#10 - JRL 7208
Analyst Says US Claims against Iran Effort to 'Control' Islamic World

MOSCOW. June 2 (Interfax) - The main reason for the United States' dissatisfaction with Iran is not Tehran's nuclear program but the U.S. wish to modernize and control the Islamic world, Russian political scientists say.

"Iran personifies Islamic statehood, which is the reason behind the American claims against it," Nina Mamedova, head of the Iranian sector of the Institute of Oriental Studies under the Russian Academy of Sciences, said at a press conference in Moscow on Monday.

Member of the Scientific Council of the Moscow Carnegie Center Alexei Malashenko shares this opinion. "We need to see the forest behind the trees," he said at the press conference. "Iran is part of a general American strategy aimed at reconstructing the entire Islamic world," he said.

"A mechanism for the fight against nuclear proliferation will be tested in Iran," Malashenko said. He stressed at the same time that "proliferation can bypass state channels."

Proliferation can be contained through setting up a UN Committee, which would have the right to punish those who break the non- proliferation regime. The five nuclear powers should set up the committee, he said.

"There will be no return to Iran's past Islamic path," Mamedova noted. "It would be incorrect to say that Iranian society is united and can rally under anti-American slogans."

Many Iranian residents are for settling relations with the United States and lessening the Islamic component of the system of power, Mamedova said. Iranian students, who number 1,300,000, take part in rallies demanding radical reforms. These students are a serious force, she added.

If the United States leans on such feelings in Iran for support, this will help achieve Iranian democratization and, thus, eliminate the main reason for a war against Iran, Mamedova said.