ABSTRACT
These proliferation fears were only ratcheted up by the Shah’s carefully calculated insistence in the following years that Iran’s policy of not harboring atomic weapons ambitions emanated from hardheaded pragmatic calculations and had little to do with Tehran’s contractual non-proliferation commitments under the NPT. HIM’s most lucidly articulated position on the issue came during an interview with the BBC’s Panorama on December 13, 1976. Pressed about Iran’s future military ambitions, the Shah expressed optimism that Tehran would be the world’s most formidable non-atomic power within fi ve years. The Shahanshah expressed his rationale for this position in the most realistic terms:
I am not thinking of this, because I could never be a fi rst-class nuclear power. I could never be a match. Because the only nuclear power around us with which we could eventually have a clash is the Soviet Union, and what is the use of a few silly little [atomic] bombs against those 50-megaton weapons? I mean it is not an intelligent policy. 2
In another interview with French Radio in June 1977, the Shah tied Iran’s quest for non-nuclear supremacy to a well-thought-out Iranian quest to extract extended deterrence, by default, from the Western bloc:
My regular army should become so strong that a country with bad designs against us would be obliged to use nuclear weapons to beat us. By using nuclear weapons it would begin a world war, which I believe everyone is trying to avoid. 3
The Shah expressed sentiments along the same lines to his chief civilian
Director pressed him on whether Iran should attain a nuclear weapons contingency option. Considering “the geopolitical position of Iran,” and its “vital need for the free fl ow of oil,” the Monarch stated, “the military nuclear option would create tensions and upset our foreign policy.” The Shah added, however, that the “only factor that may bring about a dramatic change and weaken our position is the acquisition of nuclear weapons by one of the countries in the region.” 4
Taken at face value, the sentiments expressed by the Monarch raise the allimportant question of how could one satisfactorily explain Iran’s seemingly uncompromising attitude towards the Americans on the issue of nuclear fuel cycle? Related to this, one wonders whether it was conceivable, in the Shah’s mind, for Iran to shoulder the responsibility of safeguarding peace and stability in the Middle East, as underscored by the Nixon Doctrine, without possessing a nuclear capability, especially at a time Israel and India had already gone nuclear. In other words, wouldn’t a non-nuclear gendarme in a nuclearized strategic environment constitute a contradiction in terms?
