- 00:00These are snap elections that were held in response to President Rice’s death over a month ago. What are you expecting in terms of final outcome? And I guess the bigger question is how is that going to modify Iran’s foreign policy and domestic policy? Looking ahead, if so many of these candidates are actually hard liners? Well, actually, nobody was expecting this election to take place, so there was no preparation for that. There was no internal campaign in order to select a candidate for the future of Washington that I see most probably will have been re-elected in 2035. Therefore, we we are witnessing the candidates are they are not very strong. Actually, the two most important candidates from their surrogate are candidates that they already lost against reformist candidates in the previous electoral and electoral processes. Therefore, we are we are witnessing people that they might arrive to the power without a very strong background in terms of foreign policy. Only Jalili has experience in negotiating the clarify. So maybe he would be more interested in them in renewing their efforts to negotiate something with the United States. But in general, I would I would not expect the big changes in the Iranian foreign policy. RICE He managed to get some gains during his short term, considering that several initiatives were initiated by Rouhani and Ahmadinejad than have them in the past. He was just harvesting what the other two people were producing since the very beginning. So without a big change or the implementation of a unique doctrine, he managed to achieve many things, mainly regarding the two states reaching an agreement or normalization with the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. Yeah, and therefore, I don’t expect this trend to change in the long term. Yeah. Yeah. Well, the Americans are going to be watching these elections very closely, not least because Iran has continued along with their uranium enrichment, depending on on which sources you read, they are weeks or months away from a weapon grades, sorry, a weapon grade type A missile. And I just want to point out that also that at one point during that CNN presidential debates yesterday, President Trump actually did bring up Iran. Let’s just listen to what he had to say. Israel would have never been invaded in a million years by Hamas. You know why? Because Iran was broke with me. I wouldn’t let anybody do business with them. They ran out of money. They were broke. They had no money for Hamas. They had no money for anything. No money for terror. That’s why you had no terror at all during my administration. By the way, I’m the guy that organized the world against Iran when they had a full blown international, mostly ballistic missile attack on Israel. No one was hurt. No one Israeli was accidentally killed and it stopped. We saved Israel. Louisiana. What do you think the new Iranian president is going to mean for Iranians nuclear ambitions and the possibility of re-entering perhaps into talks with the US about restraining some of those nuclear ambitions? Well, I mean, I mean, it was very clear when he threatened any candidate that would restart negotiations with the United States. He has always a very clear position regarding that, even though he accepted when Rouhani signed the CPA. However, I don’t think any of the candidates would be very open in saying that this is and I mean a real possibility, considering that they felt totally betrayed by the Trump administration, considering that any of the candidates are, at the end of the day in the United States, are pushing for and renegotiation of the JCPOA or reducing the sanctions against Iran? I don’t think any candidate would really open the door for negotiations. We know that the negotiations have been conducted in Oman and in both the U.S. and the Iranian administration and recognize that. So the dialogue never stop. However, it’s very difficult to think that they’re going to be there, going to be a breakthrough in the negotiations, regardless of who is with whom position. In the unlikely case he is, we know he will not be able to do anything because it would be prevented to do so by the parliament, by deliver there himself. And neither Jalili or Ghalibaf are in the in the mood for opening negotiation with the U.S. because they are not in that feelings in that political camp. How closely do you think Iran is watching the developments in Lebanon and how closely are they speaking to Hezbollah about what to do vis a vis the border with Israel? Is there any feeling that they’re distracted by the presidential elections that are taking place, or do you think that they have an active role in the decision making of what happens in the south of Lebanon right now? Well, it has always looked closely at what’s going on in Lebanon since the beginning of the war in October. Of course, they have been distracted for a while, but the conflict was very short. I mean, it was not very big a problem in the year and a lot of attention to the internal internal politics because not many expectations were created internally. Therefore, they are still focused on what is going on in Lebanon. A Of course, many things were happening in the last few weeks in terms of the increase in the tension between Hezbollah and Israel. It doesn’t mean that the Iran is actually behind the rising tension. Hezbollah has been always linked to Iran, but not always following 100% instructions from from Tehran. So I don’t think that the elections or the electoral process that was very, very, very fast and very quick. Affected in any way. The relation that they are received mainly is having with you. So a lot of this were. Do you see this being blown out into a full, full blown war? Do you see it being escalated into a full blown war between Israel and Lebanon? It is likely, but there are all this eight months of the war. There have been exchanges of fire between Hezbollah and Israel. More than 500 people died in Lebanon as the result of that retaliation from Israel. And however, there was no war. I mean, despite Nasrallah threatened Cyprus and other and other countries if they were helping Israel, I don’t see very likely that Hezbollah will will launch any attack to any other actor state doctor in the region because Hezbollah is not alone. I mean, Lebanon is formed by different political groups and they are not very happy with their increase in tension with Israel. Everybody remembers what happened in 2006 when the war started and the country was almost destroyed. The economy of Lebanon with some of this. So there are a lot of constraints within Lebanon due to an open war that Lebanon would start with this threat. How Israeli threats, bombing as well is very important. I don’t think Israel wants to start or engage in a dark war.
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