Read This, Not That

Is Iran a Real Threat?  

Writing for the New Yorker in 2011, Seymour Hersh looks past the hype to consider whether Iran is weaponizing, and if we should care. 

Mohamed ElBaradei, a Nobel Peace Prize recipient who is now a candidate for the Presidency of Egypt, spent twelve years as the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, retiring two years ago. For the past decade, he has been a central player in the dispute among America, Iran, and Israel over the bomb. In “The Age of Deception,” his recent memoir, he writes, “My best reading is that the Iranian nuclear program, including enrichment, has been for Iran the means to an end. Tehran is determined to be recognized as a regional power. The recognition, in their view, is intricately linked to the achievement of a grand bargain with the West. Even if the intent is not to develop nuclear weapons, the successful acquisition of the full nuclear-fuel cycle, including enrichment, sends a signal of power to Iran’s neighbors and to the world, providing a sort of insurance against attack.”

“During my time at the agency,” ElBaradei told me in an earlier interview, “we haven’t seen a shred of evidence that Iran has been weaponizing, in terms of building nuclear-weapons facilities and using enriched materials.” There is evidence that Iranian scientists have studied the issues involved in building and delivering a bomb, he added, “but the American N.I.E. reported that it stopped even those studies in 2003.”

Read the full article here.