U.S. sabotages Iran's nuclear program
Published Mar 16, 2005 3:46 PM
Following are excerpts from a talk by Ardeshir Ommani, delivered at WESPAC
on March 5, entitled “U.S. Foreign Policy Toward Iran and Iran’s
Nuclear Program.” Ardeshir is co-founder of the recently-formed
American-Iranian Friendship Committee. The full talk is available on the Workers World web
site at “U.S. Foreign Policy Toward Iran and Iran’s
Nuclear Program.”.
Iran’s interest in
nuclear energy, research and know-how began in the mid-1960s under the direct
tutelage of the U.S., within the framework of turning Iran the way of Israel,
into a regional and nuclear power for containing the movement of Arab Socialism
and its orientation towards the Soviet Union.
With the technical
assistance of the U.S., the first nuclear research facility, the Tehran Nuclear
Research Center (TNRC), was built in Tehran University in 1967, and managed by
the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), which was founded in
1974.
Immediately after the founding of TNRC, the U.S. sold a
five-megawatt research reactor to Iran. It was installed at the Amira bad
Technical College in Tehran, and runs on 93-percent highly-enriched uranium. The
reactor could produce up to 600 grams of plutonium per year in its spent fuel.
Simultaneously, the U.S. sold hot cells to Iran which could be used for
separating plutonium from the spent fuel, and then used for the production of
atomic bombs.
The question that remains to be asked is why the U.S. sold
the hot cells to the Shah.
Iran became a party to the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) on July 1, 1968, which went into effect on March
5, 1970. Article IV of the treaty states that “Nothing in the Treaty shall
be interpreted as affecting the inalienable right of all the parties to the
Treaty to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful
purposes without discrimination and in conformity with Articles I and II of this
Treaty.”
Furthermore, Article IV continues that “All the
Parties to the Treaty undertake to facilitate, and have the right to participate
in, the fullest possible exchange of equipment, materials and scientific and
technological information for the peaceful uses of nuclear
energy...”
U.S. backs Shah’s nuclear
plans
According to declassified U.S. government documents, cited
extensively by Moham mad Sahimi, professor and chair of Chemical and Petroleum
Engineering at the University of Southern California, in his authoritative paper
“Iran’s Nuclear Program,” Washington in the mid-1970’s
advised “Iran to expand her non-oil energy base” by reasoning that
“Iran needed not one but several nuclear reactors to acquire the
electrical capacity that the Stanford Research Institute” paper in 1973
“had proposed, and expressing interest in U.S. companies’
participation in Iran’s nuclear energy projects.”
Emboldened
by Washington’s encouragement, the Shah planned to build 23 nuclear power
plants throughout the country. No authority in the U.S., France or West Germany
disputed the Shah’s extensive and expensive projects on the basis of the
fact that Iran was rich in oil and natural gas deposits, the reasoning that
[U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza] Rice recently provided for the redundancy
of plans for nuclear energy in Iran.
At the time of the Shah, the only
reason that the plan for the construction of such a huge project could not be
enacted was that the price of oil on the world market fell considerably, and the
Shah’s government was not financially capable of paying for it.
However, in 1974, the Shah’s government signed a contract with West
Ger many’s Kraftwerk Union, a subsidiary of Siemens, to begin the
construction of two 1,200-megawatt nuclear reactors at Bushehr, a city in the
southwestern part of Iran. Soon the Atomic Energy Organi zation of Iran signed a
contract with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for training the first
group of Iranian nuclear engineers.
Meanwhile, West Germany, France,
Britain and the U.S. trained thousands of nuclear specialists from around the
world. Iranian nuclear personnel received their training in Italy, Belgium and
Canada, as well as the U.S.
Mark D. Skootsky, in his June 1995 research
paper on U.S. Nuclear Policy Toward Iran, writes that “while these
specialists were being trained in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy in order
to achieve the Shah’s plan for 23 nuclear power reactors, the knowledge
they gained could also have been used for a secret nuclear weapons
program,” as it was in India.
According to Mohamad Sahimi, the
classified documents mentioned above contained the information that in an
address to an October 1977 symposium called “The U.S. and Iran, an
Increasing Partnership,” Sydney Sober, a spokesperson for the U.S. State
Department, proudly announced that the Shah’s government was about to
purchase eight more nuclear reactors from the U.S.
Revolution fuels
U.S. hostility
By 1979, when the Iranian Revolution toppled the
pro-U.S. regime, the Shah had reached agreements for a total of six nuclear
power reactors from France, West Germany and the U.S.
Two 1,200-megawatt
German light-water power reactors at Bushehr were partly finished. Reactor
Number 1 was 90-percent complete and 60 percent of its equipment was also
installed, while Num ber 2 was 50-percent complete.
During the 1980s, the
Iran-Iraq war brought heavy damage to the core areas of both
reactors.
After the Iran-Iraq war, the Islamic Republic of Iran under
President Rafsan jani re-initiated Iran’s nuclear energy program and
immediately approached Kraft werk Union to complete the Bushehr project or ship
the reactor components and technical documents that Iran had paid
for.
However, the German government and Kraftwerk, under U.S. pressure,
refused to honor the contract or even return the money. Left in the cold, Iran
filed a lawsuit in 1996 with the International Com merce Commis sion (ICC)
asking $5.4 billion compensation. The case is still unsettled.
On May 5,
1987, Iran and Argentina signed agreements concerning the delivery of enriched
uranium. The $5.5-million deal would have provided Iran with a new core for its
U.S.-purchased, five-megawatt research reactor at Tehran University so that the
reactor would operate on 20 percent enriched uranium. The contract also included
the Argentine export of the 20-percent enriched uranium to Iran.
In
September 1980, the International Atomic Energy Agency approved the transfer of
115.8 kilograms of uranium, which was within the IAEA safeguards.
Although the U.S. was unsuccessful in blocking Argentina from selling the
20-percent enriched uranium to Iran, it succeeded in preventing that country
from fulfilling other aspects of its contractual obligation with Iran in early
1992. Again, under heavy pressure from the U.S., Argentina backed out of the
deal by the end of that year.
As early as the mid-1980s, writes Sahimi,
“A consortium of companies from Argen tina, Germany and Spain submitted a
proposal to Iran to complete the Bushehr- Number 1 reactor, but huge pressure by
the United States stopped the deal. The U.S. pressure also stopped in 1990
Spain’s Nation al Institute of Industry and Nuclear Equipment [from
completing] the Bushehr project.”
After exhausting all avenues in
the West in search of finding a country or a company that would not be
intimidated by the threats of the U.S. and begin the work on Bushehr’s
nuclear energy project, Iran turned to the Soviet Union, and then Russia, to
finish the job.
As long as the Shah was a partner of Israel and a puppet
of the United States, it could engage in developing all sorts of nuclear energy
and devices. But after the revolution, Iran does not deserve and cannot be
trusted with any technological, economic and social advancement, according to
Washington and Tel Aviv.
Furthermore, countries like Iran, Iraq,
Venezuela and 80 percent of humanity have to be kept backward so that they
don’t ever dream of independence, equality, social change and especially
revolution. People engaged in such changes will be branded by the U.S. empire as
“terrorists, despots, dictators and rogue nations” to be disposed
of.
Ommani has been an activist in the anti-war and anti-imperialist
struggle for over 40 years, including against the Vietnam War. He was a
co-founder of the Iranian Students Association in the 1960s, which contributed
to the overthrow of the Shah, a U.S. puppet. He directly participated in the
movements inside Iran that culminated in the 1979 revolution. Ommani is still
very active in the anti-war movement and has collaborated with the International
Action Center in the struggle against the U.S. war and occupation of Iraq.
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