Pat Dollard

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Monday, July 28, 2008
The Daily Star

BEIRUT: Lebanese politicians and religious figures reacted over the weekend to comments made last Thursday in Vienna by an Iranian vice president, Gholam Reza Aghazadeh, with two MPs accusing the Islamic Republic of using Lebanon as a bargaining chip in its attempts to resolve the international row over its nuclear program.

MP Samir Franjieh of the Future Movement party said Aghazadeh’s words amounted to an offer for stability in Lebanon in exchange for the West accepting Iran’s nuclear program.

“This should be humiliating for Hizbullah,” Franjieh told the online daily Naharnet.

“The Lebanese people have no say in Iran’s nuclear program. In fact we are for the banning of nuclear weapons throughout the Middle East … We want Lebanon pacified” in Middle East conflicts, Franjieh added.

Speaking after a meeting with Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the United Nations nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Aghazadeh told reporters that “If the negotiations [on Iran's nuclear program] get under way, then solutions could be found for many problems like Iraq, Lebanon or fuel prices.”

Aghazadeh is one of Iran’s 10 vice presidents, who are tasked with heading various national organizations related to presidential affairs. All vice presidents report to First Vice President Parviz Davoudi, who in turn reports to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who himself is required to follow the edicts of the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

As vice president for atomic energy, Aghazadeh heads Iran’s International Atomic Energy Organization, a body whose primary role is to implement regulations and operate nuclear energy installations in the country.

Aghazadeh was appointed to the post in 1997 by then-President Mohammad Khatami and is not viewed as a member of Ahmadinejad’s inner circle or directly involved in policy formulation.

In an interview with Voice of Lebanon radio on Saturday, Future Movement MP Ammar Houri said Aghazadeh’s remarks proved that Iran has taken Lebanon “hostage in order to settle the Iranian nuclear file.”

The West accuses Iran of seeking technology needed to build nuclear weapons. Iran meanwhile insists its nuclear program is for civil energy purposes.

In what was seen as a reference to Aghazadi’s remarks, Mufti of Mount Lebanon, Sheikh Mohammad Ali al-Jouzou on Sunday asserted that “The weapons of the resistance are no longer theirs but those of Iran.”

Houri’s words on Saturday echoed a statement made last week by Jouzou, who criticized the implications of Hizbullah’s prisoner swap. “The release of prisoners is a grand thing, but in releasing a few prisoners from Israel, the homeland [Lebanon] itself has been taken captive by Hizbullah and Iran,” Jouzou said, according to an article published in the pan-Arab paper Ash-Sharq Al-Awsat on July 21.

Also last week, Future Movement MP Ghazi Youssef told the party’s Future News television that the reference of Lebanon’s Shiite community should come from the Iraqi city of Najaf, and not Iran.