The experts, all of them prominent scholars, researchers and journalists, were answering questions from Mr. Torab Mostofi, a senior producer at the Persian service of Radio France Internationale (RFI) trying to understand and explain the reasons behind the Iranian diplomacy in regard to the Palestinian problem and the continued hostility with both Israel and the United States.

Dr. Mehdi Mozzaffari, a professor of International Relations at the Copenhagen (Denmark) University said as a result of the 11 September terrorist attacks on the United States, not only American forces are now present in all of Iranian neighbours, but it also gives Iran to share the longest of borders with the United States while it has no common frontiers with Russia.

To the question of "where should be Iran’s main centre of strategic interests", Dr. Mozzaffari immediately pointed to Washington as "the present centre of the world" followed by Europe, Russia and China, "none of them Iran could use as an anti-American partner" and finally the Middle East and Palestine "with no impact whatever" he explained, adding that by placing the Middle East and Palestine at the centre of its foreign policy, Tehran is following an "inversed pyramid policy with deadly results for the nation and its future".

On the last Friday of the fasting month of Ramazan, the Islamic Republic holds state-organised and orchestrated anti-Israeli, pro-Palestinian demonstrations named International Qods (Jerusalem) Day to demonstrate the "full backing and solidarity" of the Iranian people and government with the Palestinian cause.

Saying that he has the "pulse" of a great number of students, scholars, intellectuals, journalists, teachers and the intelligentsia, he told RFI that the officials are giving "extraordinary exposure to a question for which the people has no sympathy for".

"There are basic and fundamental differences between the leaders of the Islamic Republic who have based the foreign policy on the Palestinian issue with the Iranian public opinion, for not only the people, who, in his daily life, faces plenty of more important and immediate hardships, do not consider Palestine as one of his problems, but also feels stranger with it", Dr. Tale’ pointed out.

Mr. Alireza Noorizadeh, a London-based Iranian journalist and noted expert on Arab affairs says Ayatollah Ali Khameneh'i and Iranian hard liners are harming Mr. Yaser Arafat and the Palestinian Authority "more than (Israeli hawkish Prime Minister) Ariel Sharon and Israeli extremists".

"Not only the PA has not received support from the Islamic Republic, but had been greatly penalised instead", Dr. Noorizadeh argued, adding that what Mr. Khameneh'i is after is the creation of an "Islamic leadership" opposed to that of the PA’s Chairman Yaser Arafat by " buying former Palestinian Marxists and other Arab leftists with money, giving them an Islamic colouration, mixing them with remnants of the Akhwan Moslemin (Muslim Brotherhood") and elements of the Lebanese Hezbollah, positioning them against Arafat in the form of Islamic Jihad of Palestine, an organisation pieced together by Iran".

"What Iranian leaders Ayatollah (Ali) Khameneh'i and (Ali Akbar) Hashemi-Rafsanjani, and even the Majles (parliament) do and say serves more the interests of the Israeli and Palestinian extremists than the moderates in both camps", confirmed Dr. Mansoor Farhang, one of the first ambassadors of the Islamic Republic to the United Nations who now teaches at New York universities.

Dr. Farhang explained that interfering in the Palestinian problem and making the Islamic Republic the flag-bearer of Islamic values was incorporated from the outset in the regime’s Constitution of Velayat Faqih.

"Hostility with the United States is the best example of the Islamic Republic’s so-called defence of Islam’s nation and interests", he said, adding that this policy of hostility had lost its very "raison d’etre".

Noting that Iran’s foreign diplomacy was not based on clear-cut goals and objectives, Dr. Farhang said while it would be quite logical for Iran to back the implementation of the UN’s Security Council’s resolution calling on Israel to withdraw from all occupied lands, the same, it is utterly illogical for the Iranian leaders to call for the destruction of Israel, as stated by Mr. Khameneh’i when he compares Israel to a cancer tumor.

On the benefits Iran gets by projecting itself in the Palestinian quagmire and the price it pays for that, Dr. Ziba-Kalam’s answer is a plain and categorical "nothing and heavy"!

"Not only the support given to Palestinian extremists has no benefit for Iran, being it material or psychological, but it badly harms our interests, making us paying a heavy price, the least of it being the over-dramatisation of our relations with the United States, making it much more difficult, darker and conflictual from what it is", he argued.

Observing that ideologisation of foreign policy, as it is the case in the Islamic Republic, is always against one country’s national interests and the fact that, contrary to Iran, most Arabs, Palestinians and Muslims have recognised the existence of the Jewish State and do negotiate with it, "isn’t it odd for us, a non-Arab nation, to adopt a more Palestinian than the Palestinians strategy and drum up on death, death to Israel, or Israel should be wiped out? Dr Ziba-Kalam pointed out, observing that such an "illogical" attitude about Israel has made Iran to pay a "heavy price".