By: Hooshang Amirahmadi

Let me begin by thanking Mr. Crispin Blunt, Member of the House of Commons and Chairman of the Conservative Middle East Council, for mediating this invitation and for his kind introduction. I am also grateful to Ms. Faezeh Faiz, Iran Program Director for the CMEC, for coordinating the various aspects of this meeting. It is indeed an honor to speak at such an illustrious gathering of Honorable British MPs and the distinguished audience of invitees. I bring this discussion to you from across the Atlantic and hope that a trialogue between Americans, British and Iranians will ensue in the wake of this meeting. I am particularly hoping to engage the parliamentarians in these three countries in serious brainstorming on what might be done to resolve Iran's nuclear dispute. Let me thus focus my talk today on this same subject as well, looking at it from the angle of Iran's relation to the nuclear geopolitics in the Middle East.