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Analytic Note: We noted in the article that, according to Akbar Etemad, the founder of the Iranian nuclear program under the Shah, the Islamic Republic resumed the program under Rafsanjani’s presidency, which began in the summer of 1989. However, other accounts of Iran’s nuclear efforts indicate that it was during the war and Khamenei’s, not Rafsanjani’s, presidency, that Tehran resumed the program. Available sources suggest that the latter account is more likely to be accurate. We did not discuss this point in the article, but wanted to address it here and to note that, despite the discrepancy, Etemad’s insights remain very valuable given his involvement in Iran’s nuclear program. The following excerpt is the full section on that issue from the interview with him conducted over the phone on June 10, 2014, followed by the Iran’s Primer’s account of Iran’s nuclear progress in the mid-1980s.
Source Excerpt 1: Q: So, you started working on the nuclear program and then the revolution happened and changed everything. At first, the revolutionaries decided to halt the nuclear program because they thought it was yet another western imposition. But then, the program was resumed in the 1980s. At that point, you were no longer formally involved in the program, but did you have any contact with decision-makers at that point? Can you describe what was going on in Tehran, what the new leadership was thinking about the nuclear program?
A: The first few years, the AEOI was destroyed. The theory, at that point, like many other things at that time, was that the United States had imposed nuclear energy on us. This was until Rafsanjani’s presidency. He was the one who made the decision to resume the program. I was in France. For years, they wanted to negotiate with me to go back. But I didn’t want to. I didn’t think working in Iran would be possible. I didn’t go. The first person they picked for the organization was someone who didn’t even know anything about the atom. They went and bought centrifuges from Pakistan, and tried to enrich Uranium.
Source Excerpt 2: Q: Iran obviously claims that it’s never gone after nuclear weapons, just energy. Based on the communications you had with them at the time, what is your assessment of that?
A: From the beginning, they wanted to have all the options. And they were right. I’ll tell you why I say this. The reason is that they only went after enrichment. Nothing else, just enrichment.
Source Excerpt 3: According to the Iran Primer’s account, however, A 2009 internal IAEA working document reports that in April 1984, then President Ali Khamenei announced to top Iranian officials that Khomeini had decided to launch a nuclear weapons program as the only way to secure the Islamic Revolution from the schemes of its enemies, especially the United States and Israel.
Iran began developing a gas centrifuge program in 1985, according to IAEA reports but realized that it needed foreign assistance to make progress on centrifuges. Iranians visited potential suppliers abroad in order to acquire and learn how to operate key centrifuge equipment. In 1987, Iran acquired key components from the A.Q. Khan network, a rogue nuclear supply network operating out of Pakistan’s state-run nuclear weapons program. The components included:
• A starter kit for a gas centrifuge plant
• A set of technical drawings for a P-1 (Pakistani) centrifuge
• Samples of centrifuge components
• And instructions for enriching uranium to weapon-grade levels. (Weapon-grade uranium is the most desirable highly enriched uranium for fission nuclear weapons and is over 90 percent enriched.)
Full Citation: David Albright and Andrea Stricker, “Iran Nuclear Program,” The Iran Primer (2010/ Updated in 2015), http://iranprimer.usip.org/resource/irans-nuclear-program
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