This tragicomedy gets encore after encore.

The South African arms deal has, since 1999, become a complex maze of multi-billion-rand corruption investigations in several countries (including, half-heartedly, South Africa itself, where it ensnared the deputy president and several senior officials). The upside, however, was that it would get us all sorts of cool toys.

Just check out the collage alongside (click for larger, labelled images). Tell me the schoolkid in you doesn’t want that on your bedroom wall. We got a squadron of SAAB 39 Gripen jet fighters (admit it, you’d love one). We got several dozen Augusta A-109 light utility helicopters (which don’t look very light). We got four Meko A-200 patrol corvettes (which are scarily fast and manoeuvrable, according to a salty sea-dog I went sailing with once, off Simon’s Town). But the pièce de résistance is a trio of Class 209 Type 1400 diesel-electric attack submarines specially modified for South African requirements, like whale watching.

This is fun stuff. Next time the USS Nimitz strays into our territorial waters, they’ll think twice of joking with our Navy brass about “hostile fishing boats”.

Problem is, we don’t have enough drivers for these toys.

Now, do you laugh, or do you cry?

I’m a little perplexed by what the recent US National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) has to say about Iran.

If Iran stopped its nuclear weapons programme in 2003, why did the NIE of 2005 say it was actively pursuing one? Which was right? Who is the contradictor in chief (to quote Eric over at Classical Values, who has plenty more good questions and links on the subject)?

If Iran is not actively pursuing a weapons programme, why has it been so stubbornly secretive? Why is it acting just about as guilty as Saddam Hussein did about WMDs? And if Bush is so adamant on going to war with Iran, why did this NIE get declassified? Surely the evil genius has learnt to plot a little more elegantly than that? Or is this another example of the intelligence covering its backside after its previous failures? Are they saying, “Next time we’re wrong, we’re damn well going to err on the side of underestimating enemy capabilities”?

Why are the Israelis, who’d be first on the “let’s test our little toys” list, not breathing a sigh of relief?

Why, when the media has surely learnt to distrust everything the intelligence community ever said about Iraq’s weapons, suddenly turn around and splash this across the front pages as vindication of Iran and indictment of the warmonger in chief?

Herbert E. Meyer asks the really pertinent question: how do we know that the 2005 NIE was wrong and this one is right, rather than vice versa?

I, for one, am not so easily convinced. We’ve seen Mahmoud Ahmademocrat’s comedy show at Columbia University, in which he said there were no gays in Iran, and whether the Holocaust was really that bad remains a matter for further historical research. He doesn’t exactly inspire trust.

We’ve heard how he defied the UN’s International Atomic Energy inspectors, breaking seals and barring entry to Natanz. These aren’t the only ways in which Iran is failing to comply with the obligations the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty places on signatories who wish to pursue a peaceful, civilian nuclear power programme.

That same watchdog body, which can hardly be accused of warmongering or a pro-US stance, just last month said Iran is within a year of producing nuclear weapons.

So who’s right? And what’s the prize for being wrong?