Analyst Mark Schroeder examines the timing of Nigeria possibly bringing Iran to the U.N. Security Council over a weapons shipment intercepted by Nigerian authorities at the port of Lagos. Editor's Note: Transcripts are generated using speech-recognition technology. Therefore, STRATFOR cannot guarantee their complete accuracy. The Nigerian Foreign Minister is reportedly on his way to New York City to attend a meeting of the UN Security Council. The Nigerian government quite possibly will expose Iran's involvement in an arms smuggling incident that occurred in Nigeria. Now what's significant and interesting to us at STRATFOR is the very unusual Nigerian government behavior over the arms shipment. The shipment contained 13 shipping containers of weapons including rockets and mortars and small arm ammunition, and the shipment originally arrived in Lagos in July. And sat at port while it waited to be unloaded. It wasn't until October 26 that Nigerian government officials actually brought the media to the port to show the weapons that they just uncovered in these shipping containers that were labeled as building materials. And over the subsequent couple of weeks Nigerian government officials have been naming Iran as the original sender of these weapons. Now the Iranian foreign minister for his part have claimed responsibility on behalf of of these weapons and said that Nigeria was not the intended recipient, but a third West African country was, though the Iranian foreign minister did not name that country was. Now we can well surmise that Iran has long delivered weapons on the black market through Nigeria and other countries in Africa. Nigeria being one of Africa's largest economies and Lagos is its commercial and port hub. What is interesting is to ask the question why Nigeria is now bringing this issue up and threatening to take it to the agenda of the United Nations Security Council. If this was simply some kind of bilateral disputes - perhaps the weapons shipment got too large for their own comfort - Nigeria could have sent some more quiet diplomatic notes back to Tehran. But that's not what's happening. Now this brings us back to a couple of other issues that at STRATFOR we've had to note. Bringing Iran into the forefront of the international agenda even if it's arms trafficking in Africa brings pressure on the Iranian government to negotiate or somehow improve its behavior, and we certainly know in the background that the United States and Iran are in the middle of trying to negotiate or trying to somehow relate with one another note regarding security concerns in the entire Middle East. This small piece could be a part of of that broader puzzle and complicated relationship right now. There are a couple of other possible explanations for the behavior of the Nigerian government. President Goodluck Jonathan in Nigeria has been under pressure to try to shore up his domestic support. He's reshuffled his Cabinet particularly the chiefs of the armed forces and the other security apparatus of that country, and this may be a move by President Jonathan to show domestically that he is on top of his country security. It could be that. It could be a deal among some Nigerian powerbrokers that went bad. There could be some fairly straightforward domestic Nigerian explanations for why its government is now trying to show a strong hand in security concerns in the country. But bringing this to the concern of the UN Security Council - as the Nigerian foreign minister may be doing as early as tomorrow - that is still some quite unusual behavior