Aspirations by Iran for a nuclear energy industry are not new. US opposition to it is, however, according to new declassified document published this week by the National Security Archive.
According to the documents, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the notorious dictator of Iran known as the Shah, who owed his position to CIA intrigues and oppression by Iranian secret police, sought nuclear energy capability to the chagrin of US leaders in the 1970s.
The Shah claimed the right to develop a nuclear energy program under the Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) to which his country was a signatory along with the US. According to his reasoning, the treaty blocked the proliferation of nuclear weapons in non-nuclear states (at that time everyone except China, Russia, Britain, France, and the US), but it obligated nuclear states to provide technology and nuclear raw materials to non-nuclear states in order to develop nuclear energy.
(Incidentally, the NPT also requires the nuclear states to set a timetable for eliminating their own nuclear arsenals, a provision that has been repeatedly violated ever since its establishment.)
Both the Ford and Carter administrations expressed strong reservations about allowing the Shah access to nuclear energy technology because they feared his government would secretly work to build a nuclear weapon, the newly released documents showed. More to the point, the successive US administrations in the mid- and late-1970s agreed with the assessment of one intelligence official who felt that 'an aggressive successor to the Shah might consider nuclear weapons the final item needed to establish Iran's complete military dominance of the region.'
Nevertheless, the Carter administration came to an agreement with Iran and negotiated a plan to provide nuclear energy technology in exchange for 'nonproliferation controls.' In other words, the US reserved the right to scrutinize what Iran did with the materials and withhold technology and raw materials if Iran appeared to be shifting toward weapons programs.
Interestingly, the current Iranian government has cited the same national sovereignty, security and its energy concerns expressed by the Shah in the process of developing a nuclear energy program.
And while the Bush administration has made the same case against allowing Iran to pursue a nuclear energy program as his predecessors, he has refused to come to some arrangement with Iran on the matter. Of course, this has everything to do with the Bush administration's disastrous policy of labeling Iran 'evil' and refusing to build any diplomatic common ground on any subject (including Bush's refusal of Iran's 2001 offer to join in the hunt for Osama bin Laden after 9/11).
In a parallel situation, an agreement worked out with North Korea in the 1990s to provide that government with needed goods in exchange for foregoing the acquisition of nuclear weapons collapsed when the Bush administration labeled that country as 'evil' and suspended the arrangement. That action prompted North Korea to fear for its security and to reconstitute its nuclear program. While regional powers worked hard to convince North Korea to suspend its program, it was only when the Bush administration retreated from its hardline policy and reestablished the previous arrangement that North Korea halted its nuclear program.
The Bush administration's policy toward Iran has been on the whole a deviation from US policy and US obligations under the NPT on the nuclear proliferation question. It has led to intense brinksmanship between the US and Iran over the course of the past few years with Bush threatening to use military force preemptively against Iran.
Bush's policy has also been short-sighted. Engaging Iran on the nuclear energy question would likely allow US and international oversight of any nuclear program there and ensure that Iran would be unable to develop a nuclear weapons program.
No nation has a right to nuclear weapons, including the existing nuclear powers: the US, Russia, China, France, Britain, Pakistan, India, and Israel. And because the nuclear energy industry has so far failed to guarantee public health and safety and environmental protection, nuclear energy should itself be halted. Dismantling nuclear arsenals should be and is a major goal of the peace movement globally.
In the world of real politics as it is now, however, a diplomatic effort that seeks to guarantee Iran's national security and an alternative energy source while insisting on international oversight in exchange could serve to ratchet down tensions in the Middle East, reduce or eliminate the so-called proxy wars against Israel, and reduce Iranian-influenced sectarianism in Iraq.
But a hard-nosed realist would simply have to drop the notion that any nation is inherently 'evil' and cannot be dealt with.
