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Atoms for peace
Nuclear infancy
The years from 1957 through 1973 mark Iran’s first exposure to, raw fascination with, and unsophisticated socialization into the nuclear world. It was President Eisenhower’s 1953 Atoms for Peace Program that initiated a host of Third World countries into the nuclear age. Iran was no exception to this unfolding trend as the enervated state was struggling to create modern foundations to assert domestic authority and redefine its regional and international identity following a cascade of strategically bruising experiences that included the Anglo-Soviet invasion of August 1941, the Soviet foot-dragging in withdrawing from Azerbaijan Province in 1946, and the CIA-orchestrated coup of 1953 that toppled Iran’s first democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq.
The left-leaning July 14, 1958 Revolution in Iraq and Brigadier General Abdul Karim Qasim’s subsequent abjuration of and withdrawal from the anti-communist Baghdad Pact foregrounded the young Shah’s anxieties regarding Iran’s vulnerabilities to indirect Soviet subversion. Viewed from a strategic perspective, 1958 was the beginning of a securitized era in Iran’s relations with its Arab neighbor to the west. The volatile atmosphere was further compounded by the Shah’s occasionally overwrought alarmism at the Soviet threat from the north and Moscow’s courting of Tehran’s Arab rivals and adversaries in the Middle East and North Africa.
During this founding period, Iran was gradually coming to grips with the notion of the atom and its functional and strategic implications. However, the woeful lack of an indigenous blueprint to govern its nuclear identity deprived Tehran of the ability to commit the requisite scientific, bureaucratic, and infrastructural resources commensurate with a thought-through national nuclear enterprise. This was in contrast, for instance, to India’s nuclear initiation where the Atomic Energy Research Committee as a governing body was founded in 1946 (prior to the country’s independence) with preeminent nuclear physicist Homi J. Bhabha at its helm.
Standing on such an uncertain ground, in 1957 the Iranian Council of Ministers set up the Iranian Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC). The body was chaired by the Prime Minister with the Minister of Industry and Mines acting as his deputy. The IAEC was predominantly a macro policy-formulating structure whose role in conceptualizing and streamlining Iran’s nuclear efforts was largely pro forma. The Shah, in this embryonic period, virtually embodied and encapsulated the country’s dabbling with the atom and almost single-handedly gave visibility, context, and a semblance of orientation to it. As a matter of fact, the whole nuclear enterprise in this era amounted to little more than an exercise in crafting sorely needed prestige for the person of the Shah in the wake of his humiliating escape to Italy in 1953 and re-accession to the throne in an externally engineered coup d’état. This episode in Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi’s political life indelibly tainted his image as a U.S. client figure and the Monarch spared no effort or expense in the following two decades to redeem his reputation.
The available archival evidence does not shed a definitive light on the initial epiphany moment for the Shah’s nuclear consciousness and its subsequent evolution into an object of his obsession toward the mid-1970s. Having said that, one controversial figure has explicitly claimed being the inspirational figure behind the Shah’s nuclear initiation. Abolfath Mahvi, the Shah’s cousin, whose name as the owner of the consulting firm Iran Nuclear Energy Company (INECO) sporadically appears in U.S. State Department cables, relates a conversation with the Shah where he broached the idea of the atom to His Imperial Majesty (HIM) during a 1963 trip to the United States:
Since the U.S. President will not support your request for America to increase its purchase of Iranian oil that would, in return, allow you to purchase more arms, why not consider acquiring nuclear weapons? It will reduce the need to purchase more sophisticated arms and military hardware and will add to Iran’s prestige among the international community.1
Mahvi claims his counsel made a profound and lasting impression on the Shah and shaped the Monarch’s approach to nuclear energy. Others have refuted this assertion as nothing more than empty grandstanding by a onetime kickback broker. The foundational figure of Iran’s nuclear program Akbar Etemad, for example, finds Mahvi’s claims hyperbolic at best and falsified at worst. According to Etemad, Mahvi never amounted to anything more than a run-of-the-mill influence peddler who riding on the Shah’s coattails, made a fortune on secret commissions and not-so-secret kickbacks. Etemad, however, believes that the Shah’s nuclear fixation had as much to do with HIM’s principal conviction that “oil was too precious to be burned up” as with anything else.2 In any event, a balanced reading of the available archival evidence does not even circumstantially suggest that the Shah’s nuclear consciousness was, as Mahvi asserts, born with an eye on the atom’s national security dividends or in terms of granting Tehran’s defense posture more bang for the buck. On this reading, the Shah regime’s nuclear genesis runs in sharp contrast to the Islamic Republic’s nuclear awakening, born in the thick of the Iran–Iraq war, where a non-security narrative has proved a hard sell.
The available archival records do not shed light on whether the Shah’s nuclear curiosity was sharpened or otherwise influenced by possible intelligence on Israeli nuclear activities dating from the 1940s or Egypt’s forays into the nuclear field under President Nasser in the mid-1950s. A close perusal of the available evidence indicates the trigger on the Iranian side to enter the atom age probably came from the Shah’s keen personal interest in the issue further whetted by dispatches from Iranian diplomatic missions abroad about nuclear cooperation between the United States and other Third World countries within the Atoms for Peace Program. For example, on January 12, 1955 Ali Asghar Hekmat, Iran’s Ambassador to New Delhi informed the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs of India and Pakistan’s nuclear dabblings. In his correspondence, Hekmat drew Tehran’s attention to a conference India had convened to explore various aspects of nuclear technology and underscored the personal interest Jawaharlal Nehru had taken in developing a nuclear infrastructure.3 Hekmat also mentioned a trip by a U.S. delegation to India to explore avenues for nuclear cooperation between the two countries.4 He recommended officials in Iran follow India’s suit and float trial balloons about a possible initial foray into the nuclear age as well.5
In 1956, the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs published a report where reference was made to a cable by the Iranian Embassy in Amman, Jordan about nuclear cooperation between the U.S. and Israel and arrangements to establish a nuclear science lab. According to the report, this nuclear facility would enable Israel to make noteworthy headway in the field of nuclear technology. The document also alluded to a similar partnership in place between the U.S. and Lebanon.6
Taking a keen interest in the report, Iranian Prime Minister Hossein Ala made an inquiry as to the reasons behind the Iranian Government’s tardiness in rolling out similar negotiations with the United States.7
Taking note of the Prime Minister’s strong interest in the nuclear issue, Tehran University Chancellor Manoucher Eqbal kicked off negotiations with Loy W. Henderson, former U.S. Ambassador to Iran (1951–1954) and director of the Office of Near Eastern Affairs in the U.S. State Department at the time. Looking favorably upon the issue, Ambassador Henderson pledged to take up the subject with the relevant American officials. Parallel to Eqbal’s negotiations with Henderson, the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs initiated a series of preliminary talks with the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. Worthy of a quick mention here is that even at these most exploratory and tentative stages, the nuclear issue was not a purely technical matter devoid of political overtones as far as Washington was concerned. For instance, in November of 1955 Washington sought the advice of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran regarding the favorability of the over-all political situation before sending a physicist to Tehran to conduct informal negotiations for a nuclear research program in Iran.8
As Iran’s efforts to dip its toes into the nuclear world were assuming higher priority, on July 18, 1956, in a letter to U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, Iranian Ambassador to Washington Ali Amini (who went on to become Prime Minister in 1961) “communicated to His Excellency the desire of the Iranian Government to enter into negotiations looking toward the conclusion of an intergovernmental agreement for cooperation in matters concerning the civil uses of atomic energy.”9 On July 27 of the same year, the United States responded affirmatively to the Iranian request and on August 16, the United States government presented a draft agreement to the representatives of the Iranian Embassy in Washington for consideration. The draft was subsequently sent to a “Scientific Committee of the University of Tehran” for review and advice.10
The draft agreement proposed by the United States broadly followed the same guidelines stipulated in agreements concluded “with 32 other countries.” The chief pillars of these guidelines included “A) exchange of unclassified technology; B) lease of up to 6 kilograms of U-235 for reactor fuel, as well as laboratory quantities of other special materials; and C) Appropriate safeguards.”11
As far as the Americans could diagnose, the virtual lack of trained personnel in the country was Iran’s main stumbling block in setting up a pilot-scale nuclear program at this initial stage. Asked about “the nature of research facilities and trained physicists in Iran” during a 1956 visit to the United States, an Iranian delegate to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) replied, “There are about 40 full professors on the faculty of science at the University of Tehran.”12 In an effort to convey the high-priority status the atom issue enjoyed in Tehran, Iran’s IAEA envoy placed Tehran’s nuclear quest in a broader context. He cited the “political pressure, supported by popular demand, which had descended upon the Government and thence the faculty of science, to develop atomic energy for Iran.” This made it “imperative” for him to “return to Iran with the necessary information prerequisite to initiating a reactor project.” During the meeting, the Americans suggested, considering its skilled manpower shortcoming, Tehran opt for the swimming pool type reactor, as the water boiler type (the first reactor the Japanese had decided on and Iran had an eye on) would require an “ample cadre of trained technicians.”13
Following these exploratory fact-finding negotiations with the Americans, in October 1956 the Iranians signaled their willingness to sign the agreement as proposed by the U.S. through their Embassy in Washington. The Shah assumed a high-profile and leading role in Iran’s nuclear initiation enterprise by expressing his desire to personally announce the agreement “on the occasion of the opening of a U.S. Atoms-for-Peace Exhibit” in Tehran.14 On November 1, 1956, the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) recommended to President Eisenhower the approval of the agreement negotiated jointly by the AEC and the Department of State in keeping with the Atomic Energy Act of 1954. The AEC considered the agreement “an important and desirable step in advancing the development of the peaceful uses of atomic energy in Iran” through “cooperation between the two countries with respect to the design, construction and operation of research reactors.”15 Thereupon, having made the determination it “would not constitute an unreasonable risk to the common defense and security,” President Eisenhower authorized the execution of the agreement in a letter to the AEC dated December 22, 1956.16
Dr. Ali Amini, the Iranian Ambassador to the United States, Lewis Strauss, Chairman of the AEC, and William M. Rountree, Assistant Secretary of State, finally signed the agreement on March 5, 1957. The signing was formally announced by the Shah at the opening ceremony of the U.S. Atoms for Peace Exhibit in Tehran on March 6, 1957.17 Almost two years later, in a February 4, 1959 letter to the AEC, the Iranian Embassy in Washington, D.C. informed the Americans of the ratification of the agreement by both houses of the Iranian Parliament.18 The U.S. Government, in turn, notified the Iranians of entry into force of the agreement on April 27, 1959.19 Coming on the heels of the 1955 “Treaty of Amity and Economic Relations and Consular Rights” between Iran and the United States, the 1957 nuclear treaty was concluded in an atmosphere of comity between the two countries and was of tremendous prestige value to Tehran.
The press release to the media on the occasion of the signing of the agreement by the Department of State and the AEC contained forward-looking sentiments on the potential for Iran and the United States to cooperate in the nuclear field. Chief among them was an expression of “hope and expectation” that the initial agreement would lead to “consideration of further cooperation at some future date of an agreement in the field of nuclear power,” a prospect that, as we will see in the following chapters proved more elusive than the Americans and Iranians had initially anticipated as the geopolitical terrain of the Middle East and the Indian Subcontinent underwent tectonic shifts with massive implications for designation of national nuclear programs as proliferation threats.
The 1957 agreement also expressed optimism that it would “enable the Iranians to enhance their own country’s training and experience in nuclear science and engineering for the development of peaceful uses of atomic energy within the framework of the ‘Atoms-for-Peace Program.’” Mention was also made of the Iranian enrollees “attending the reactor technology courses at the International School for Nuclear Science and Engineering operated for the U.S. AEC by the Argonne National Laboratory in cooperation with Pennsylvania State University and North Carolina State College.”20
Notes
