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Article Excerpt
Due to its geopolitical prominence, Iran has been the focus of great-power policies during the entire course of modern history. The Russian-British rivalry over Iran that began in the mid-1800's lasted a century. With the end of World War II, Britain's role in the region diminished, and the vacuum was filled by the United States.
Iran gained full sovereignty over its territory by 1947. Two major factors shaped U.S. policy on Iran in the post-war period. First, Iran's geopolitical significance made it even more important for the United States to contain the USSR on its southern flank. (1) Second, Iran possessed rich oil and gas resources. (2) In order to control the flow of this strategic commodity to Western economies and military forces, the United States determined to maintain "friendly" regimes in Iran. Prime Minister Mohammad Mossaddeq, who nationalized the country's petroleum reserves in 1951, was allegedly toppled by the CIA. (3) With Shah Reza Pahlavi's return in 1953, Iran regained its status as the United States' number one ally in the Middle East. Under American protection, Iran became a regional power in the period leading up to the Islamic revolution in 1979. With the Islamic revolution, the United States lost its closest ally in the region. What made this even more dramatic was the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the same year. Suddenly, the United States lost its two most important intelligence areas against the USSR, faced the significant risk of disruption of the oil supply from the region, and faced the serious strategic threat of a destabilization in the region. Iraq perceived the situation as a great opportunity to regain the territories ceded to Iran in 1974. With U.S. support, Iraq attacked Iran in September 1980. The Iran-Iraq War ended in 1988, after ruining both countries. (4) In the following period, two important events shaped the course of regional politics: first, Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990, and the gulf war that followed, and, two, the fall of the USSR the next year.
The new situation offered both risks and opportunities for Iran. On the one hand, Iran aimed to increase its control of the newly independent republics in Central Asia by using religion as a tool of influence. On the other hand, Washington supported Turkey's greater role in the region and excluded Iran from oil and gas projects. In return, Iran approached Russia and Armenia for support on regional matters in the post-Cold War period. Iran's support for radical groups in the Middle East, its sabotage of the Middle East peace process, its establishment of a partnership with Syria, and its demonization of Israel were other factors that contributed to tense relations with United States. (5) In this context, Washington continued to formulate policies, such as "dual containment" to contain Iran and thwart the military and political influence of both Iran and Iraq. (6)
The September 11, 2001, attacks and subsequent shifts in American foreign policy brought another dimension to U.S.-Iranian relations. Although the overthrow of the Taliban regime in 2002 and Saddam Hussein in 2003 eliminated the Iranian regime's two major regional rivals--Afghanistan and Iraq, respectively--it also caused the country to be encircled by U.S. forces on the east, west and north. In addition, energy and military agreements between the United States and the Central Asian republics made Iran feel even more contained. With the exposure of Iran's secret nuclear program in 2002, relations between the two countries deteriorated greatly. Some experts believe the threat posed by the United States caused Tehran to secretly accelerate its nuclear program.
EARLY HISTORY
Iran's pursuit of a nuclear capability goes as far back as the 1960s. Ironically, the United States was the first country to help Iran gain nuclear technology. It supplied a five-megawatt research reactor to Iran that began operation in 1967. Iran signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1968 and ratified it in 1970. (7)
The Iranian nuclear program was ambitious from the beginning. Oil prices soared, especially after the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, allowing the Iranian government to invest more in nuclear-energy development. Under Shah Muhammed Pahlavi's administration, the Iranian government made deals with German and French contractors. Germany's Kraftwerk Union (a subsidiary of Siemens) agreed to build two 1,200-megawatt nuclear reactors at Bushehr, and a French company agreed to supply two 900-megawatt reactors. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) also signed a contract with the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) to train the first cadre of Iranian nuclear scientists in 1975. Iran's domestic nuclear cycle included an advanced nuclear research center and the development of uranium mining and ore processing. (8)
The United States also supported Iran's plans to build a nuclear-energy capacity. According to declassified confidential U.S. government documents, (9) the shah's government planned to purchase eight nuclear reactors from the United States for electricity generation purposes. In July 1978, only seven months before the Islamic revolution, the final draft of the U.S.-Iranian Nuclear Energy Agreement was signed. This agreement was designed to facilitate Iranian-American nuclear cooperation, including the purchase of equipment and material from the United States and help in the search for uranium deposits. The political upheaval preceding and following the revolution halted the Iranian nuclear program. By 1979, one nuclear reactor, Bushehr 1, was 90 percent complete, with 60 percent of its equipment installed; Bushehr 2 was 50 percent complete. The first prime minister after the revolution, Mehdi Bazargan, concluded that Iran did not need nuclear energy and discontinued the project. (10)
The second factor that prevented Iran from developing a nuclear capacity earlier was the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-88. Iraq bombed Iran's nuclear reactors and research centers, hitting the two reactors under construction in Bushehr six times. With the end of the war, Iran's need for electricity significantly expanded. According to the official Iranian line, this led President Hashemi Rafsanjani's government to review its policy and decide to continue with the quest for nuclear-energy projects. The Iranian government sought international technical assistance and collaboration to complete the nuclear facilities from Germany, Argentina, Spain, the Czech Republic, Italy and Poland. (11) However, these attempts were prevented by the United States as a part of the dual-containment policy.
In 1995,...
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