Iran’s Nuclear Program was A Child Of Washington in the First Place

[unhappycamper]

http://www.juancole.com/2015/07/nuclear-program-washington.html



U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower (right) meets with Iran’s Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi in 1954.

Iran’s Nuclear Program was A Child Of Washington in the First Place
By contributors | Jul. 6, 2015
By Tony Wesolowsky | (RFE/RL) | – –

The start of Iran’s nuclear program can arguably be pegged to December 8, 1953.

It was on that date that U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower delivered what was later dubbed his Atoms For Peace speech to the United Nations General Assembly.

Eisenhower used the occasion to sell a wary world on the positives of nuclear power and to spell out a visionary plan to use it “to provide abundant electrical energy in the power-starved areas of the world.”

Under the plan, Eisenhower said the United States would provide the necessary technology and expertise to nations eager to create civilian nuclear programs.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran#Dynasties_.281501.E2.80.931979.29

In 1951 Mohammad Mosaddegh was elected prime minister. He became enormously popular in Iran after he nationalized Iran's petroleum industry and oil reserves. He was deposed in the 1953 Iranian coup d'état, an Anglo-American covert operation that marked the first time the US had overthrown a foreign government during the Cold War.[123]

After the coup, the Shah became increasingly autocratic and Sultanistic, and Iran entered a phase of decades long very close relations with the United States, and the rest of the West.[124] While the Shah increasingly Westernized and modernized Iran and retained it a fully secular state,[30] arbitrary arrests and torture by his secret police, SAVAK, were used to crush all forms of political opposition. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini became an active critic of the Shah's White Revolution and publicly denounced the government. Khomeini was arrested and imprisoned for 18 months. After his release in 1964, Khomeini publicly criticized the United States government. The Shah sent him into exile. He went first to Turkey, then to Iraq and finally to France.

Due to the 1973 spike in oil prices Iran’s economy was flooded with foreign currency which caused inflation. By 1974 Iran’s economy was experiencing double digit inflation and despite many large projects to modernize the country corruption was rampant and caused large amounts of waste. By 1975 and 1976 an economic recession led to increased unemployment, especially among millions of young men who had migrated to Iran’s cities looking for construction jobs during the boom years of the early 1970s. By 1977 many of these men opposed the shah’s regime and began to organize and join protests against it.[125]

[leveymg]

1. Thank G.H.W. Bush for the AQ Khan network that proliferated '76-'01

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/leveymg/280

The Saudi Prince's Secret: Bush, Sr. Sold-Out CIA to Build Pakistan A-Bomb
Posted by leveymg in General Discussion (1/22-2007 thru 12/14/2010)
Mon Jul 09th 2007, 10:21 AM
Lost in all the hullabaloo over Dubya's commutation of the jail sentence handed former White House aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby was this little gem of a news item from Pakistan:

Pakistan eases curbs on atomic scientist
By MUNIR AHMAD, Associated Press Writer <i>Mon Jul 2, 1:49 PM ET
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - A.Q. Khan, the scientist who became a national hero for developing Pakistan's atomic bomb and went on to sell nuclear secrets abroad, can leave house arrest to meet with friends and relatives, officials said Monday.

Strange coincidence? Perhaps. But, not unrelated. For it’s a small, small world in spookdom.

A strange coincidence, indeed.

***

A large part of Valerie Plame’s job at CIA was to track the illicit trade in nuclear technologies peddled by Dr. Khan’s network. Khan’s Nuclear Walmart made it very easy for customers to buy what they needed to start home bomb-making. Khan’s one-stop shop for WMDs made it just as easy for the CIA to keep track of nuclear programs in at least half-dozen unfriendly countries, and a variety of criminal organizations in a dozen more that supplied money and know-how. When Khan’s operation was publicized on June 1, 2001 by a Bush Administration official, that long-standing CIA counter-proliferation program was also effectively ended. That official was Richard Armitage, who is also said to be the first to out Plame, a key manager at CIA Counter-Proliferation.

There was never any chance that AQ Khan or Libby would do hard time - they were both "made men" who know too much.

A.Q. Khan



Khan was a founding member of the CIA and ISI partnership, going back to the mid-1970s, when he first started stealing U-235 enrichment technologies from the nuclear lab where he worked in the Netherlands. According to a BBC interview with the former Dutch PM, Ruud Lubbers, the Dutch police wanted to arrest A.Q. as early as 1975, but the CIA interceded to prevent Khan's arrest and enforcement of an INTERPOL warrant after he fled back the following year to Pakistan. During the six year period the warrant was on the books, Khan travelled freely to dozens of countries pursuing his global nuclear proliferation mission. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4135998.... ; http://www.hindu.com/2005/08/10/stories/20...

The CIA's involvement and protection of Khan goes back years before the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, so the Cold War rationale offered for the Agency's quarter-century long involvement with the Pakistan's nuclear program begins to break down under scrutiny. It wasn't just simply a matter of doing a favor in exchange for the secret war in Afghanistan against Soviet invaders. Somebody wanted Pakistan to build atomic bombs, and the CIA was instrumental in allowing that to happen, as it was in the later spread of nuclear technologies to other countries.

The question is, why?

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