The Iranian Nuclear Dispute: Origins and Current Options. By Hossein Mousavian After a pause of more than a year, the seven countries that are holding talks on Iran’s nuclear program resumed their discussions in April, with subsequent meetings in May and June. As the countries—Iran and the P5+1 (China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States)—prepare for their next meetings, efforts to find pathways to a resolution need to take into account the origins of Iran’s nuclear program and the sources of the ongoing dispute over it.
Western countries have major concerns about the nature of Iran’s nuclear program as they try to deduce whether it is a peaceful energy program or is designed to build nuclear weapons someday. This article addresses a different concern: whether pressure from the West has resulted in the Iranians accelerating and expanding their nuclear activity and capability. The history of Iran’s nuclear program suggests that the West is inadvertently pushing Iran toward nuclear weapons. Nuclear aid to the shah. "Iran Will Require Assurances" Hossein Mousavian has served as visiting research scholar at Princeton University’s Program on Science and Global Security from 2009 to the present.
Prior to this position, he held numerous positions in the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, including director-general of its West Europe department and ambassador to Germany from 1990 to 1997. Ambassador Mousavian was also head of the Foreign Relations Committee of the Supreme National Security Council of Iran during both terms of Mohammad Khatami’s presidency (1997-2005). In this capacity, he served as spokesman of the Iranian nuclear negotiations team from 2003 to 2005.
When that team was replaced following the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Mousavian served for two years (2005-2007) as foreign policy adviser to Ali Larijani, who was secretary of the Supreme National Security Council and the chief nuclear negotiator in the Ahmadinejad administration. What are the necessary elements of a viable step-by-step process, in your view? The Iranian Nuclear Crisis: A Memoir.
Israel: No Iranian Nuclear Weapons Program; Barak: Any decision to Strike Iran "Far off." As Gen.
Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, arrived in Israel Thursday, the left-leaning Haaretz newspaper dropped its own atomic bombshell. Israeli intelligence agencies have worked up an intelligence assessment that Iran has not yet decided whether to begin a military program to construct a nuclear warhead. Put in other words, Mossad believes that there is no current Iranian nuclear weapons program. Haaretz writes: “The intelligence assessment Israeli officials will present later this week to Dempsey indicates that Iran has not yet decided whether to make a nuclear bomb.
This is the same conclusion to which the 16 US intelligence agencies have come in 2007 and 2010. Haaretz says that Israeli Minister of Defense Ehud Barak gave an interview with the Army radio, in which he come to another surprising conclusion. “We haven’t made any decision to do this . . . I should think this assertion is pretty clear. Barak told them, “I wouldn’t want to provide any estimates.