Iran Seeks Technologies and Materials Needed to Make Nuclear Weapons

What galvanizes international concern is the fact that as numerous IAEA reports and other accounts confirm, Iran has, for a long time, been deliberately stonewalling the IAEA, refusing to comply fully with the inspection regime mandated by the NPT and the Additional Protocol and has been engaged in a systematic large-scale, comprehensive policy to acquire all the technologies and materials needed to make nuclear weapons.  It has taken part in A.Q. Khan’s nuclear bazaar and has obtained valuable help from Russia, China, Pakistan, and North Korea in making missiles and in learning how to master atomic energy. Indeed, given the enormous size of its own hydrocarbon endowment, Iran has yet to provide a convincing rationale as to why it needs atomic energy. Indeed, it is so wasteful of its natural energy endowment that it has to import both gas from Turkmenistan and gasoline from abroad to meet its growing demand. As its economy is shackled by enormous subsidies of energy consumption and wastefulness, mere economic reforms and greater efficiency in the consumption of energy would amply satisfy its growing demand. Indeed, if Iran were building an energy program to meet Dr. Saami’s criteria it would also have reformed it wholly inefficient energy economy to stop wasting its precious hydrocarbons. Whether or not the nuclear program originated under the Shah and whatever projections were made thirty years ago about Iran’s energy needs in 1990 is irrelevant. The fact is, that due to mismanagement Iran did not continue developing as fast as it was growing under the Shah after the clergy took power in the revolution of 1979. Iran’s energy needs could easily have been met and could still easily be met by greater efficiencies so that, for example it did not have to import both natural gas and gasoline. The fact that these subsidies and other wasteful programs continue without any interruption strongly suggests that the purpose of the nuclear program is not primarily to provide efficient energy at affordable prices, but rather to develop nuclear weapons. Therefore Iranian protestations that its nuclear energy program is purely for peaceful purposes have failed to convince any objective analysts. Moreover the fact that it has built dispersed, redundant, and underground facilities strongly suggests as well that the program is designed for military purposes.