. Joe Lieberman (I., Conn.) during a discussion organized by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

“They have to believe the U.S. will use our immense power to disable their nuclear program if they don’t on their own,” Lieberman said.

Sen. Jon Kyl (R., Ariz.) concurred.

“I think the Iranian are probably nervous, but not nervous enough,” said Kyl, who is also retiring from Congress. “The threat probably isn’t credible enough.”

The candid words from two of the Senate’s top foreign policy voices indicate that frustration among lawmakers could be rising as Iran continues to ignore Western demands for Tehran to disable its nuclear enrichment program.

Economic sanctions, the Senators added, have effectively crippled Iran’s economy but have not had an impact on insulated Iranian leaders and military officials.

“The sanctions have been unprecedented and are having an effect on the Iranian economy, but so far not an observable effect on the Iranian regime at all,” Lieberman said.

“It’s unacceptable for us to allow Iran to become a nuclear state,” he said. “Containment is not an accept alternative. It changes the whole balance of power in the Middle East, emboldens terrorists,” such as those affiliated with Hezbollah and Hamas.

Lieberman also had some pointed words for Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated President Mohamed Morsi, who has come under fire in recent days from secular dissidents for implementing authoritarian rule.

“We should be telling Morsi, ‘Look, there’s already a lot of skepticism about you in America because we’ve read the Muslim Brotherhood documents and they’re not consistent with American values,’” Lieberman said. “We’re going to judge you not by your title with the Muslim Brotherhood but your actions.”

If Morsi continues his authoritarian crackdown, the Obama administration should make it clear that “we’re not going to be able to have normal relations with you,” Lieberman added.

Lieberman also criticized Team Obama for its failure to fully support opposition forces fighting against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

“I’ve been increasingly frustrated, angry, disappointed that the U.S. hasn’t been more proactive in support in the dissidents,” he said. “This is a case where there’s an awful lot of values of strategic interests coming together.”

America could deal a blow to the Iranian regime if it helps oust Assad, one of Tehran’s closest allies.

“Assad is the number one friend of our number one enemy, Iran,” Lieberman said, adding that Assad’s fall would “be a significant body blow to the regime in Tehran.”

The fall of Assad’s regime would “increase our leverage over Iran when it comes to our nuclear program, maybe as much as sanctions do,” he said.

Sanctions “have not stopped Iran from building up its conventional military and missile capabilities, in large part with indigenous skills,” according to the report, which was released earlier this week.

Western economic sanctions on Iran, which President Obama’s administration says are the toughest in history, have not been able to stop Tehran from clandestinely shipping weapons to the embattled regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, which continues to slaughter opposition forces and citizens alike in a bloody conflict that has spanned over a year.

“Iran is also judged [to be] not complying with U.N. requirements that it halt any weapons shipments outside its borders, particularly with regard to purported Iranian weapons shipments to help the embattled Asad [sic] government in Syria,” the report states.

The study complicates arguments made by the Obama administration and others who maintain Western sanctions have brought Iran to the brink of economic collapse, possibly forcing it to abandon its clandestine nuclear enrichment program.

“The CRS conclusions demonstrate the error of Obama administration claims that their Iran policy is working,” Elliott Abrams, former adviser for President George W. Bush, told the Washington Free Beacon. “Sanctions hurt Iran’s economy, but that is not our goal; forcing change in their nuclear program is the goal and sanctions have not achieved it.”

Sanctions have not deterred Iran from behaving erratically, Abrams said.

“Iran continues its nuclear weapons program, supports terror, builds missiles, and most recently is supporting the Assad regime’s murderous policy in Syria,” Abrams said. “The sanctions have failed to deter the Iranian regime from any of this pernicious and dangerous activity.”

CRS, a nonpartisan organization, states clearly in its report that sanctions are not working as intended.

“The principal objective of international sanctions—to compel Iran to verifiably confine its nuclear program to purely peaceful uses—has not been achieved to date,” states the report, authored by CRS’ Kenneth Katzman, a specialist in Middle East affairs.

“Despite the imposition of what many now consider to be ‘crippling’ sanctions, some in Congress believe that economic pressure on Iran needs to increase further and faster,” the report notes.

The report examines over nearly 80 pages U.S. efforts to sanction Iran. It concludes that sanctions have failed to force Tehran to abandon its nuclear program, which continues mostly unimpeded, despite increasingly strong measures.

“There is a consensus that U.S. and U.N. sanctions have not, to date, accomplished their core strategic objective of compelling Iran to verifiably limit its nuclear development to purely peaceful purposes,” the report states.

Intelligence evidence indicates that Iran has increased its capability to enrich uranium to levels close to those sufficient for a nuclear bomb.

Foreign policy experts suspect the Iranian regime is insulated from the crippling economic effects of sanctions, including the recent collapse of Iran’s currency, the rial.

“Tehran likely has sufficient foreign exchange reserves to last well beyond the date that Iran will become a threshold nuclear power, which according to [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu is in the spring or summer of 2013,” Mark Dubowitz, executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), told the Free Beacon, citing studies performed by FDD.

“Even when facing imminent economic collapse, that meltdown would need to occur at least six months—and preferably much longer—before Iran reaches the nuclear threshold,” Dubowitz explained. “That would possibly allow time for the economic shock to cascade through the political system with the hope of convincing Iran’s leadership to change course. But that’s still a big assumption that economic collapse could break the supreme leader’s nuclear will.”

It also remains unclear if economic sanctions have directly set back Iran’s nuclear program in a significant way, according to CRS.

“A related issue is whether the cumulative sanctions have directly set back Iran’s nuclear efforts by making it difficult for Iran to import needed materials or skills,” the report notes.

Iran continues to increase its influence in the Middle East despite the sanctions regime, the report states.

“Sanctions against Iran have not, to date, clearly reduced Iran’s influence in the Middle East or its strategic capabilities in the Persian Gulf region,” the report notes. “Iran continues to financially and militarily support militant movements in the Middle East, including the exportation of arms to some of these movements, and to Syria.”

In addition to shipping arms to rogue regimes and terrorist groups, Iran is stockpiling ballistic missiles and domestically produced drones, some of which are capable of launching attacks on U.S. interests in the Persian Gulf.

Even the human rights situation in Iran has deteriorated.

“U.S. and international sanctions have not, to date, had a measurable effect on human rights practices in Iran,” the report states.

Some insiders argue that the Obama administration must alter its goal of pushing Iran to the bargaining table. They maintain that regime change is the only solution.

“It doesn’t take a CRS report to tell us what we already know—Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons capabilities despite current sanctions,” said one Iran sanctions expert on Capitol Hill who requested anonymity. “It’s time to accept the basic truth that the objective of sanctions moving forward should be regime change from inside Iran, and that is an achievable objective.”

The left-leaning National Iranian American Council (NIAC)—which describes itself as a nonprofit educational organization that advocates in favor of increased U.S. engagement with Iran—sued Seid Hassan Daioleslam in 2008. The group alleged Daioleslam defamed the organization by claiming that it clandestinely lobbied American government officials on behalf of the Iranian regime.

Federal District Court Judge John B. Bates cleared Daioleslam of the defamation charges last week after a protracted and oftentimes bitter battle between the two sides. Bates upbraided NIAC throughout his 23-page decision for failing to make its case and for intentionally hindering the discovery process.

“I believe they intentionally withheld documents,” Daioleslam told the Free Beacon. “The documents [NIAC has] not turned over not only hampered the legal proceedings, they deprived the American people from knowing what’s going on behind the scenes.”

Court documents show that NIAC officials inappropriately altered internal documents, withheld certain pieces of correspondence, and produced mysteriously incomplete records.

Daioleslam and other NIAC opponents maintain the organization is still camouflaging its pro-Tehran activity.

“It is a great pleasure to see [Daioleslam] vindicated at long last from the harassment suit brought by an individual and an organization whose lobbying agenda dovetails perfectly with the interests of the bloody dictators of Tehran,” Kenneth Timmerman, executive director of the Foundation for Democracy in Iran, told the Free Beacon.

“The court documents indicate that NIAC committed fraud by editing internal documents to illegally shield them from disclosure,” added Timmerman, a Maryland Congressional candidate who has long been involved in the case and is mentioned several times in the court documents.

NIAC has billed itself as a “nonpartisan” organization “dedicated to advancing the interests of the Iranian-American community” since its establishment in 2002.

However, critics such as Daioleslam, who heads the Iranian American Forum, accuse NIAC of carrying water for the Iranian regime.

The group, NIAC’s critics say, has lobbied lawmakers and the Obama administration to weaken economic sanctions on Iran and pursue a softer approach toward the regime’s clandestine nuclear arms program without disclosing its ties to the mullahs in Tehran.

The U.S. government requires that “persons acting as agents” of foreign countries publicly disclose their activities under what is known as the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). The law applies mainly to lobbyists who petition American officials on behalf of foreign governments. Failure to disclose such activities can result in prosecution by the Department of Justice.

NIAC hailed the recent court decision as a “victory” in a statement on its website, claiming that Daioleslam could not prove that his statements “were correct and truthful.”

However, in determining whether Daioleslam actually defamed the group, Judge Bates initiated an exhaustive discovery process that granted the defense team access to scores of NIAC’s records dating back several years. Many of those records cast the group in an unfavorable light.

Diaoleslam called NIAC’s post-decision statement ridiculous, and maintained that he “never rescinded” any of his claims.

“I maintain they lobby in favor of the Iranian regime,” he said. “I believe it more and more, ten times more than before.”

NIAC stonewalled the court at multiple times during the two-year process by refusing to release documents in a timely fashion.

It was also caught altering pertinent materials, which led Judge Bates to sanction the group by ordering it to pay a large portion of Daioleslam’s legal fees.

One example that provoked the judge’s ire was NIAC’s alteration of a document that billed its precursor, Iranians for International Cooperation (IIC), as a “lobbying” outfit. The 1999 document, however, was changed to label IIC as an “advocacy” group before it was submitted to the court—drawing a rebuke from the judge.

“It does appear that something very odd is going on with this file,” Judge Bates wrote in his opinion. “The Court is prepared to find by a preponderance of the evidence that [NIAC] intentionally altered the document.”

Later in the discovery process, NIAC failed to release 5,500 emails relating to one of its senior officials, Babak Talebi, who no longer works for the group. Though NIAC was ordered by the judge to release all emails relating to Talebi’s activities, it chose not to.

“Plaintiffs were not necessarily entitled to make a unilateral decision about which search terms to use, and they certainly were not entitled to represent that they had used all of the agreed-upon search terms when that was not true,” Bates wrote in his opinion.

“Plaintiffs’ failure to [produce all emails] is inexcusable,” Bates wrote, adding, “ . . . literally thousands of emails [were] produced in an unjustifiably tardy fashion.”

Additionally, NIAC would not release a slew of third-party email exchanges between its staff and government officials, including White House staff.

NIAC’s “failure to produce [these] emails is indefensible, and plaintiffs made no coherent attempt to explain either in their briefing or at the motions hearing why all of these emails would not have been produced,” Bates wrote, saying such behavior was “inexplicable and unexplained.”

“Most disturbingly,” Bates added, NIAC provided its own experts with certain emails that the organization falsely had told the defense were unavailable.

NIAC’s actions suggest that the group has something to hide, Iran expert Timmerman said.

“When I am elected to Congress, I will press the appropriate federal agencies to investigate Trita Parsi and NIAC as unregistered foreign agents,” he said.

It came to light during the discovery process that multiple electronic records were somehow omitted from an initial third-party review of NIAC’s computers.

Accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) was tasked with independently locating “4,159 calendar entries that had not been previously produced [by NIAC], including 999 entries that had been deleted and 715 entries that had been double-deleted,” the court found, raising unanswered questions about why these entries were initially misplaced.

It then became clear that the “date modified” field for multiple items had been altered before their release, according to court documents.

Eighty-seven “of the entries, including 42 of [NIAC chief, Trita] Parsi’s 63 entries, had been altered between December 25 and December 27 of that year,” though it remains unclear exactly what was changed, according to the court.

“The only alteration that gives this Court pause is that Patrick Disney, a NIAC employee, changed at least 82 references to ‘lobbying’ in his calendar entries to say ‘legislative direct’ in February 2010,” Bates stated in his opinion.

Ultimately, NIAC released an additional 5,000 entries, though the release was presented in a non-native-computer format—meaning it was impossible to determine the exact provenance of the information or whether or not it had been edited.

Several of the originally unreleased documents reveal that NIAC officials met with multiple left-wing foreign policy groups, including Campaign for New American Policy on Iran and J Street.

Furthermore, no calendar entries were located for Parsi over a five-month period in mid-2006, even though he met with “several United States and Iranian officials” during that time, the court found.

It was also discovered that Parsi did not connect his office computer to NIAC’s online network, meaning that communications were never archived or stored.

Though NIAC maintained that it had attempted to remedy this electronic oversight, it “provided no evidence to back up this vague allegation,” Judge Bates wrote.

Documents released during the case suggest that Parsi may have served as a conduit for Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations.

In 2006, Daioleslam alleges, Parsi met with Iranian UN ambassador Javad Zarif in New York City.

Ambassador Zarif allegedly gave Parsi a copy of Iranian talking points that were later disseminated to the media via a “a large scale media campaign” aimed at portraying “Iran as the party that seeks dialogue and peace and frame the US as the party that seeks war and confrontation,” according to the Iranian American Forum.

Parsi may also have played a role in arranging meetings between U.S. politicians and senior Iranian officials, according to court documents.

NIAC maintains the lengthy court battle proved nothing about its lobbying activities.

The group said after the ruling that Daioleslam “could not point to a single shred of evidence indicating that NIAC served as a lobby for the repressive government in Iran.”

NIAC cited Bates’ declaration that “nothing in this opinion should be construed as a finding that defendant’s articles were true.”

NIAC declined requests for comment.

The cyber attack was not successful but was one of several Iranian-backed electronic strikes detected in recent months that highlights the growing threat from Tehran, a major backer of international terrorism, according to a recent report by the Joint Staff intelligence directorate, known as J-2.

“Iran’s cyber aggression should be viewed as a component, alongside efforts like support for terrorism, to the larger covert war Tehran is waging against the west,” the report, dated Sept. 14, concluded.

Iran’s hostile posture against the United States is well known. However, the Joint Staff J-2’s hawkish assessment of the Iranian threat contrasts sharply with the more conciliatory policies of the Obama administration, a defense official familiar with the report said. For Pentagon’s J-2 to acknowledge in the internal report that a covert war is underway was unusual, the official added.

Since 2009, the administration has avoided supporting the Iranian opposition groups that took to the streets to opposed rigged elections. The administration also opposes a near-term Israeli military strike on Tehran’s nuclear facilities favoring instead the use of economic sanctions, which critics say have not slowed Iran’s drive to develop a nuclear weapons capability.

The International Atomic Energy Agency reported earlier this month that Iran is building up stockpiles of enriched uranium and continues to stonewall the U.N. nuclear watchdog on its nuclear arms-related work.

No other details were available on the previously undisclosed attempted Iranian financial cyber attack.

A Joint Staff spokesman declined to comment.

In the past, China and Russia were singled out as major nation-state cyber threats, using their militaries and intelligence services to conduct sophisticated cyber-espionage and preparation for future cyber sabotage in a conflict.

Now, Iran is emerging as a strategic threat to U.S. cyber systems that control critical infrastructure such as military systems, financial networks, communications, the electrical power grid, transportation networks, and other vital functions.

“They’re technically proficient, well-funded, and have placed a top priority on cyber defense and offense thanks in large part to the high number of sophisticated malware discovered on their oil and energy networks,” said Jeffrey Carr, a cyber warfare specialist.

Iran’s official computer emergency response team is a respected organization in the information security community, he said, noting, “Some Iranian hackers have demonstrated a high level of proficiency.”

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said during Senate testimony in February that “Iran’s intelligence operations against the United States, including cyber capabilities, have dramatically increased in recent years in depth and complexity.”

Dmitri Alperovitz, another cyber security expert, told NPR in April that Iranian cyber attack capabilities are growing.

“There is a great deal of worry in terms of what they may be able to do if they’re pushed to the brink,” Alperovitz said. “If they believe the regime is threatened, if they believe they’re about to be attacked, [they may consider] how can they employ cyber weapons, either to deter that attack or to retaliate in a way they can’t do militarily.”

Former Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates told a security conference recently that U.S. military power is a deterrent for “most nation-states [who] have no more interest in conducting an easily traceable and highly destructive cyber attack than they do a conventional military one.”

However, terrorist groups “have no such hesitation,” Gates said, according to Infosecurity Magazine.

“With few assets to strike back at, they are hardly deterred,” Gates said. “If a terrorist group gains a disruptive and destructive [cyber] capability, we have to assume it will strike with little hesitation. So in cyber we have a small window of opportunity to act before the most malicious actors acquire the most destructive technologies.”

Iran’s support for international terrorism is better known than its cyber warfare capabilities.

The FBI linked Iran’s government to a failed plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States in October 2011. Tehran also supports the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah, which has conducted numerous deadly terrorist attacks in the Middle East and other part of the world.

The Treasury Department in February identified Iran’s intelligence service as taking part in “multiple joint projects with Hezbollah in computer hacking.”

The Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security, along with the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, have been linked by Treasury to the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, and have provided help to al Qaeda terrorists, including the provision of documents, identification cards, and passports. Iran also has supported the terrorist group Al Qaeda in Iraq, the Treasury Department said in a Feb. 16 statement.

In July, after reports surfaced that the United States was involved in cyber attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities, an Iranian official told the official IRNA news agency that Iran would make a decisive response to U.S. cyber attacks. “If the vain American cyber attacks against our country do not end, they will receive a decisive response,” IRNA quoted an “official of the cyber base” on July 25.

Iran has sought to insulate itself from cyber attacks like the Stuxnet and Flame strikes that affected Iran’s nuclear program. Stuxnet disrupted industrial control technology used by the Iranians to enrich uranium. Flame is said to be targeted at gathering intelligence.

Iranian officials also announced that they plan to remove the country from the Internet this month in anticipation of stepped up cyber attacks.

Tehran announced in May that it planned to create a “master” cyber laboratory. A state-run news report quoted Saeed Rahimi, head of the Iranian Cyber Defense Center, as saying the new cyber center would be set by March 2013 and that it would be “responsible for providing protection from cyber threats and attacks, and suggesting reciprocal measure against each threat.”