Iran is not that unlikely a partner for the United States.
I would not be surprised if the US switches to the winnig side, once GW Bush is gone. Prior to 9/11, there were some discussions in the Administration about a rapproachment with Iran.
Wikipedia has some history - Google "Wikipedia Nuclear program of Iran"
an excerpt -
Note the entire reprocessing cycle, including plutonium and enriched uranium....also note taht Henry Kissinger, Cheney, Wolfowitz, and Rumsfeld were advocates....
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U.S.-Iran nuclear co-operation in the 1950s and 60s
The foundations for Iran's nuclear programme were laid during the Cold War, in the late 1950s under auspices of the U.S. within the framework of bilateral agreements between the U.S. and Iran. A civil nuclear co-operation programme was signed as soon as 1957 with the U.S. under the Atoms for Peace program. The Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was ruling Iran at that time, and after Mohammed Mossadegh's 1953 overthrow supported by the CIA, the regime appeared sufficiently stable and friendly to the West that nuclear proliferation would not become a threat.
In 1959 the Tehran Nuclear Research Center (TNRC) was established, run by the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI). The TNRC was equipped with a U.S.-supplied 5-megawatt nuclear research reactor, operational from 1967 and fuelled with highly enriched uranium.[2] Iran signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1968 and ratified it in 1970. With the establishment of Iran's atomic agency and the NPT in place, plans were drawn by the Shah Mohammad Pahlavi to construct up to 23 nuclear power stations across the country together with the USA by the year 2000.
[edit] U.S.-Iran nuclear co-operation in the 1970s
In March 1974, the Shah envisioned a time when the world's oil supply would run out, and declared, "Petroleum is a noble material, much too valuable to burn... We envision producing, as soon as possible, 23 000 megawatts of electricity using nuclear plants."[3] Bushehr would be the first plant, and would supply energy to the inland city of Shiraz. In 1975, the Bonn firm Kraftwerk Union AG, a joint venture of Siemens AG and AEG Telefunken, signed a contract worth $4 to $6 billion to build the pressurized water reactor nuclear power plant. Construction of the two 1,196 MWe nuclear generating units was subcontracted to ThyssenKrupp, and was to have been completed in 1981.
By 1975 U.S. Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, had signed National Security Decision Memorandum 292, titled "U.S.-Iran Nuclear Co-operation," which laid out the details of the sale of nuclear energy equipment to Iran projected to bring U.S. corporations more than $6 billion in revenue. At the time, Iran was pumping as much as 6 million barrels (950,000 m³) of oil a day, compared with about 4 million barrels (640,000 m³) daily today.
President Gerald Ford signed a directive in 1976 offering Tehran the opportunity to buy and operate a U.S.-built reprocessing facility for extracting plutonium from nuclear reactor fuel. The deal was for a complete "nuclear fuel cycle", with all the proliferation risks that would entail. The Ford strategy paper said the "introduction of nuclear power will both provide for the growing needs of Iran's economy and free remaining oil reserves for export or conversion to petrochemicals."[4]
President Ford's team endorsed Iranian plans to build a massive nuclear energy industry, but also worked hard to complete a multi-billion-dollar deal that would have given Tehran control of large quantities of plutonium and enriched uranium -- the two pathways to a nuclear bomb. Iran, a U.S. ally then, had deep pockets and close ties to Washington. U.S. companies, including Westinghouse and General Electric, scrambled to do business there.
In an interview for a newspaper article on March 27, 2005, Henry Kissinger said, 'I don't think the issue of proliferation came up'.[4]
Until the change of administration in 1977, Dick Cheney, U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz, some of the strongest opponents of Iran's nuclear programme today, were all heavily involved in promoting an Iranian nuclear programme that could extract plutonium from nuclear reactor fuel for use in nuclear weapons.[5] In fairness, it must be noted that Iran was an ally of the United States at the time.
[edit] After the 1979 Revolution
After the 1979 Revolution, Iran informed the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) of its plans to restart its nuclear programme using indigenously-made nuclear fuel, and in 1983 the IAEA even planned to provide assistance to Iran under its Technical Assistance Programme to produce enriched uranium. An IAEA report stated clearly that its aim was to “contribute to the formation of local expertise and manpower needed to sustain an ambitious programme in the field of nuclear power reactor technology and fuel cycle technology”. However, the IAEA was forced to terminate the programme under U.S. pressure.[6] The revolution was a turning point in terms of foreign co-operation on nuclear technology. |
