Tehran Confab Seeks Self-Reliant Security Model for West Asia

The secretariat of the second edition of Tehran Security Conference, which opens today, said the confab is a platform for promoting dialogue, confidence and cooperation among West Asian countries and aims to chart a course leading to a regional security arrangement independent of outsiders.

Seyyed Jalal Dehqani Firouzabadi told IRNA on Sunday that "one of the main targets of the conference is to find a self-reliant regional security model which can accommodate all the challenges and opportunities facing the region."

The role of regional players as well as extra-regional ones would be discussed during the meeting, he said, adding that the conference would also serve as a platform for regional countries to expand their bilateral ties.

Top analysts with 25 research institutes and 80 foreign dignitaries will be among those participating in the event dubbed "Regional Security in West Asia: Emerging Challenges and Trends," Firouzabadi said.

Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, Majlis Speaker Ali Larijani and Defense Minister Amir Hatami will be among the keynote speakers in the gathering.

Arms trade, economic development, cyber revolution, big powers, regional security, environmental threats, and terrorism and extremism will be among other issues to be raised at the meeting.

The organizers of the confab say the ongoing conflicts in the region and the emergence of terrorist groups, such as the self-styled Islamic State, which wreaked havoc on Muslim countries and depleted their state coffers, increase the necessity of establishing new security arrangements in West Asia on the basis of self-reliant models instead of resorting to "imported" and "borrowed" security.

They believe the presence of foreigners in the region has not only failed to solve the region's security problems and will not do so in the future, but will also add to the existing complexities and cause further complication of security issues, with its ultimate result being the total collapse of the regional security order.

In an address to the previous security conference in Tehran in December 2016, Secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council Ali Shamkhani said that "based on Iran's security and defense doctrine, no neighboring countries or nations in West Asia, excluding the Israeli regime, is classified as a threat to the Islamic Republic."