Expert Sees Little Hope for Iran Nuke Talks

David Rudge, The Jerusalem Post:

Diplomatic efforts to stop Iran's nuclear development program are almost certainly doomed to failure given the nature of the ruling regime in the Islamic Republic, according to Dr. Soli Shahvar, a leading expert on Iranian affairs.

Shahvar, a senior lecturer in the University of Haifa's Department of Middle East History, also believes that the Iranian-backed Hizbullah will ferment trouble to try and disrupt the disengagement plan and the tentative rapprochement between Israel and the new Palestinian leadership. READ MORE

"There was a meeting in Beirut on April 1 between Hizbullah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah and Hamas leader abroad Khaled Mashal at which I am sure they planned strategy towards this end," Shahvar told The Jerusalem Post. "I think we can expect a lot of trouble in the near future that will emanate from Iran but will be perpetrated by its proteg , Hizbullah, probably via the latter's growing connections with Palestinian elements in the territories."

Shahvar, who spoke after the inauguration on Wednesday night of the university's new Center for Gulf Studies at which he gave a lecture, did not rule out the possibility of some kind of escalation along the northern border during this sensitive period.

This is also one of the scenarios of military intelligence, which believes Hizbullah might try to heat-up the border directly or allow Palestinian rejectionists to carry out operations from south Lebanon. The IDF's Northern Command has reportedly been given instructions to prepare and be in a state of readiness for such an eventuality.

Shahvar, who immigrated to Israel from Iran, has been closely monitoring events in his homeland, as well as the close ties between the fundamentalist regime and organizations like Hizbullah and Teheran's nuclear development program.

He noted that Iran had justly maintained that it had a right under the terms of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, to which it is a signatory, to develop atomic energy for peaceful purposes.

"This is what Iran maintains that it is doing and supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei went so far as to issue a 'fatwa' [religious edict] a few months ago forbidding the production of atomic weapons by his country," said Shahvar.

Furthermore, there was no concrete evidence that would stand up in a court of law that Iran was actually trying to develop nuclear arms, although all the indications pointed in that direction, he said.

According to Shahvar, the circumstantial evidence was overwhelming especially when taking into account Iran's armaments program, including the development of long-range ballistic missiles, and the threat under which the regime perceived itself to be from virtually all sides.

"Iran feels threatened by the US presence in Afghanistan, Iraq, the US fleet in the Persian Gulf and, albeit to a much lesser extent, an American presence in Central Asia and the Caucasia region," he said. "This is perceived as an immediate threat because this is the Big Satan, the demise of which Iran has been advocating for the past 26 years. It also views Israel, the Little Satan, as one of its main enemies."

Shahvar said the decision-makers in Teheran wanted a means of countering these perceived threats, including that posed by Israel, which was reported to have nuclear weapons, long-range rockets and submarines capable of firing missiles fitted with atomic warheads.

"The Iranians are expanding the acquistion, development and production of conventional weapons alongside attempts to develop non-conventional means of warfare, including biological and chemical agents," he said.

"All of this means to me that they are definitely trying to produce nuclear weapons but are doing so in an extremely covert way, probably in deep underground facilities hidden from the eyes of US satellites.

"They have also learned from the experience of the Iraqi reactor and have spread their sites around the country, making it even more difficult to obtain reliable intelligence information in such a closed country," he added.

Shahvar maintained that Iran would not abandon its nuclear ambitions in light of all these factors, and that it was countering the diplomatic efforts by Britain, France and Germany with the threat of its own economic sanctions.

"Iran has frozen multi-billion dollar contracts with European companies for the extraction of gas and oil, onshore and offshore, in parts of southern Iran until after the elections on June 17. This is obviously a warning of what would happen if too much pressure is applied over the nuclear program issue.

"Sanctions would also be of no avail unless they would be applied totally because Iran could always purchase products from somewhere and it certainly has no shortage of money. An increase of one dollar on a single barrel of oil makes Iran an extra $1 billion a year and oil prices have reached record heights over the past year," he said.

Shahvar said that if, or when, Iran acquired atomic weapons it would not automatically mean that warheads would be fitted to missiles for use against Israel or US targets, and that a much more insidious scenario was likely.

This would involve the manufacture of small tactical nuclear bombs that would find their way into the hands of Islamic terror groups, even extremist Sunni ones like Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaida or a Shi'ite organization like Hizbullah, which had proved its capabilities in south Lebanon and abroad.
"This seems much more likely given the way Iran, as the number one state that supports terror, has acted in the past using its extremely capable and highly effective intelligence service," he said.

One of the few rays of hope regarding Iran and the threat it posed to stability throughout the Western world and the Middle East in particular came from within the ranks of those in the country who were seeking genuine reforms.

"All of these threats from Iran would cease if there were to be a regime change. At the moment, however, the reformists lack leadership and organizational infrastructure and the main opposition forces are still divided, although this, hopefully, could change in the not-too-distant future," said Shahvar.