MOSCOW, January 26 (RIA Novosti) - Iran's nuclear program may turn the country into a "leading player" in the Middle East, Russian experts said Thursday.
"Iran is striving to take a dominant position in the region, and its nuclear program is the most suitable means of achieving this," Alexei Arbatov, the head of the center for international security at the Russian Academy of Sciences, said at a roundtable on the Iranian nuclear issue.
"Iran may become an owner of nuclear weapons, but it can approach this line without crossing it," he said. "In both cases it would enable the country to dictate its own terms in the world arena."
Razhdab Safatov, an advisor for the speaker of Russia's lower house of parliament, said Iran was caught in the tangle of its own interests.
"The nuclear program became a national idea for the country, and no one, not even high ranking officials, can retreat from the stated position," he said.
He predicts that the Iranian "nuclear file" will be forwarded to the UN Security Council, and that in this event, the international community will be able to impose sanctions against Iran.
Some countries, led by the United States, suspect Tehran of pursuing a secret weapons program and have been pushing the referral of the Iranian nuclear file to the UN Security Council, which has the power to impose sanctions on the Islamic Republic if it is found to have been in breach of its international commitments. Iran has consistently stated that it only wants nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.
Russia, which is building an $800-million power plant in Iran, has defended the country's right to nuclear energy, but expressed its "disappointment" with Tehran's decision earlier in January to end a two-year moratorium on nuclear research and resume activity at its nuclear facilities.
In a move seen as compromise to diffuse tensions around the situation, Moscow has offered to conduct uranium enrichment for Iran on Russian territory, a proposal which Ali Larijani, the secretary of the Iranian Supreme National Security Council, welcomed on Wednesday.
