Muammar Qadhafi liked his weapons. During his 42-year reign, the Libyan leader is thought to have spent over a hundred billion dollars on arms. As big a problem as that was while he was in power, it is far worse now that he is gone and his country is in chaos. Libya is filled with loose deadly material that isn’t being looked after.

A couple weeks ago, rebel forces stumbled on some unguarded warehouses near the desert town of Sabha and found about 10,000 blue barrels filled with at least 2 million liters of yellowcake uranium. This radioactive powder is step one toward enriched uranium, used in nuclear weapons. Despite the risk, though, safeguarding it properly is apparently going to take a while; the International Atomic Energy Agency says it will look into protecting it “once the situation in the country stabilizes.”

How perfectly sensible: Leave the nuclear material vulnerable to theft while the country is a lawless jungle. What do you suppose the chances are that some of this stuff ends up in the hands of dangerous people?

Amid the confusion, reports show opportunistic folks taking full advantage. Tons of weapons—some quite sophisticated, including mortars, missiles and anti-tank weapons—are simply being looted.

And one of the most conspicuous thieves singled out by Western intelligence is—you guessed it—Iran. This country just has an uncanny knack for turning up in these types of situations.

The Telegraph reported, “Acting on orders received from Revolutionary Guards commanders in Iran, [the elite Quds Force] took advantage of the chaos that engulfed Libya following the collapse of the regime of former dictator Col. Muammar Qadhafi to seize ‘significant quantities’ of advanced weaponry, according to military intelligence officers in Libya.” Among the weapons is a particularly dangerous prize: hundreds of Russian-made shoulder-held surface-to-air missiles that can target planes flying up to 11,000 feet. These missiles reportedly top Iran’s wish list, and America has tried for years to prevent Tehran from getting them. Once Iran has them, they could easily end up with any one of a number of terrorist groups that the mullahs supply. A senior intelligence officer told the Telegraph that such missiles in the wrong hands means “no civilian aircraft in the region will be safe from attack.”

Behold the “Arab Spring.”

This is one variation on a theme that has been playing out in various forms throughout the region over the past year. As unrest builds, as instability rises, as governments fall and disorder follows, the Islamic Republic of Iran sees opportunity. Amid the muddle, it dispatches its agents and resources, and finds ways to secure its interests, and often ends up with an impressive stash. It is reading from the same playbook it has successfully used in Iraq and Afghanistan over the last decade: Watch a government fall, step in to fill the hole.

After recent impressive gains, the Iranian regime has grown more confident and brash. It is aggressively militarizing, and its positions against the West are getting more confrontational.

Last February, for the first time since the 1979 revolution, it sailed Iranian frigates through the Suez Canal and into the Mediterranean. In July it claimed to send submarines into the Red Sea; it also unveiled underground missile silos that it says could withstand direct bombing. Last month it connected the Bushehr nuclear plant to the national power grid. And last week, it trumpeted its new ability to launch ship-based missiles from international waters to hit land-based targets; Iran’s naval commander warned that Iranian ships could soon be patrolling America’s East Coast.

The White House and defense establishment ridiculed this notion, saying it was way beyond Iran’s capabilities. That seems to be roughly the West’s default reaction to nearly any development in the Islamic Republic. But the point is, Iran has reached a stage where it speaks and acts at will, and quite provocatively, utterly unconcerned with consequences. This past year’s events certainly give it cause for boosted confidence.

At a meeting in Tehran on the eve of Quds Day this past August, the Ayatollah Khamenei gave his vision for how the “Arab Spring” will likely mark the “end of the age of the superpowers” as well as the rule of “puppet Arab rulers.” He spoke of the popularity of Islam within these countries, and said that the more power the people gain, the more Islamic their governments will become. Despite Western efforts to shape these countries’ futures, he said, “If elections were held today in all the [liberated] countries, the result would favor Islamic tendencies. … Who could have imagined that tendencies in Egypt would be so clearly Islamic?”

He said that when the dust clears, “The plausible scenario is that regional developments will lead to the creation of a solid and clear Islamic bloc in which many members of the elite will participate.”

In spelling out this scenario, the ayatollah isn’t just making a casual observation. He is describing how current conditions are fitting precisely with the ambition Iran has pursued for decades.

Last week, a paramilitary arm of the Revolutionary Guards, the Basij militia, issued an official statement expanding on Khamenei’s comments that lays this ambition bare. According to Reza Kahlili, a former cia spy writing for American Thinker, the statement says that the ayatollah was divinely chosen to impose Islam on the whole world.

The Basij statement praises the direction of the activist movements sweeping the region, calling them “flourishing glorious revolutions that are both holy and rooted within the Islamic masses.” It claims that soon, under Khamenei’s leadership, America and Israel will be destroyed, and Islam’s global conquest will proceed apace.

Kahlili observes, “This announcement by the Basij is significant in that it verifies beyond any doubt that the Islamic regime ruling Iran is truly a messianic one bent on the final worldwide conquest of Islam with the ‘awakening’ as just the beginning.”

Since the inception of this magazine two decades ago, the Trumpet’s editor in chief has pointed to Iran and its strategic aim to dominate the region by seizing leadership of the radical Islamic camp. He has repeatedly spoken of its apocalyptic messianic ambitions. He didn’t just imagine, but explicitly spelled outjust how Islamic the tendencies in Egypt would become. He specifically described how unrest in Libya fits with Iran’s larger military strategy. All of his statements have been based on observing the scene in accordance with biblical prophecy, and they have been powerfully vindicated by events this past year.

Keep watching Libya. Iran is going to end up gaining more than just some unguarded weapons that happen to be lying around. As radicals rise to power in Libya, Iran will gain a strong ally, an expanded sphere of influence, and further advancement toward its ultimate goal of conquest. Remarkably, it’s the most consistent theme of this so-called Arab Spring: more impressive prizes for the Iranian regime.