I'm less of an expert on judicial and legal matters, but I want to make a brief point.
I speak from Brussels, which is the capital of the European Union and also the headquarters of NATO. The European Union, through its three foremost members—France, Great Britain, and Germany—has been engaged in talking to Iran's leaders since 2003, soon after the exposure of the clandestine nuclear program to the world. We in Europe have been speaking to Iran for six years now. We have spoken to Iran during the Khatami era. We have spoken to Iran during the Ahmadinejad era. We will continue to speak to Iran after Ahmadinejad is gone, if he loses the elections.
There are people here who believe that the problem is Ahmadinejad, that somehow the leadership before Ahmadinejad was more reasonable and amenable to a compromise, and therefore new leaders will be amenable to compromise again. So yes, in a sense, if the supreme leader thought that gaining time is now something critical for Iran's goals, he would push for a replacement of Ahmadinejad through elections.
Despite the changes, despite the elaborate dance of different people and envoys—Rohani, then Larijani, then Jalili, and who knows who will come next as a nuclear negotiator—the policy remains substantially the same and the goals remain the same. Iran aspires to regional hegemony and to expanding its influence and indeed exporting its ideology, and nuclear weapons are an instrument to achieve this goal.
I want to spend one more minute on this specific issue because Canada, among NATO members, has been generous, courageous, and committed to the war that the free world is fighting in Afghanistan. You have lost men and indeed women, and you have sacrificed the treasury.
Now, there is a sense that a new leadership in Iran may, for example, come forward and cooperate with us in Afghanistan, because there is a sense that somehow reasonable leaders in Iran would see that there are shared goals. The fact is that the ultimate, overall, overarching goal of all figures of power in Iran, despite the differences, is to reduce the presence, the influence, and the impact of western countries--first and foremost, that of the United States--in the region, starting from Afghanistan.
So a change in power will create the impression that something has changed, and the case that people like my colleague over in Ottawa is making in the public sphere...have somehow lost the reason for barking up Iran's tree. The fact is different. Iran's goals are not determined by an elected politician. They are determined by the supreme leader, who, in the Shia doctrine that informs the Iranian revolution, is the shadow of God on earth. The shadow of God on earth, who speaks in the name of God, cannot possibly be influenced and conditioned by the fickle will of the people and cannot delegate the determination of political choices on such crucial matters as the exportation of Islamic ideology across the world to an election.
We should remember that even if Ahmadinejad goes and perhaps the case against Ahmadinejad through the International Criminal Court or other international legal fora becomes weaker, the case against Iran and the goals of the Iranian regime will remain just as menacing and threatening as they are today. The difference is only in the fact that the rhetoric is blunt and direct, whereas before it wasn't. But the goal remains the same.
Thank you.