Iran's Nuclear Option: Tehran's Quest for the Atom Bomb

by Al J. Venter

At a time when international terrorism is the focal point of our concerns, a far more pressing threat has arisen to the balance of power in the world and ultimately to the security of our country. Since the Islamic Republic of Iran admitted, just two years ago, that it was secretly producing highly enriched, weapons-grade uranium, leading nations have struggled to react in an appropriate manner. In this book, the U.S. public is able to learn, in full detail and for the first time, exactly what the Europeans and UN have been trying to forestall.

In Iran we see a country, located at the center of the uraniumMiddle East, which could very shortly have the ability to strike its immediate neighbors and nations farther away with nuclear weapons. With the innate size to dominate its region, Iran is also a country with an avowed mission to export it's theocratic principles, and a nation which has, over the past 25 years, been a notorious supporter of terrorist organizations. Its parallel development of atomic bombs comprises the greatest threat that we have seen in the new millennium.

In Iran's Nuclear Option, defense expert Al J. Venter details the extent to which Iran's weapons program has developed, and the clandestine manner in which its nuclear technology has been acquired. He demonstrates how Tehran has violated the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and details the involvement of several countries who have been shown by the IAEA to have trafficked in illegal nuclear materials. He proves, for the first time, a direct link between the now-defunct South African apartheid regime's nuclear program and Tehran's current nuclear ambitions.

Venter digs deep into ancillary subjects, such as Iran's fervor on behalf of Shiite Islam, its missile program—developed alongside its nuclear one—and the role of the Pasdaran (Revolutionary Guards), whose tentacles have spread throughout the Middle East and increasingly further afield. While noting Tehran's support of terrorist groups such as Hizbollah, Venter follows closely how the Persian homeland itself has progressed toward a strategic nuclear capability that would make recent terrorist attacks look obsolete.

Iran's Nuclear Option is essential reading for anyone with an interest in global security and the perilous volatility of the Middle East. It also comprises an indicator for America's own options, should it be willing to counter the threat while time remains, in favor of world peace rather than greater global instability.

Table of Contents

Preface
Foreword by Stephen Tanner
Introduction

PART THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF IRAN
1 Its People and Government
2 The Iran-Iraq War, 1980–1988
3 Iran's Shi' Provocative and Driven

PART IRAN'S NUCLEAR PURSUITS
4 How Close is Iran to Building an A-Bomb?
5 Doomsday Scenario
6 Iran's Multi-Stemmed Centrifuge An Overview by David Albright and Corey Hinderstein
7 Nuclear South Africa and Iran
8 Case South Africa's Atom Bomb

PART IRAN'S TROUBLED ROLE IN WORLD AFFAIRS
9 Building Guided Missiles to Hit Israel
10 Iran's History of Terror
11 Iran's Unconventional Weapons
12 The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps
13 What's Next?

Appendix A The Russia-Iran Nuclear Connection
Appendix B IAEA Implementation of the NPT Safeguards Agreement in the Islamic Republic of Iran
Appendix C Iran's Economy and Oil and Gas Resources
Appendix D How Saddam Hussein Almost Built His Bomb
Appendix E Close-Quarter The South African Nuclear Weapons Program
Appendix F Iran's Devils in the Detail by Charles P. Vick
Appendix G Pasdaran's Protegé: Hizbollah

Acronyms, Technical, Arabic, and Persian Words and Phrases
Acknowledgments
Notes

460 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Albertus Johannes Venter is a South African journalist and historian who is arguably the world's foremost expert on the modern military history of Africa. He has been a war correspondent/military affairs reporter for many publications, notably serving as African and Middle East correspondent for Jane's International Defence Review. He has also worked as a documentary filmmaker, and has authored more than forty books.

He has reported on a number of Africa’s bloodiest wars, starting with the Nigerian Civil War in 1965, where he spent time covering the conflict with colleague Frederick Forsyth, who was working in Biafra for the BBC at the time.

In the 1980’s, Al J Venter also reported in Uganda while under the reign of Idi Amin. The most notable consequence of this assignment was an hour-long documentary titled Africa’s Killing Fields, ultimately broadcast nationwide in the United States by Public Broadcasting Service.

In-between, he cumulatively spent several years reporting on events in the Middle East, fluctuating between Israel and a beleaguered Lebanon torn by factional Islamic/Christian violence. He was with the Israeli invasion force when they entered Beirut in 1982. From there he covered hostilities in Rhodesia, the Sudan, Angola, the South African Border War, the Congo as well as Portuguese Guinea, which resulted in a book on that colonial struggle published by the Munger Africana Library of the California Institute of Technology.

In 1985 he made a one-hour documentary that commemorated the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

He also spent time in Somalia with the US Army helicopter air wing in the early 1990s, three military assignments with the mercenary group Executive Outcomes (Angola and Sierra Leone) and a Joint-STAR mission with the United States Air Force over Kosovo.

More recently, Al Venter was active in Sierra Leone with South African mercenary pilot Neall Ellis flying combat in a Russian helicopter gunship (that leaked when it rained.) That experience formed the basis of the book on mercenaries published recently and titled War Dog: Fighting Other People's Wars.

He has been twice wounded in combat, once by a Soviet anti-tank mine in Angola, an event that left him partially deaf.

Al Venter originally qualified as a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Shipbrokers at the Baltic Exchange in London.

(from wikipedia)