Iranian Professor: US and Israel have Been Trying To Divide Iran For Years

Professor of geopolitics points the finger at US Neoconservatives and Israeli Zionists, Highlights past co-operation to make Iran a nuclear nation
By Steve Watson

Infowars
Dec. 15, 2006

An Iranian political science professor has said today that Iran and the US signed an agreement in 1978 which allowed Tehran to seek nuclear technology in order to meet its future energy demands but no one now talks about the agreement. He has also asserted that Zionists in Israel in co-operation with neoconservatives in the US have intentionally been trying to divide Iran for decades.

As reported by the IRNA news agency, Professor of Political Geography and Geopolitics at Tehran's Tarbiat Moadarres University, Pirouz Mojtahedzadeh, said it was the US that encouraged Iran to develop nuclear energy.

Mojtahedzadeh asserted during a speech at an international conference of world geologists that in 1978 the US had proposed the former regime of the defunct Shah launch a nuclear program in order to prevent a future energy crisis some 50 years down the line.

Mojtahedzadeh also suggested that the repeated attempts to paint Iran's nuclear program up as a military program directly contradict the International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) repeated confirmations that Iran has not violated any laws or regulations of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Earlier this month he also gave an interview in which he asserted that Zionists and their neo-conservative colleagues in the US have for years been trying to divide Iran.

After Shimon Peres had in a series of speeches and interviews earlier this month called for disorder in Iran and its division and a "world with no sovereign borders", Professor Mojtahedzadeh added that conspiracies of Peres and other Zionist regime officials are paving the way for conflict between Christian West and Islamic East.

He said that Zionists' suspicious moves in Iraq and the country's Kurdistan region are part of the interventionist activities of the racist Zionist regime.

He added that Zionist agents, backed by their supporters, are pitting Iraqi Kurds against Iran.

We have previously documented how Iran's nuclear program was defined by the US for decades and how the US supplied materials and the know how. The history of how Iran's path to nuclear proliferation began is a familiar story.

The 1953 CIA ouster of President Mossadegh, a leader who was conforming to westernized policy but made the mistake of asking to keep a small portion of his country's oil revenue, was achieved by means of staged bombings and shootings which were blamed on the Iranian government in order to antagonize the population and enable the coup.

After installing the Shah Globalists like Henry Kissinger opened the door for Iran to develop sophisticated nuclear energy programs which laid the foundation for today's crisis. Twenty three reactors were built with the help of American corporations like General Electric and Westinghouse.

The regal Shah even served as the poster boy for US power companies selling nuclear reactors to a skeptical American public.



In 1976, President Gerald Ford even authorized the Shah to buy and operate a plutonium-extracting and processing facility - a big step toward converting energy processing to weapons making.

The culmination of decades of planning a nuclear program for Iran, came in 1977 and 1978. During his now-famous trip to Tehran on January 1, 1978, President Jimmy Carter and the Shah reached a new bilateral agreement for nuclear cooperation. The US agreed to grant Iran "most favored nation" status for reprocessing of spent nuclear fuels. Iran agreed to buy 6-8 light-water nuclear reactors from the US (subject to approval by the US Congress). This was reported in The Washington Post, 1 January 1978 under the headline—"Carter will meet Sadat to Discuss Talks on the Mideast; Carter will visit Sadat to Discuss Mideast Diplomacy,"

On July 10, 1978 (only 7 months before the Islamic Revolution's victory) the draft of the US-Iran Nuclear Energy Agreement was signed. The agreement was supposed to facilitate cooperation in the field of nuclear energy and to govern the export and transfer of equipment and material to Iran's nuclear energy program. Iran was also to receive American technology and help in searching for uranium deposits. This can be found in the Digital National Security Archive—"Iran: The US-Iran Nuclear Energy Agreement," Department of State Memorandum, 20 October 1978.

On October 18, 1978, James R. Schlesinger, the US Energy Secretary, sent the agreement to President Carter for his signature. Also in the Digital National Security Archive—"Iran: The US-Iran Nuclear Energy Agreement," Department of State Memorandum, 20 October 1978.

By then, however, Islamic Revolution had swept Iran, and the Shah had informed the US Ambassador Richard Sullivan that his plans for NPPs were on hold. Finally, in early 1979, the US stopped its supply of highly enriched uranium to Iran. Since Iran started its nuclear energy program in the early 1980s, the US has been completely hostile towards it.

An excellent essay can be found on the entire history of Iran's nuclear program here. This study also details the fantasies of the powerful neocon elite concerning Iran and their double standards when it comes to nuclear proliferation.

We can also add to the history the more recent revelations penned by New York Times reporter James risen in a new book that six years ago the CIA simply gave Iran the blueprints to build an effective nuclear bomb.

Risen explains that in what appeared to be a "rogue operation" code named "Merlin", a Russian nuclear engineer in the pay of the CIA, who had defected to the US years earlier, had been given nuclear blueprints and had then been sent to Vienna to sell them - or simply give them - to the Iranian representatives to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

With the Russian doing its bidding, the CIA appeared to be about to help Iran leapfrog one of the last remaining engineering hurdles blocking its path to a nuclear weapon. The dangerous irony was not lost on the Russian - the IAEA was an international organization created to restrict the spread of nuclear technology.

The Russian's assignment from the CIA was to pose as an unemployed and greedy scientist who was willing to sell his soul - and the secrets of the atomic bomb - to the highest bidder. By hook or by crook, the CIA told him, he was to get the nuclear blueprints to the Iranians. They would quickly recognize their value and rush them back to their superiors in Tehran.

Obviously the Russian agent was bemused and more than a little apprehensive about the entire operation so, according to Risen's sources, a senior CIA official downplayed the operation telling the agent that it was just an intelligence-gathering effort, not an illegal attempt to give Iran the bomb. He suggested that the Iranians already had the technology he was going to hand over to them.

In truth, the CIA knew absolutely nothing about Iran's nuclear know how due to an earlier espionage disaster whereby information concerning virtually all CIA operatives inside Iran was leaked to Iran. As a result many were arrested, the rest pulled out and many are still missing. Porter Goss admitted to the Bush administration in a White House briefing last spring that the CIA had no knowledge of how close Iran was to becoming a nuclear power.

The idea behind Merlin was to give the Iranians flawed nuclear blueprints to set back their weapons program and help the CIA monitor more closely the paths they took. However, the Russian agent did not know this and was kept in the dark.

Upon reviewing the blueprints he immediately noticed the flaw and decided to provide the Iranians with a note of his own pointing out the flaw. Of course he thought he was doing the right thing in order to carry out his mission successfully. He thought the flaw was so obvious that they would have spotted it anyway and possibly smelled a rat.

Risen also contends that operation "Merlin' has been considered and possibly approved for use with other states such as North Korea.

Of course it is possible that operation Merlin was a double edged sword and has provided the rogue elements of the CIA, under NeoCon control, with the pretext they need to extend the war in the middle east into Iran.

It is clear that the Frankenstein that the neocon globalists now calls Iran's nuclear program was conceived by the Shah and his government, with the direct assistance and strong encouragement (many believe pressure) by the US. Once again globalists have created an enemy state and provided a pretext in order to divide and conquer. It may only be a matter of time before the division begins.













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