by James Glaser
January 26, 2005

It always seems to come down to greed and money when the Unites States gets in a fix with another country. I should say a "fix" of our own making. If we read a little bit about how Iran got into the nuclear game, we find out we started them in that direction. The story of Iran's journey into the nuclear age is about the same as how Iraq got on the path to Weapons of Mass Destruction. The United States along with many European countries, gave Saddam Hussein enough information and equipment to step right onto that path, and with the help of the good old USA, Iran went nuclear.

Of course when we start a third world country on any path, it is American Corporations who are making money off of it, and years later, invariably it is the American taxpayer who has to set up a blockade on that path.

From the Wikipedia Encyclopedia:

"The foundations for Iran's nuclear program were laid in the 1960s under auspices of the U.S. within the framework of bilateral agreements between the two countries. In 1967 the Tehran Nuclear Research Center (TNRC) was built and run by the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI). The TNRC was equipped with a U.S. supplied 5-megwatt nuclear research reactor. Iran signed and ratified the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1968. With the establishment of Iran's Atomic agency and the NPT in place, plans were drawn by Mohammad Reza Shah Pavlavi (Iran's monarch) to construct 23 nuclear power stations across the country together with USA by the year 2000."

"By 1975, the U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, had signed National Security Decision Memorandum 292, Titled "U.S.-Iran Nuclear Cooperation," which laid out the details of the sale of nuclear energy equipment to Iran projected to bring U.S. corporations more than $6 billion in revenue. At the time, Iran was pumping as much as 6 million barrels (950,000 m³) of oil a day, compared with about 4 million barrels (640,000 m³) daily today."

President Gerald R. Ford even signed a directive in 1976 offering Tehran the chance to buy and operate a U.S.-built reprocessing facility for extracting plutonium from nuclear reactor fuel. The deal was a complete "Nuclear fuel cycle." The Ford strategy paper said the "introduction of nuclear power will both provide for the growing needs of Iran's economy and free remaining oil reserves for export or conversion to petrochemicals."

American corporations got "more than $6 billion in revenue," because Uncle Sam gave nuclear technology to Iran. American corporations also made money off of things we sold to Iraq, when Saddam Hussein was working for us. Today we spend $6 billion every month trying to fix what we started by helping Iraq into twentieth century arms.

Iran is another story. We set up Iran's nuclear industry, and now we say they can't use it. No one is saying that Iran is doing anything that is forbidden by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty we had them sign, but the Iran of today is not the Iran we were out to help thirty years ago. Once again our arming of a third world dictator has backfired, and the American tax-payer will have to foot the bill.

Major corporations made big profits from our technology sales to Iraq and Iran, and now major corporations are making big profits from disarming Iraq, and they are pushing Washington to do the same to Iran in closing down their nuclear program.

The corporations make the big money going in, and they make the big money going out. Only the American taxpayer loses—the American tax payer, and all the American troops killed and wounded, plus the innocent civilians we kill stopping the mistakes we made years ago.

As long as we continue to market dangerous technology to third world despots and dictators, we will have to look forward to someday dealing with them.

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