The Ayatollah's Metamorphosis on Nuclear Energy (Khodnevis)

Today, all factions of the Iranian regime take pride in Iran’s technological achievement and proclaim uranium enrichment as a right under the Non-Proliferation Treaty. 

Thirty four years ago, in contrast, Ayatollah Khomeini was so adamantly opposed to the nuclear program initiated under the late Shah that a judge appointed by him accused the Shah’s foreign minister, Abbas Khalatbari, of treason for signing a contract with Siemens of Germany to construct a nuclear energy complex in Bushehr and agreeing to loan one billion dollars to French Atomic Energy Commission to build a uranium enrichment plant in Tricastin, France. Under this agreement, Iran pledged to buy a certain amount of the uranium produced at Tricastin in exchange for having success to Eurdif enrichment technology.   

 Khalatbari was convicted of the charge and executed in March 1979.  The daily Jomhori-e Islami, the official organ of the Islamic Republican Party, founded by Khomeini’s clerical lieutenants, including Ayatollah Ali Khamenei,  reported Khalatbari’s execution  on its front page with the headline: Nuclear Reactors: Obvious Treachery Against Our People.  Next to these words are photos of Khalatbari and his dead naked body. 

At the time, the editor of Jomhori-e Islami was Mir Hussain Mousavi, the man who served as the Islamic Republic’s prime minister for eight years and has been under house arrest since 2009 for charging fraud in the reelection of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.  Five years after Khalatbari’s execution, the Islamic Republic revived the country’s nuclear program and, in 1995, recommitted Khalatbari’s “treachery” by giving a billion dollar contract to Russia to rebuild the Bushehr reactor. At the same time, the regime began a secret program, with assistance from Pakistan and North Korea, to develop domestic enrichment technology.

- Mansour Farhang is professor of international relations at Bennington College, Vermont.

Recommended Reading:

Dialogue of Murder: A cautionary tale that must not be forgotten by Cyrus Kadivar (January 26, 2003, Iranian.com)