BBC Ex-USSR: Iran aiming to provoke regional military conflict - Russian exper 91) â By enriching uranium to a higher grade, Iran is embarking on a deliberate course of provoking a military conflict in the Middle East due to its unstable domestic situation, Aleksey Arbatov, head of the International Security Centre of the Russian Academy of Sciences' Institute of World Economy and International Relations, said in a live interview to Russian Defence Ministry-controlled Zvezda TV on 9 February.