Iran's Nukes

I n one of man jaw-dropping reminders in America's War for the Greater Middle East , Andrew Bacevich notes the origin of Iran's nuclear programs, so much and so controversially in the news of late:

During Nixon's Presidency, while the Shah ruled Iran, “U.S. arms exports to Iran sky-rocketed. Between 1950 and 1972 the United States had provided Iran with approximately $1.5 billion of weapons, the costs largely covered by grant aid. By 1973 Tehran had become a paying customer. That year alone, it agreed to purchase U.S. arms to the tune of more than $2 billion. Over the next six years, Iran contracted to buy over $19 billion in weapons. . . . By 1978, the now-besieged Iranian monarch presented Washington with a shopping list requesting an additional $12 billion in military hardware. The Shah did not get everything he requested—just almost everything. Indeed, after considerable wrangling, the United States even agreed to provide Iran with nuclear reactors, the Shah offering personal—if suspect—assurances that Iran had no intention of acquiring nuclear weapons. This was the precursor to the Iranian nuclear program destined in the twenty-first century to become a source of such controversy and concern” (14).

Not only did the US kick-start the nuclear program we now want to shut down. We also send tens of thousands of Americans, military and civilian defense contractors, to Iran. Some of them, one recalls, ended up as hostages.