The Nuclear Power Beside Iraq

Atlantic, The, May, 2006 by James Fallows

A year and a half ago, Iran’s nuclear ambition constituted a threat but not yet a world crisis. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had not yet been elected president of the country, nor begun his declarations that the Holocaust never occurred and that modern Israel must be “wiped from the map.” The mullah-dominated Iranian government was still evasive and uncooperative rather than flatly defiant when the United States and Europe demanded supervision of its nuclear programs by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

It might even look favorably on the face-saving compromise the Russian government talked about, under which Iranians could build just about any nuclear power plant they wanted, thereby satisfying their announced desire to move beyond reliance on oil—as long as they left the...

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