I'm darn close to 100% certain that this is a SIGINT collection op, and either it went wrong (my first posting) or it's right on plan (my second posting).  

No other explanation makes sense of all of it.  

Oh, and in addition to collecting Iran's traffic, we're probably going for Indonesia.

Any NSA alumni care to comment on this?  

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BTW, 250+ millisecond latency on those circuits would mean that anyone calling a "customer service" desk that uses VOIP to a call center in e.g. India, is going to have a particularly nasty time trying to communicate.  1/4 second delay in each direction means that the nonverbal timing cues that are necessary to taking turns in a conversation, will be lost.  This no doubt will piss off plenty of people and possibly cause some companies to bring their call centers back into the US.