The Doha Debates - Iran's nuclear program
The Doha Debates hosted by Tim Sebastien takes on Iran's nuclear program and asks if it is peaceful
Mahjoob Zweiri, Professor of Middle East Politics and Iran, University of Jordan FOR
Baria Alamuddin, Foreign editor of Al-Hayat newspaper AGAINST
Mohammad Marandi, Head of the North American Studies,University of Tehran FOR
Alireza Nourizadeh, Director, Centre for Arab and Iranian Studies AGAINST
A narrow majority of Arabs reject Iran’s assurances that its nuclear programme is peaceful and believe the country is planning to build an atomic bomb, according to the region’s only politically independent debating forum.
A motion that “This House trusts Iran not to build a nuclear bomb” was defeated by 52% to 48% during an animated discussion in the latest of Qatar’s monthly Doha Debates.
Two of the four-member panel and some of the 350 people in the audience expressed fundamental misgivings over Tehran’s nuclear plans, but there was near unanimous resentment over Israel’s nuclear arsenal.
Baria Alamuddin, foreign editor of one of the leading pan-Arab newspapers Al-Hayat, speaking against the motion, said that as an Arab and a Lebanese she naturally mistrusted Iran.
To loud applause, she asked the audience to consider what Tehran was “doing in Iraq” and in Iran itself. “(The regime) comes across as dishonest and devious and cannot be trusted at all when it comes to nuclear weapons.”
She said she found it impossible to trust a country whose President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, issued “almost daily” threats to the rest of the world that included calls for “death to Israel and America.”
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