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  • Iran’s Nuclear Controversy:Prospects for a Diplomatic Solution
  • Mohamed A. El-Khawas (bio)

The revelation in 2002 that Iran had a secret nuclear program propelled its case to the center stage of world politics. The Tehran government has persistently claimed that its nuclear program is designed solely to meet the country's civilian energy needs. Since the controversy broke, it has tried to negotiate a solution with the European Union and to avoid a confrontation with the United States.

However, Iran's secrecy has aroused suspicion. Americans and Europeans fear that Iran is planning to acquire nuclear weapons, because the same technology used for civilian power generation can produce weapons as well. As a European nuclear expert has remarked, some aspects of the Iranian programs are "highly troubling" because they appear to have gone "well beyond normal civilian activities."1 The Bush administration has accused Tehran of using its civilian program as a subterfuge to develop nuclear weapons secretly.2

Although the United States, Britain, France, and Germany share common goals, they have not found any agreement over the past three years on the best way to stop Iran from proceeding with its program. Their ability to work together has been hampered by sharp disagreements over the war in [End Page 20] Iraq, which has become a stumbling block for any meaningful cooperation on Iran.

My purpose in this essay is to review the nature of the controversy. Because foreign policies are by-products of national experiences and are influenced by past events, it is useful to examine the arguments presented by both sides and the long-term, underlying issues behind the apparent US hostility toward and distrust of Iran. I also analyze the Bush administration's approach to the controversy and explain its shift in policy from the first to the second term in the White House.

Iran's Nuclear Program

Iran's nuclear program began in the mid-1970s with help from the West. Iran was a key ally in the US strategy to contain Soviet expansion in the Middle East and avoid Soviet threats to the supply of oil to the West. According to the National Security Decision Memorandum 292 dated 22 April 1975, the Ford administration agreed to provide Tehran "with material to be fabricated into fuel in Iran for use in its own reactors." It also offered to sell the shah of Iran a reprocessing facility for extracting plutonium from nuclear reactor fuel. Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger, the power behind the deal, supported this stance because it would generate significant new business for corporate America, including Westinghouse and General Electric. The justification was that Iran needed "to prepare against the time—about fifteen years in the future—when Iranian oil production is expected to decline sharply."3 Recently, Kissinger has reversed his stance.He wrote in the Washington Post on 8 March 2005 that "for a major oil producer such as Iran, nuclear energy is a wasteful use of resources."4

Kissinger was not the only member of the Ford team to change his mind. Vice President Richard Cheney is now the leading figure in the Bush administration trying to prevent Iran from acquiring the same nuclear technology that he had endorsed thirty years earlier. As he put it, the Iranians are "already sitting on an awful lot of oil and gas. Nobody can figure [out] why [End Page 21] they need nuclear [power] as well to generate energy."5 One of the reasons for this shift is that Iran is no longer an ally. Another is Iran's new status as a "rogue nation," accused of supporting militant groups in the Middle East and of having vehement opposition to Israel.

The overthrow of the shah in 1979 brought to a halt the nuclear cooperation between the United States and Iran and put the two countries on a collision course. In November 1979, militant students had stormed the American Embassy in Tehran and held fifty-two American diplomats as hostages for 444 days. Events surrounding the embassy takeover have continued to shape the relationship between the two countries. Since then, the United States has been in a tense standoff with Iran, with...

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