Unending Crisis: National Security Policy After 9/11

Two: Iran

29 T W O Iran I R an has been PuRsuInG nucleaR WeaPons foR many decades. With the assistance of France, Germany, and South Africa, Iran began developing plans for a large nuclear infrastructure during the 1970s, under the former shah of Iran, Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi. The Iranian government signed a contract with Siemens of Germany to construct two one thousand–megawatt nuclear power reactors at Bushehr, located near the head of the Persian Gulf, in the late 1970s. Ultimately, Iran hoped to build up to twenty nuclear reactors or perhaps even more, making it a major player in the world nuclear power industry. In 2004, long-held suspicions that the quest for nuclear power production was linked to a nuclear weapon program were largely confirmed by one of the shah’s former foreign ministers, Ardeshir Zahedi, who said that “the assumption within the policymaking elite was that Iran should be in a position to develop and test a nuclear device within 18 months” of making the decision to construct nuclear weapons.1 Why would Iran want nuclear weapons? The motivations of the Islamic Republic today are of course different from those of Iran under the Western -aligned shah, but the radically different regimes share one common, and compelling, reason for pursuing the bomb: international prestige. Since early in the Cold War, the possession of nuclear weapons has distinguished great powers from other states. The political value of nuclear weapons has not declined since the end of the Cold War, despite urgings that nuclear weapons should play a lesser role in state security policies. 30 ChAPTeR Two The five permanent members of the UN Security Council (China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States), known as the Permanent Five, are the only nuclear weapon states recognized by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. In 1958, British prime minister Harold MacMillan said that Britain’s program “puts us where we ought to be . . . in the position of a great power.” President Charles de Gaulle of France said in 1961 that “a great state” that does not possess nuclear weapons when others do “does not command its own destiny.” Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee of India indicated in 1998, after the Indian nuclear tests, that India now was a truly important country because “We have a big bomb now.” When the Permanent Five met in Paris in 1998 to fashion a response to the Indian and Pakistani tests, there were reports that Germany and Japan sought to come as well but were told not to attend, because they were not nuclear weapon states. Iran is a proud country. The Persian cultural heritage is one of the richest in world civilization, and the Persian Empire was once the world’s most powerful. If that empire’s former provinces and client states now have nuclear weapons, why shouldn’t modern Persia? The view of many Iranians may be that Iran deserves to be a great power. Dr. Akbar Etemad, the director of Iran’s nuclear program under the shah, has asserted that the program was designed to provide the nuclear option should any of Iran’s regional competitors move in that direction.2 But there is more to it than that. In the 1970s, none of Iran’s potential competitors was moving toward nuclear weapons, but if the shah was interested in anything, it was international prestige, for Iran and, by association, for himself. Many Iranians believe that, as a great civilization with a long history, Iran has a right to acquire nuclear weapons.3 The nuclear program and Iran’s national identity have become linked in the minds of some of Iran’s rulers. Ali Hussein-Tash, deputy secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, said in 2006 that “A nation that does not engage in risks and difficult challenges, and a nation which does not stand up for itself, can never be a proud nation.”4 A reformist activist, Mostafa Tajzadeh, noted in 2003 that “It’s basically a matter of equilibrium; if I don’t have a nuclear bomb, I don’t have security.”5 For better or for worse, Iran suddenly was able to see itself as the region’s major power after the demise of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein. The acquisition of nuclear weapons could enhance Iran’s role as a regional power and increase its influence in the Middle East. IRAN 31 The Islamic...