Iran's Nuclear Option

Tehran's Quest for the Atom Bomb

Al J. Venter

• Publisher: Casemate
• Year: 2005
• ISBN:
  9781612000862
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

"The most systematic exposition to date about Iran's nuclear program and its role in world affairs" ( Middle East Quarterly ). Since the Islamic Republic of Iran admitted that it was secretly producing highly enriched, weapons-grade uranium, nations have struggled to react appropriately. For the first time, and in full detail, this book explains exactly what the Europeans and United Nations have been trying to forestall. Iran could shortly have the ability to strike its immediate Middle Eastern neighbors—and more distant nations—with nuclear weapons. With the size to dominate its region, Iran also has an avowed mission to export its theocratic principles, and in recent decades, has been a notorious supporter of terrorist organizations. Its parallel development of atomic bombs represents the greatest threat to the balance of world power we've seen in the new millennium. Here, defense expert Al Venter reveals the extent to which Iran's weapons program has developed and the clandestine manner in which its nuclear technology has been acquired. He demonstrates how Tehran has violated the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and details the involvement of several countries shown by the IAEA to have trafficked in illegal nuclear materials. He proves, for the first time, a direct link between the now-defunct South African apartheid regime's nuclear program and Tehran's current nuclear ambitions. Venter digs deep into subjects such as Iran's fervor on behalf of Shiite Islam, its missile program—developed alongside its nuclear one—and the role of the Pasdaran, the Revolutionary Guards, whose tentacles have spread throughout the Middle East and increasingly farther afield. While noting Tehran's support of terrorist groups such as Hezbollah, Venter follows closely how the Persian homeland itself has progressed toward a strategic nuclear capability that would make recent terrorist attacks look obsolete. Iran's Nuclear Option is essential reading for anyone with an interest in global security, the perilous volatility of the Middle East, and America's options, should it be willing and able to counter the threat while time remains.

PART I

THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF IRAN

1

IRAN: ITS PEOPLE AND GOVERNMENT

“The Iranian regime is not easy to understand. There is a gap between its rhetoric and its actions; between its sense of grievance and its inflammatory behavior; and between its ideological and national interests. Nor are its actions consistent.”

Paula deSutter: Center for Counterproliferation Research, National Defense University, Washington DC

Iran is a country of contrasts. Influenced to some extent by Western culture–and then only superficially–its rule by religious law is both uncompromising and tenacious. While possessing seven percent of the world’s oil reserves, many of its people practice a lifestyle indistinguishable from that of their medieval forebears. This has resulted in huge extremes between rich and poor, in spite of a reasonably healthy economy. These contrasts might be easily discerned in pictures of a shepherd boy and his flock of goats passing a modern oil rig, or in headlines from December 2003 when news of Iran’s nuclear program vied with scenes from the destitute ancient city of Bam, whose mud-brick structures had been collapsed by an earthquake.

Iran’s almost seventy million people have a long history, during the course of which a great Persian civilization evolved. Over millennia it formed a number of empires that sometimes stretched well beyond its borders. In this period, the country created sophisticated institutions, many of which still continue to influence its Islamic regime today. Despite the turmoil surrounding the establishment of its revolutionary government, Iran’s development has shown remarkable resilience.

Major trends affecting the Islamic Republic throughout much of its history have been a tradition of monarchical government, represented in the latter part of the twentieth century by Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, the dominant role of the Shi’ites, Islamic clergy, personified by the Ayatollah Sayyid Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini and those who succeeded him, and, since the late 19th century, pressure for Westernization or modernization.

Iran has been distinguished for having regimes that not only conquered neighboring areas but also devised ingenious institutions. The Achaemenids (550–330 B.C.) who ruled the first Iranian world empire–which stretched from the Aegean coast of Asia Minor to Afghanistan, as well as south to Egypt–created the magnificent structures at Persepolis, the remains of which still exist.

The Achaemenids also inaugurated a vast network of roads, a legal code, coinage, a comprehensive administrative system that allowed some local autonomy, and wide-ranging commerce. Iran influenced its conquerors too. Following its conquest of Iran, the Muslim Umayyad Empire (AD 661–750) adopted many Iranian institutions, such as Iran’s administrative and monetary systems. The country was ravaged in the 13th century by the Mongol invasions, though the intruders from the northern steppe gradually became influenced by the more advanced civilization of their subjects. Tamerlane, the famous Mongol ruler (r. 1381–1405), made use of Iranian administrators in governing his farflung territories.

Despite their primarily tribal origin for most of the country’s history, the people of Iran have known only monarchical government, often of an absolutist type. For example, the Sassanids who ruled Iran for four centuries, beginning in AD 224, revived the Achaemenid term shahanshah (king of kings) for their ruler and considered him the “shadow of God on earth.”

This concept was again revived in the late 18th century by the Qajar monarchy, which remained in power until Reza Khan, a military commander, had himself crowned as Reza Shah Pahlavi in 1926. Many considered Reza Shah’s son, Mohammad Reza Shah, to be an absolutist ruler in his later days, especially because of his use of the internal security force SAVAK (Sazman-e Ettelaat va Amniyat-e Keshvar) to repress domestic opposition.

After the Muslim conquest, Iran was strongly influenced by Islam and, specifically, the political role exercised by the Shi’ite clergy. Such influence was established under the indigenous dynastic reign of the Safavids (1501–1722), who belonged to a Sufi religious order and made Shi’ite Islam the official religion of Iran, undertaking a major conversion campaign of Iranian Muslims. The precedent was revived in 1979 in a more thorough going theocratic fashion by Ayatollah Khomeini.

In contrast to this traditional element in Iranian history has been the pressure toward Westernization that began in the late 19th century. Such pressures initially came from Britain, which sought to increase its commercial relations with Iran by promoting modernization of Iran’s infrastructure and liberalization of its trade. British prodding had little effect, however, until Iranian domestic reaction to the growing corruption of the Qajar monarchy led to a constitutional revolution in 1905–1906. This revolution resulted in an elected parliament, or Majlis, a cabinet approved by the Majlis as well as a constitution guaranteeing certain personal freedoms of citizens.

Within less than twenty years, the program of Reza Shah stressed measures designed to reduce the powers of both tribal and religious leaders and to bring about economic development and legal and educational reforms along Western lines. Mohammad Reza Shah, like his father, promoted such Westernization and largely ignored the traditional role in Iranian society of conservative Shi’ite religious leaders.

He strengthened the military by considerably expanding its role in internal security matters to counteract the domestic opposition that arose after Mohammad Mossadeq’s prime ministership. In addition, the Shah stressed defense against external enemies because he felt threatened by the Soviet Union, which had occupied Iranian territory during and after World War II.

To counter such a threat, the Shah sought American military assistance in the form of advisory personnel and sophisticated weaponry. He also harshly repressed the communist Tudeh Party and other dissident groups such as the Islamic extremist Mojahedin (Mojahedin-e Khalq, or People’s Struggle) and Fadayan (Cherikha-ye Fadayan-e Khalq, or People’s Guerrillas) organizations.

Meanwhile, the Shah promoted Iran’s economic development by implementing a series of seven- and five-year economic plans, the first of which was launched in 1948. The programs emphasized the creation of the necessary infrastructure and the establishment of capitalintensive industry, initially making use of Iran’s enormous oil revenues but seeking in the end to diversify the country’s economy by expanding heavy industry. In the 1960s the Shah also paid attention to land reform, but the redistribution of land to peasants was slow, and in many instances the amount of land allocated to individual farmers was inadequate for economically viable agricultural production.

Moreover, Iran experienced high inflation as a result of the Shah’s huge foreign arms purchases and his unduly rapid attempts at industrial modernization. Members of the bazaar, or small merchant class, benefited unevenly from these programs and gained less proportionately than the Shah’s Westernizing elite. This lack of benefit from reforms was also true of the inhabitants of most small villages, who remained without electricity, running water, or paved roads.

Many factors contributed to the fall of the Shah. Observers most often cite such factors as concern over growing Western influences and secularization, the neglect of religious leaders, the repression of potential dissidents and of the Tudeh Party, and the failure of the bazaar class to achieve significant benefits from the Shah’s economic development programs.

Following a brief secular provisional government after the Shah was overthrown in 1979, clerical forces loyal to Ayatollah Khomeini took control and launched a far-reaching Islamic revolution.

In Khomeini’s revolutionary regime, the Ayatollah himself acted as policy guide and ultimate decision maker in his role as the pious jurist, or faqih, in accordance with the doctrine of velayat-e faqih, under which religious scholars guided the community of believers. Iran–officially renamed the Islamic Republic of Iran–became a theocratic state with its rulers representing God in governing a Muslim people, something not attempted previously even by the twelve Shi’ite Imams.

The constitution of 1979 designated Khomeini as the faqih for life. Other than appointing Khomeini faqih in perpetuity, the revolutionary constitution provided for political institutions to implement the legislative aspects of the government. An elected legislative assembly, the Majlis, charged with approving legislation devised by the executive, was dominated by Muslim religious leaders.

The constitution also created the Council of Guardians to ensure that laws passed by the Majlis conformed with Islam. In practice, the Council of Guardians has been conservative about economic legislation, blocking Majlis measures on land reform, for example.

To overcome this blocking of legislation, the Ayatollah Khomeini in January 1988 issued a ruling in which he claimed that the Islamic state had the same powers as the Prophet Mohammed, who was God’s vice regent. Therefore, the state could set aside the Qur’an with regard to legislation if it were for the good of the community, he declared.

But conditions within society were still restrictive. As Whit Mason tells in his article¹ “Iran’s Simmering Discontent,” President Mohammed Khatami, from the start, felt compelled to make the expansion of women’s rights a pillar of his program of liberalization. Mason grants that since his election in 1997, women have made considerable gains, far more than in other Mideastern Muslim countries, notably Saudi Arabia.

“Out of the two hundred and seventy-three members of Iran’s Majlis, or parliament,” Mason wrote, “eleven are female. Khatami has promoted several women to top positions in the government, and some sixty percent of places in universities go to females.

“But like much of the rest of his program, many of Khatami’s efforts on behalf of women have been thwarted by hard-line conservatives. While women can get away with pushing their scarves farther back on their heads and can wear makeup and maybe even hold hands with their boyfriends in upscale neighborhoods without being harassed by the morals police, a woman’s testimony in court still carries only half the weight of a man’s. The ‘blood money’ paid to avoid the death penalty for causing the death of woman is only half that for the killing of a man; and family law accords all advantages in divorce and child custody to men. The Council of Guardians has blocked all efforts to reform the law in these instances.”²

Other than through legislative institutions, political expression occurred in principle through political parties. However, the dominant political faction, the largely clergyled Islamic Republican Party, established in early 1979, was dissolved in 1987 because it had become unmanageable. Subsequently, only one legally recognized political party, the Iran Freedom Movement (Nehzat-e Azadi-yi Iran), which had been established by former Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan, operated in Iran.

Estimates of the number of persons opposed to the government or in prison varied. Officially, the latter number was given as nine thousand, but the anti-government Mojahedin maintained that a hundred and forty thousand was a more realistic figure. In 1988 opposition parties existed in exile, primarily in Western Europe, and included ethnic Kurdish movements and the Mojahedin Islamic extremists, as well as Marxists and monarchists. The Mojahedin also created the Iranian National Army of Liberation, which operated out of northern Iraq against the Khomeini regime.

After the Ayatollah’s government came to power, it initially executed or imprisoned many members of the Shah’s regime, including officers of the various armed services. But following the outbreak of the war with Iraq in 1980, substantial numbers of military men were released from prison to provide essential leadership on the battlefield or in the air war.

As early as June 1979, a counterforce to the regular military was created in the form of the Pasdaran (Pasdaran-e Enghelab-e Islami, or Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or as commonly known in the West, Revolutionary Guards), an organization charged with safeguarding the Revolution. The Pasdaran became a significant military force in its own right and was overseen by a cabinet-level minister.

By 1988 the eight-year-old war with Iraq had evolved through various stages of strategy and tactics. Because Iran’s population was approximately three times that of Iraq’s, Iran’s military manpower pool was vastly superior. Capitalizing on this advantage, in the early stages of the war, Iran engaged extensively in “human-wave” assaults against Iraqi positions, frequently using youths in their early teens.

This war strategy proved extremely costly to Iran in terms of human casualties; it was estimated that between three and four hundred thousand Iranians had been killed by 1987, and estimated loss of matériel was also large. The hostilities included a tanker war in the Persian Gulf and the mining of the Gulf by Iran, events that led to the involvement of the United States and other Western nations, which sought to protect their shipping and safeguard their strategic, economic, and political interests in the area. (See Chapter 2.)

Furthermore, a “war of the cities” was inaugurated in 1985, with each side bombarding the other’s urban centers with missiles. Iran expended considerable effort in developing a domestic arms industry capable of manufacturing or modifying weapons and war matériel obtained from outside sources.

During this period Iran’s principal arms supplier was China, from which it acquired Silkworm HY-2 surface-to-surface missiles, among other weapons systems. Iran also obtained missiles from the Soviet Union, which attempted to maintain amicable relations with both sides in the Iran-Iraq War. In addition, in the ground war, which initially had favored Iraq but then turned strongly in Iran’s favor, in April 1988 Iraq succeeded in regaining the Faw Peninsula. Iraq thus recovered a significant part of the territory it had lost earlier to Iran.

The war severely strained Iran’s economy by depleting its foreign exchange reserves and causing a balance of payments deficit. It also redirected manpower that would otherwise have been engaged in agriculture and industry.

By 1987 Iran’s overall war costs were calculated at approximately US$350 billion. Moreover, wartime damage to urban centers in western Iran, such as Abadan, Ahvaz, Dezful, and Khorramshahr, caused refugees to flood into Tehran and other cities, further aggravating the housing shortage. The destruction of petroleum producing, processing, an...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Foreword by Stephen Tanner
• Introduction
• PART I: THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF IRAN
• PART II: IRAN'S NUCLEAR PURSUITS
• PART III: IRAN'S TROUBLED ROLE IN WORLD AFFAIRS
• Appendix A The Russia-Iran Nuclear Connection
• Appendix B IAEA Implementation of the NPT Safeguards Agreement in the Islamic Republic of Iran
• Appendix C Iran's Economy and Oil and Gas Resources
• Appendix D How Saddam Hussein Almost Built His Bomb
• Appendix E Close-Quarter Observations: The South African Nuclear Weapons Program
• Appendix F Iran's Missiles: Devils in the Detail by Charles P. Vick
• Appendix G Pasdaran's Protegé: Hizbollah
• Acronyms, Technical, Arabic, and Persian Words and Phrases
• Acknowledgments
• Notes