ABSTRACT
Although discredited by Washington, the Jane’s story furnished a foretaste of what would become Washington’s mainstream approach towards Iran’s nuclear status as an NPT member state. The U.S. State Department, for example, cited the Iranian Government’s “previous actions” as circumstantial evidence evincing Tehran’s pledge to abide by its “international commitments” was less than ironclad. The State Department specifi ed Iran’s state of war with Iraq as intensifying those concerns. From this set of anxieties emanated a policy articulated as the following: “the United States will not consent to the transfer of U.S.-origin nuclear equipment, material or technology to Iran, either directly or through third countries, where such consent is legally required.” Within this framework, the United States also discouraged “other nuclear suppliers” from engaging in nuclear cooperation with Iran. 4
Faced with these forbidding circumstances, Iran focused its initial attempts to rekindle the Shah’s nuclear attempt primarily on Bushehr. Having realized that keeping the BNPP mothballed meant the waste of billions of dollars of capital already sunken, Tehran turned to a host of countries to complete the Busher-I
as mentioned before, had a long history of working with the Shah’s program and had helped Iran “convert Tehran’s Research Reactor from highly enriched uranium to low-enriched uranium fuel and later supplied 20-percent-enriched fuel under international safeguards.” China, according to a NCA concluded in 1987 would help Iran with “scientifi c exchanges and the eventual purchase of miniature neutron source reactors and a heavy-water research reactor.” 5 Iran’s multiple covert and overt attempts to resuscitate the BNPP with various countries were turned down, however, in no small part, under U.S. pressure.
