Iran 14

Dit zijn de Bushehr nucleaire reactors. 'In 1974, the German contractor Siemens began construction of two 1,200-1,300 megawatt electric (MWe) pressurized water nuclear reactors near Bushehr. The German program included 2100 German workers and roughly 7000 Iranian workers. The Shah of Iran intended that this program would provide Iran with the infrastructure essential for industrializing the country.' William O. Beeman, a Brown University professor of anthropology and Middle East Studies, is author of "The 'Great Satan' vs. the 'Mad Mullahs': How the United States and Iran Demonize Each Other." Hij schrijft: 'U.S. instigated Iran's nuclear policy in the '70s. The White House staff members who are trying to prevent Iran from developing its own nuclear-energy capacity, and who refuse to take military action against Iran "off the table," have conveniently forgotten that the United States was the midwife to the Iranian nuclear program 30 years ago. Every aspect of Iran's current nuclear development was approved and encouraged by Washington in the 1970s. President Gerald Ford offered Iran a full nuclear cycle in 1976. Moreover, the only Iranian reactor currently about to become operative - the reactor in Bushire (also known as Bushehr) - was started before the Iranian revolution with U.S. approval, and cannot produce weapons-grade plutonium... The American push for Iran's nuclear development was carried out with great enthusiasm. Prof. Ahmad Sadri, chairman of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Lake Forest College in Illinois was a young man in Iran when the United States was touting nuclear-power facilities to the government of the Shah in the 1970s. He remembers seeing the American display at the Tehran International Exhibition, which was "dedicated to the single theme of extolling the virtues of atomic energy and the feasibility of its transfer to Iran." Sadri also remembers an encounter with Octave J. Du Temple, executive director emeritus of the American Nuclear Society, who fondly reminisced about half a dozen trips to Tehran in the early '70s to participate in meetings on "transfer of nuclear technology." Donald Weadon, an international lawyer active in Iran during that period, points out that after 1972 and the oil crisis, the United States was rabidly pursuing investment opportunities in Iran, including selling nuclear-power plants. He writes that "the Iranians were wooed hard with the prospect of nuclear power from trusted U.S.-backed suppliers, with the prospect of the reservation of significant revenues from oil exports for foreign and domestic investment." American dissimulation on this point reveals some interesting motives on Washington's part. Iran under the Shah was as much of a threat to its neighbors - including Iraq - as it might be said to be today; its nuclear ambitions then could have been inflated and denigrated in exactly the same way that they are being inflated and denigrated today. But the United States was blissfully unconcerned. The big difference today is that Iran is now perceived to be a threat to Israel, and this fuels much of the threat of military action.' Lees verder: http://www.sacbee.com/24hour/opinions/story/3178566p-11887465c.html