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Claim:Iran is insisting on enriching uranium, with no economic justification. That proves Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons.Response:No, it doesn’t. Iran is building nuclear reactors, which cost a fortune to build but are worthless without fuel. And there is no ironclad way to guarantee a fuel supply if the fuel in question is not located in Iran. Iran recalls that after the Revolution the chief enrichment consortium, Eurodif of France, refused to deliver one gram of fuel to Iran, even though Iran owned 10 percent of the company.1More to the point, perhaps, all kinds of governments pursue programs for political purposes that lack clear, ex-ante, cost-benefit rationale. Conservatives have complained about this tendency in our own government for decades. In Iran, enrichment has become for Iranians a matter of national entitlement and a source of pride in technological advancement not unlike our own moon landing—supported by reformers and hardliners alike. Five years of Bush Administration ultimatums and Western pressure have made enrichment an ongoing emblem of Iran’s independence and refusal to be cowed. Commercial unprofitability is beside the point. Many of the people who “just know” that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapon are the same people who “just knew” that Saddam Hussein had a nuclear weapons program in 2003. They were wrong. The U.S. intelligence community, which has looked at this issue closely, finds Iran’s intentions on nuclear weapons to be unclear, and possibly not yet determined. |