"Iran is the new superpower in the Middle East. As predicted by France and Germany."

If Iran is a superpower then France is a superpower. Iran is power which has imperial ambitions and has achieved a small part of this in regard to Syria. But Iran is in many ways a far weaker power than France- miltarily certainly and economically there is no doubt of that either. Iran only advantage in terms of economics in comparison to France, is there is a large potential for growth [it's people are about 5 times poorer than the french]. Of course one advantage france has is it's member of the EU [sort of a member of NATO] and one of the permanent 5 member of security council. And Iran has managed to isolate itself and going down the road to further isolation, and it doesn't have good relations with other countries surrounding it. It's navy could all sunk in about an hour, it's a major producer of oil but dependent on other countries for refined oil products. If it was not for the conflict in the middle east which the Arabs share a huge part of the blame, Iran would even be less significant then it is presently. AND on top of all this it's leadership is not respected by any nation AND it's on the only real superpower's shit list.
If the weak palestine govt could manage to stop their civil war and have any talent at governing they could have more influence/power than Iran. That's how weak a rather large country which has had modest success economically is in the world. But in the ranking of "Superpower" I would say it's well ahead of N Korea.