Nuclear Iran: The Birth of an Atomic State

by David Patrikarakos

The Iranian nuclear crisis has dominated world politics since the beginning of the century, with the country now facing increasing diplomatic isolation, talk of military strikes against its nuclear facilities and a disastrous Middle East war. What is Iran's nuclear programme all about? What is its genesis? There is little real understanding of Iran's nuclear programme, in particular its history, which is now over fifty years old. This ground-breaking book is unprecedented in its scope. It argues that the history of Iran's nuclear programme and the modern history of the country itself are irretrievably linked, and only by understanding one can we understand the other. From the programme's beginnings under the Shah of Iran, the book details the central role of the US in the birth of nuclear Iran, and, through the relationship between the programme's founder and the Shah of Iran himself, the role that nuclear weapons have played in the programme since the beginning.
The author's unique access to 'the father' of Iran's nuclear programme, as well as to key scientific personnel under the early Islamic Republic and to senior Iranian and Western officials at the centre of today's negotiations, sheds new light on the uranium enrichment programme that lies at the heart of global concerns. What emerges is a programme that has, for a variety of reasons, a deep resonance to Iran. This is why it has persisted with it for over half a century in the face of such widespread opposition. Drawing on years of research across the world, David Patrikarakos has produced the most comprehensive examination of Iran's nuclear programme - in all its forms to date.

Genres: Iran, Middle East, Politics, History, Nonfiction

320 pages, Hardcover

First published November 13, 2012

Reviews

[Jens Jakob · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent acount of the story behind the Iranian nuclear programme.
A must read for everybody interested in this matter

[Sophie Rice · Rating 4 out of 5]

Technically this was a book I should have read last fall for my Iran in the Middle East class (sorry professor!). I clearly should have read it because a lot of the thesis for that class and current thought on Iran can be seen throughout this history. The combination on historical narratives, Iranian and American rhetoric, and scientific basis provide a strong background to this work.

[Denny · Rating 4 out of 5]

A quick course in Iran/Persia history is necessary to understand the forces affecting its nuclear power development. The author talks about the last 200 years with special emphasis on the 20th century. Events have an important role. For instance:

o In 1953, a CIA-led coup deposed the democratically elected prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh, and re-installed the pro-American Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi to the throne. One of the reasons: oil. Another: the Cold War. This is still a raw nerve for Iran. As the Hostage Crisis is for the United States.

o During the Iran-Iraq War, Iraq used chemical weapons (WMD) against Iran 14 times starting in 1983. Iran complained to the U.N. seeking a resolution condemning Iraq's use of prohibited weapons. The U.S. attempted to sabotage this resolution. The U.S. was aiding Iraq in this conflict. And, the U.S. exported chemical and biological materials to Iraq = these WMD.

The world's most open secret is Israel has nuclear weapons. This is one of the few 'nuclear Iran' discussions that talks about this threat.

Iran has sought nuclear power for over 50 years. The Eisenhower administration initiated this effort in 1957 as part of the Atoms for Peace program. Iran wanted an alternative energy source since it's oil reserves are finite. In addition, nuclear power would increase Iran's standing. But the Shah was pragmatic. If national security was at risk, Iran would seek weapon capability.

Iran is a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty. India, Pakistan and Israel did not sign and all have nuclear weapons. Iran doesn't want to leave the NPT as North Korea did 10 years ago. Iran wants to stay engaged with the international community.

So what's Iran to do? For now, Iran doesn't have nuclear anything. While getting closer, it's more difficult without outside support and with outside hostility.

I believe that Iran will eventually have nuclear weapons. How and what the international community will/should do is not in my 'little gray cells.'



The author takes a stab at what Iran might do.
"(Develop a) nuclear-weapons capability -- by which the state has surmounted all technological obstacles to a bomb without actually proceeding with the final stages of weaponization (which could be achieved quickly if the need arose) -- has several benefits. Most potent of these is that it offers all the political benefits of nuclear capability -- deterrence, prestige, political leverage -- without the political cost -- having to leave the NPT, becoming a true pariah state, (being under) totally crippling sanctions.

[Gordon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Our book club took an interest in the question of where Iran really stands in its nuclear program today. To lighten the approach, we read "All the Shah's Men" for a brief, though sound, historical background and favorable reading material for a book club. While All the Shah's Men stops in 1953, "Nuclear Iran" takes the ball from there and fills in the gap with a focus on the Shah's interests in a peaceful Nuclear power program through the Islamic revolution in 1979 up to today. Published/released in December 2012, this book has the latest information available on the diplomatic stalemate we have arrived at today, while Iran (defiantly, though in one view, rightfully) presses forward with an increasingly capable nuclear program.
I'd say this text is fairly neutral and unbiased with respect to any domestic or international / foreign policy political partisanship. Really simply lays out the documented evidence of the diplomatic tennis match being played by all sides, Europe, USA, Russia, China, Iran, India, Pakistan, Israel, and a set of other "developing" nations related to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty.
The writing was at times difficult to follow, with jumps forward and back in time by a few years in either direction, making it sometimes difficult to figure out the timing of who said what to whom, when, in relation to other events... Some of that is natural and acceptable given the need to reveal information that we only discovered years after-the-fact, but makes sense to expose it in the delivery of the story.
Bottom line. If you want to know where Iran and the rest of the world stands on Iran's nuclear program, its motivations, and aspirations, and our passive and active involvement, and sometimes interference with the program, this is a great book to read.
No doubt I have my own opinion now, and even have some approaches to possible solutions in the current stalemate we have arrived at, though like the book successfully does, I leave it to you to make your own assessment.

[David Dunnagan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pros:

Exhaustively researched, filled with primary source information. Traces the program from beginning to end. Gives real insight into Iran's thinking at various points, as well as the complex political workings of the UN.

Cons:

Highly repetitive. The author has one major thesis - Iran's nuclear program is linked to its national identity and complex relationship with modernity - and he repeats it ad nauseam. And then some more.

Highly repetitive. In every chapter, the author has a few points to make, and a thousand ways to restate them. Even important historical events end up repeated multiple times in a way which does not feel intentional.

In an early chapter, he breaks the chronological organization of the book in order to go over events already mentioned. It's extremely confusing.

Overall, a excellent resource which needed a lot more revision.

[Venky · Rating 4 out of 5]

David Patrikarakos has written what ought to be one of the most meticulously researched, eminently readable and enormously insightful account of Iran’s dalliance with danger in steadfastly proceeding with the ambitions of developing a nuclear bomb in the face of stinging reproach, selective retribution and universal rancor. Charting Iran’s tryst with the nuclear dream, Mr. Patrikarakos begins “Nuclear Iran” with an account of the reluctant ascension of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi as the Shah of Iran. The engineering of the infamous coup of 1953, aided and abetted by the CIA via Operation Ajax not only ensured that the hard-lining Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh was overthrown, but also that Iran would be led by a Shah keen to maintain cordial and amicable relations with the West.

Riding on the twin planks of Westernization and modernization, the Shah succeeded in winning the trust of the Western world in so far as the embracing of nuclear technology was concerned. The year 1957 saw the establishment of a nuclear training centre under the aegis of Central Treaty Organisation (“CENTO”) as well as the opening of the American ‘Atoms for Peace’ exhibit in Teheran, not to mention a bilateral agreement between Iran and the USA for pursuing peaceful nuclear research. Pioneering these initiatives with the Shah was Akbar Etemad, a young nuclear physicist back in Iran after accumulating qualifications from Geneva and Paris. Desirous of severing the nuclear programme from all bureaucratic hurdles, Etemad mooted and succeeded in establishing the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran (“AEOI”). Spearheaded by Etemad himself the organization was answerable only to the Shah himself and had his boon bestowing hand in so far as money, methods and resources were concerned.

Flush with oil money, Iran forged ahead with a supremely far sighted plan of constructing as many as 20 nuclear reactors and the global powers of the world stumbled upon each other in a race to win Iran’s favour and contracts. The German firm Kraftwerk (a Joint Venture of Siemens AG and AEG Telefunken) was selected to build a pressurized water reactor power plant with two 1,196 MW reactors at Bushehr at a cost of US$4-6 billion. As Mr. Patrikarakos chillingly illustrates, things began to take an insidious turn when the Shah of Iran was toppled in an ideological coup in 1979. The radical cleric Ayatollah Khomeini with his rabid mistrust of Western countries (“foreign agents”), was proclaimed the supreme leader of Iran. Iranian identity and identity politics would take an ominous colour as Gharbzadegi (‘West-struckness’) or “Westoxification” would be relegated to the confines of history. A brainchild of Ahmad Fardid, A Teheran University Professor, this term was popularized by the “secular Marxist writer, and social critic, Jalal Al-e Ahmad in his 1962 book, Occidentosis: A Plague from the West.”

The new regime began to lose no time in scaling back the nuclear programme. In the words of Mr. Patrikarakos, “on 31 July 1979 Kraftwerk formally terminated its contract to build the Bushehr power plant, citing Iranian debts to the company of $US 450 million. At this stage the first reactor was around 80% complete, the second reactor 45-70% complete, while 90% of the parts had been shipped.”

Thus began a total dismantling of both Western collaboration and relations and also a covert hatching of plans to indigenously develop uranium enrichment under the ruse of civilian nuclear energy. The environment of mistrust, malice and misinformation pervading Iran’s ties with the West only accelerated both Iran’s perceived need for a bomb and the global super powers’ fears of a mass proliferation mania in the tinder box that had become the Middle East. The International Atomic Energy Agency and their inspectors were both curtailed as well as confounded in exercising their role as impartial inspectors of various centres of nuclear activities in Iran such as Bushehr, Natanz, Saghand, Isfahan, and Anarak. Where Mr. Patrikarakos’ work is the most illuminating is in the lucid and brilliant analysis of the motives, methods and means under girding the various players involved in Iran’s nuclear gamble. The intransigence of the George W. Bush’s administration that viewed Iran as a hostile pariah; the insouciance of successive Iranian regimes under Khatami and the rabid Ahmadinejad in emphasizing covertness and secrecy over transparency and mediation; the insipid routine of the IAEA in merely churning out inspection reports ignored by most of the readers; the implicit connivance and collusion of Russia and China with Iran while explicitly making a show of stern and stringent dissatisfaction at Iran’s brazen transgressions and violations, all contrived to exacerbate and accentuate a situation that was in the very first place precariously delicate and vertiginously volatile. The Western world’s sanction regime was met by an obstinate continuation of Iran with its policy of enrichment of Uranium. Add to the mix, the incredulously targeted assassination of prominent Iranian nuclear scientists by Mossad (neither acknowledged nor denied by the Israeli administration) and the infiltration of the Stunex virus to adversely impact the functioning of various centrifuges in Iran’s nuclear establishment, the world had on its burdened back, a potentially debilitating scenario whose outcome could only be catastrophic!

As Mr. Patrikarakos admirably puts it, “the supreme irony of the nuclear crisis is that Iran’s nuclear programme is the ultimate expression of its desire for acceptance (but on its own terms) that is pursued through the one means that will ensure it remains a pariah.”

Mr. Patrikarakos also displays a prophetic attribute when he states in the book that a Republican President at the helm of US affairs might alter the geopolitical balance or imbalance permeating the Middle East. At the time of this review, the US and Iran are engaged in trading nasty barbs and scary threats. A senior Iranian security official has issued a chilling warning to the west, stressing Tehran will respond to any hostile action, declaring the era of "hit and run" is over. This is in response to the irresponsible and indelicate comments made by the intemperate Donald Trump, had expressed grave reservations about the nuclear deal with Iran, agreed by his predecessor Barack Obama, before the decision was taken to cancel it. He said:” It is clear to me that we cannot prevent an Iranian nuclear bomb under the decaying and rotten structure of the current agreement. “The Iran deal is defective at its core. If we do nothing we know exactly what will happen."

Meanwhile a perturbed world watches with bated breath.

[ML · Rating 4 out of 5]

I prefer originally had to read this book for school but never did ! It however seemed pretty timely so I decided to pick it up. It was so good . It was definitely not an easy read but it was definitely worthwhile . It can get slightly technical at times but I now know more than I ever thought I would on the topic .

[Paul Cooke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellently told, good in-depth record that the West should read to truly understand Iran.

[Sonja · Rating 4 out of 5]

Keine leichte Kost, aber eine umfassende und ausgewogene Darstellung.

[Alan]

excellent book

[Hakan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good reference on the subject providing informative details.