ISLAMABAD, June 7: Speakers at a seminar on Thursday urged all Muslim countries to evolve a collective security doctrine in the face of the current challenges facing them. Speaking at the seminar, ‘US-Iran relations: emerging trends, security challenges and implications,’ organized by the Institute of Policy Studies (IPS), they said Muslim states needed to have complete unity among their ranks and file and evolve a common mechanism in dealing with emerging challenges and threats to them.

Former foreign secretary Tanvir Ahmad Khan observed that the United States not only wanted to transform the Muslim world geographically but also divide its faith to weaken it.

He termed Iran’s nuclear programme as the most transparent in the world as it had signed a nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT) and an additional protocol, and so far, nothing had been proved against it.

He said it was a very prudent step of the Iranian government to invest in nuclear energy as its oil and gas energies would exhaust sooner of late and were non-renewable.

Former chief of the inter-services intelligence (ISI), Lt-Gen (retired) Asad Durrani, predicted that the US would not open a third front after it has messed up in two countries —Iraq and Afghanistan. He, however, criticized the security relations of the Gulf States where internal dissent had allowed external intervention to protect their security assets, which was undesirable.

He observed that the Muslim states’ leaders were not reaching a consensus in determining their collective security relations and doctrine.

Dr Nazir Hussain, assistant professor at the department of defence and strategic studies at the Quaid-i-Azam University, observed that the chances of American aggression on Iran had been reduced due to the geo-political reality of Iran, which owns the entire eastern coastline of the Persian Gulf.

He said direct talks between Iran and the US for the first time since the 1979 Iranian revolution, Iran’s carrot and stick policy where it is engaged in intense diplomacy with EU-3 and IAEA, had further reduced the threat of aggression towards Iran.

He cited other reasons as well, like the huge military cost of operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, where the US taxpayer may not be ready to bear the burden of a third war.

He noted that Pakistan was in a better position to defuse tensions between the US and Iran. “Pakistan’s requirement of oil and energy has put it in (a) vulnerable position where it cannot afford a conflict in Iran,” he added.

Chairman IPS Senator Prof Khurshid Ahmad said the contemporary world was in a neocolonial phase where America wanted to impose its global world order, irrespective of whether the republicans or democrats are in power; they would pursue the same agenda.

“The real superpower is the people power who are resisting Americans in both Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere,” he continued. He wished that Pakistan, Iran and the Arab world align their relations, keeping in view the global military, political and economic alliance of the west.

He argued that the so-called ‘war on terror’ had failed but the label was being retained for other objectives. “(The idea of) security cannot be understood merely in military terms. It should cover economic and (the) human dimension too and the internal causes of insecurity,” he urged.

Regarding the standoff between the US and Iran over the later’s nuclear programme, Prof Khurshid conclude, “Iran is not the problem, the US is.”