 All right. I think we can get started. I understand some of your friends are studying hard for the exams and are missing this one. So they will have to compensate with extra effort for losses of having this discussion today. We started last Friday talking about Iran's nuclear program. This is a very wide ranging issue and I will go almost all of the slides that I used back in 2006 and since then not much has changed as I mentioned last time and I will try to be as explicit as possible about every single step that has paved the way to what we are now facing currently because the Iranian nuclear program is still dominating the international political arena in terms of security implications, political implications, economic implications, etc. So it is necessary for us to understand very well what has happened in the past, what has happened recently and what is happening today and what is likely to happen in the future because as I said, Iranian nuclear program is not a simple issue. It has many facets, it has many dimensions, each of which needs to be fully elaborated and comprehensively discussed for you to better understand because this is a whole new subject for those who have not been familiar with the nuclear proliferation-related issues and I don't think many of you have had any such acquaintance or just any knowledge beforehand. I was talking last time about this Atoms for Peace speech of the U.S. President Eisenhower and I had explained as to why the United States president felt the need to deliver a speech at the United Nations General Assembly meeting. The date was 8th of December 1953 and it is significant in that right after the detonation of two atomic bombs on top of Japan which paved the way to the termination of war, the Second World War, World War II, first with Japan and then of course since then Japanese-American relations have improved very much and prior to that Japan was an imperial power and was the dominating power in the far east and south-pacific to a great extent. Anyway, so having seen the disastrous effects of the nuclear weapons, United States proposed to other nations primarily to the Soviet Union to give up any work on further development of nuclear weapons, and also promising that itself was not or would not go to develop any weapons in the future. But the Soviets did not welcome this idea on the grounds that they put forward arguments such as knowledge cannot be disinvented, you cannot put the genie back into the bottle and therefore you have now this knowledge as to how to develop a nuclear weapons, material, scientific, technological skills and other things that are necessary to assemble a device. Since you have developed this weapon once you can develop it in the future even if we commit ourselves not to develop these weapons and even if you commit yourself not to develop these weapons how can we make sure that in the future in the next US administration no president will ever contemplate of developing this weapon. The Soviets did not agree to the proposal put forward by the United States to quit developing further weapons and then they themselves developed the first Soviet bomb in 1949. In those years of course there were other countries which had advanced scientific knowledge, theoretical work and also some technological advances in the nuclear field and nuclear energy as I said has two facets, has two faces one of which is benign and the other is malign I mean good and bad, two faces of nuclear energy like many other technological innovations of course in the hands of benign purposes for positive purposes nuclear energy can be a large source of energy generation electricity, it has applications in agriculture in the health sector, medical sector, et cetera so many countries especially the advanced countries in the west have embarked upon fast developing these technologies and also shared this technology by way of selling to other countries because it was going at a very good price but because of the, possibly the psychological as well as political impact of having used this weapon against humans in Hiroshima and Nagasaki the United States felt at that time the moral obligation to not to share this technology with other countries with a view to prevent other countries from developing the weapon and therefore put limitations on its own companies on its own government not to allow sharing this technology with other countries and therefore there was this 1947 Atomic Energy Act which prevented the US firms from entering into contractual agreements with other countries, other companies which of course have been negatively affected because European companies, Canadian firms were selling this technology to other countries already and therefore the United States again this time decided to lift this embargo towards its own firms, its own companies and to allow the American firms also to enter the market and to be competitive in this market but of course the United States wanted to sort of bring sort of regulations to the nuclear market at that time there was no regulations or there were no sets of procedures which would regulate as to whom should buy or whom could buy or sell this technology or for under what conditions so the Atoms for Peace speech actually was the message to the world by the United States that the United States was ready to share this technology provided that countries that would acquire this technology that would transfer this technology would make a commitment, would commit themselves not to exploit for purposes other than mentioned in the contract that is they would only use this technology for energy generation or applications in the agriculture or medicine or medical sector so this Atoms for Peace speech in a sense opened the way to the entry of the US firms into the international market and since then the US government itself also gave a lot of support to the American firms in terms of selling this technology in order to have this competitive edge competitive advantage in the market of course one reason was maybe to provide some advantages for the American firms but another reason was of course something that may not have been pronounced explicitly was to have a say on the development of nuclear capabilities of other countries because if the United States would be the provider supplier of nuclear technology of course the United States would itself have the ability to control as to how that technology would be used in that particular country that would have bought this technology from the United States if other countries sold that technology to countries of concern or whose ambitions would create some question marks the United States would not have any control on that for instance when Canada sold the counter reactors to India of course it was the Canadian government and the Canadian firm that would have any control about how that technology would be used but if the United States or US firms sold the technology United States would have first hand information from the country from the faceted in which that technology would be used so therefore that was also another reason why the US president delivers such a speech which is a famous speech known as the Atoms for Peace speech so in the 1950s United States as I said provided encouragements to other states especially and primarily to its allies countries like Turkey, countries like Iran which of course had close relations with the United States within a strategic context just remember the first and foremost ambition or just expectation or form policy prior to the United States was to contain the Soviet Union so as part of the containment policy Turkey and Greece were included in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization NATO and Iran was of course outside of NATO but there was also a special arrangement between Turkey and Iran as well as Pakistan which aimed at providing a belt in order to contain the first Soviet expansion and sort of prevent them from reaching to the Middle East and to the Indian Ocean so but in this context Iranian Shah not only in the 50s but also throughout the 60s and 70s as well as 80s Iran in a sense wanted to exploit this situation I mean during the Shah period I mean the Shah was somewhat according to some observers was over emphasizing the significance of its country and also over estimating the threats and some American observers including the US presidents as well have in their messages to the Shah tried to remind him that the threats that he perceived were not necessarily as significant as he deemed to be important or significant and that he would be better off if he invested more in historic development at the social sort of development issues but of course from the Shah's perspective first and foremost the most important thing was the security of the country and he was concerned about Nazarism which was gaining a lot of support within the Arab countries among the Arab streets and also the Russian threat was there so the Shah's considerations about security were not necessarily compatible with those of the United States anyway in the 60s and also in the 70s we have seen a steady increase in the interest of the Shah and Iran as a whole in nuclear technology but it is not possible to talk about any significant or quantum leap until 1974 what happened in 1974 was of course very significant which was the oil prices crisis the OPEC crisis which resulted in the increased deep rise of the oil prices some four times or so and over a short period of time the Shah actually found himself his country in large sums of money so yes until then Iran was getting significant revenues from oil and gas and primary oil gas was not of that much use at that time as it is the case today of course it was but not as much as today but oil with the increase in prices of oil four times within a very short span of time there was a huge influx of money coming and huge revenues due to oil prices or the exports so after that the Shah took a very radical decision and in a sense elevated raised his expectations and set his ambitions very high which was to build or establish 20,000 megawatt electric within the following 20 years so had Shah's plans been accomplished by 1994 I mean 74 plus 20 years makes 1994 Iran should have had actually 20,000 or so megawatt electric established a nuclear power infrastructure what does this mean 20,000 megawatt may not mean too much well big power reactors of course in the past 600 megawatt or 800 megawatt were big large nuclear reactors for energy generation but nowadays 1300 or 1300 or 1500 or so or 1400 megawatt a reactor is a big reactor which can generate large amounts of electricity so therefore 20,000 megawatt electric is something in between 18 to 25 or so nuclear reactors I mean today Iran as of today November 9th 2010 has only one operating reactor 1000 megawatt so that may tell something about how big was the ambition of the Shah back in 1974 and we know from the writings of then head of the atomic energy organization of Iran he was in his writing he says that the budget of the atomic energy organization of Iran was increased from one million dollars to one billion dollars so there is 1000 times increase in the budget after this long term expectations long term ambitions so this is something which was significant in that once a country declares to the world its intention to build large number of nuclear reactors of course many countries many supplier firms and countries want to take their own share from it so therefore German firms French firms as well as American firms have competed with one another and they made sort of proposed bits and they proposed the Iranian government projects to install large power reactors and German firm Siemens and KVU Kraftwerk Union proposed and started to build two times 1.3 or 1300 megawatt electric in Boucher so it was the Siemens Kraftwerk Union so that was the German firms bit and eventually started the construction in the second half of the 1970s and by the time of the Islamic Revolution in 1979 a significant proportion of the this the construction and the buildings was said to be complete I mean in two reactors one of which was according to different reports and information that we get from various sources some 80% 60% of the reactors the construction not the sort of technological parts or technical parts but the mere physical construction they say was completed by the time of the revolution which or a significant again proportion of which was later on destroyed during the Iran-Iraq war well that's a different story that we'll be talking about so in order to understand and there was also the French firm which was about to build another sort of in Darko region so these were the nuclear power reactors which were agreed by Iran to build to let the French and the German firms to build and the United States also wanted to take its own share of nuclear reactors and more specifically and more importantly and also more interestingly to build two other facilities one of which would be enrichment and that would be the processing so these are two very strategically important facilities and nuclear reactor is a sort of a mechanism by means of which you generate electricity actually the principle is very simple you either have a nuclear fuel to boil the water and to sort of create just large sums of large amounts of vapor which when you force into the turbines the turbines turn and they generate electricity if you put coal or other sort of natural gas then you can still boil the water, have the vapor turn the turbines and get the electricity so therefore nuclear reactors themselves are just mechanisms of generating electricity I mean so the reactor the core of the reactor or the reactor itself does not have any direct significance for weapons manufacturing in the nuclear field what has significance is actually a rich uranium or repressed uranium which actually is plutonium so therefore reactors may be somehow misinterpreted or misunderstood by man in the street by ordinary person as if one can generate or build bomb within the reactor there is no such thing as building a bomb in the reactor reactors just consume low-energy uranium depending on the type or sorry size of the reactor and they just generate electricity but their significance for metric purposes or nuclear weapons comes from the enrichment facilities or repressing facilities that are attached to the nuclear program energy generation program so this aspect of enrichment and repressing dimensions of the big picture I mean these two elements make nuclear technology or nuclear power reactors or nuclear program significant reactors themselves are no different than any other sort of medium by means of which you generate electricity there is nothing that can be produced in the nuclear reactor other than plutonium which has to be repressed I mean you have to take from the core inverse in water let it cool down for like about a year and then you apply some chemical process by means of which you extract the plutonium which is produced in the reactor field and I'll explain this in as simple manner as possible because without proper understanding or schematic understanding of this it may not be possible to advance any further I mean I'll come to that in this point but what is important here is in 1974 the Shah although some Iranians and according to some records also the Shah himself denied to have such ambitions Iran Shah is on the records or is said to be reportedly on the records for having set his ambition as high as 20 megawatt 20,000 megawatt electric within the following 20 years and again according to some reports we understand that it was an American firm, consultancy firm Stanford from Stanford University I guess which primarily proposed 23,000 megawatt and for some reason there was this adjustment to 20 megawatt 20,000 megawatt electric within the next 20 years maybe to capture the minds of large populations with an easy figure like 20,000 megawatt within 20 years that was the ambition, the German French firms have set on building these reactors, the United States also American firms also wanted to enter into the market and also again as I said more specifically and most interestingly the US president Jimmy Carter spent the New Year's Eve in Tehran together with the Shah and in order to sell these technologies in 78, 77, 78 sort of New Year's turn so that is significant I'm repeating this a couple of times because what we are facing today is the US demands from the United States to stop enrichment hopefully for the time being Iran is not doing the processing as far as we know other than some laboratory scale work on the processing which was reportedly being made several years ago but the problem at the core of the problem today is the enrichment capability as well as enrichment work in Iran which is of course not very much welcome by the United States and other countries in Europe as well as Israel so this is something that we will have to elaborate as to who is right, who is wrong or what is right, what is wrong because it is not always possible to decide what is right or what is wrong or there is not one single right or wrong which is a complex situation of course then came the Islamic Revolution in 1979 and the war with Iran so in 1979 when Humeini returned to Tehran from France, from Paris where he was living for quite a long time and then the revolution took its own pace and over time within a year or so things have settled to a large extent not entirely but from 1979, February onwards within about a year or so the Islamic Revolution was almost settled in Iran and Humeini was the only leader spiritual leader as well as political leader in many respects and his approach to a nuclear project was very negative many might think that the Humeini's approach might have been sort of appreciative of what has been done in the past no, he said and he didn't like the fact that these nuclear reactors were being built by French and German firms as well as American firms were doing certain things in the Tehran research reactor the 5 megawatt very small which is very identical to the one that was having a Czech major nuclear research center in Istanbul which came to Turkey almost at the same time in the 50s, 60s and work was carried on since then very much for research purpose anyway Humeini's position was actually these technologies would make Iran dependent on the west therefore he wanted the French German sort of built reactors no matter at which level they were at the time to be sort of left alone and he did not let the continuation of the reactors by the western companies actually after the Islamic Revolution there was a period of chaos I mean the German and French firms and German and French governments didn't know what exactly to do they didn't know whether they should continue with the construction which was of course opposed by Humeini himself because the motto was neither east nor west only the Islamic Revolution or is Iran an Iranian Islamic Republic so therefore there was this hesitation period for about a year or so and at that time the American government of course put a lot of pressure on German and French governments not to go ahead with the construction of the reactors that they had started to build so in the meantime of course Iran had also shares in the uranium enrichment company which was of course partly owned by the French and therefore there was this contradiction between France and Iran et cetera so in 1979 and onwards we did not see much actually nothing in the name of reactor construction soon after the war with Iraq started and Saddam Hussein considering that he would take advantage of the situation attacked Iran and the war the eight year war started and during the war of course Iran had to assign priority to other issues I mean to meet issues security issues and in the meantime during some of the air raids by Iraqi airplanes Boucher was also hit several times there is a record some scholars, researchers have conducted their research about when and how many times the Boucher reactor was hit after all it is significant because it was not complete and what was complete or 60% complete was also destroyed partially during the war so therefore the 1980s did not witness anything in the name of nuclear energy program, nuclear program of Iran because they themselves were not able to continue the projects and there was the state of war with Iraq and that their facilities were being hit by the Iraqi airplanes et cetera et cetera of course things have changed in due course because Khomeini who was from the beginning from the onset was adamantly opposing the continuation of western projects be it nuclear or otherwise he was eventually convinced by Raf Sanjani and Musavi Musavi is you might know from the most recent elections last year he was the so-called leader of the green movement in Iran how green or how liberal it's open to debate but at this a contender an opponent of Medinajad today so but at that time Raf Sanjani convinced Khomeini that it will be in Iran's interest to continue the nuclear project and if Iran had developed nuclear capability it might have been a significant deterrent against other countries and during that war Iran was facing some energy shortages even though Iran is a country which is very rich in oil resources it did not have enough refineries or the refiners that Iran had were not able to operate at a full scale because of the war and after all during the war your consumption of energy, oil and everything increases and therefore Khomeini was convinced that nuclear project should continue and this is something that we understand again from some records and also from my conversations with Iranian scholars, experts and statesmen, politicians, diplomats during my visits to this country in 2004 and 2005 so as I said in the mid 1980s Khomeini gave his blessing to Raf Sanjani for the continuation of the nuclear project of course the continuation of the project was not only dependent on Khomeini's decision, once Khomeini made his decision to continue with the project of course he needed partners, other countries who would continue the project and finish the job which was of course not very easy because Iran first of all knocked on the doors of the French and the German firms and asked from them to complete the job which was incomplete which was left incomplete because of the revolution and the war that followed of course that was also a period of hesitation and German and French firms of course they could not operate independent of their governments and independent of the conjunctural situation and the United States was putting a lot of pressure on the governments, French and German governments not to let their firms to continue with the construction of the reactors so since Iran or when Iran understood that there was no hope for the French and German companies to continue with the construction of Boucher and Darkovin, then they asked from other countries extending from Sweden to India almost in Argentina and other countries which were known as having some work with nuclear projects and none of them agreed eventually and there was one common theme something very common in the demands of the Iranian government which was in addition to the completion of the construction which was left uncompleted by the French and Germans especially the German Boucher Iran also asked from the governments during these negotiations with the Argentine or Brazilian or Swedish or Indian firms or governments sending their students, Iranian students to these countries for education and training so I mean as I said especially under the pressure of the United States and for some other reasons, none of these negotiations proved to be fruitful, I mean none of them had any result and therefore Iran had nothing but to wait toward the end of the 1980s Rafsanjana and Gorbachev are known for talking about this issue as well among other things among other political issues and Gorbachev is also said to have agreed for the completion of the nuclear project which was not completed by the Germans but soon after that was in 1989 and soon after the Soviet Union and Gorbachev himself found themselves in trouble and Gorbachev could not stay in power and then of course Yeltsin came to power after this kind of coup or revolution and the Russian Federation of course was primarily dealing with its own problems putting things in order in the early 1990s yet Iran did not give up its ambition its desire to go ahead with the nuclear project and soon after Yeltsin I think that was in 1992 the first agreement was signed between Iran and Russia in 1992 for the completion of the project which eventually signed into a contract in January 1995 and according to this contract which I had a chance to see its translation not the original one but the content and this issue struck my attention 20 or 30 students every year would be sent to Russian institutions for masters especially PhD studies doctoral studies that was an interesting point because a country like Iran which went at first glance and a very maybe superficial interpretation and overall sort of assessment I mean one might ask the question why first of all a country which is the second and third largest sort of owners or big reserves largest reserves of oil and gas in the world after Saudi Arabia and Iraq or Russia etc why would they need nuclear energy this is a question that many people ask and we'll talk about it later on and also in addition to that why would a country like Iran like to send 30 students every year to Russian institutions for pursuing doctoral studies so this is something that tells us that when Iran from the beginning wanted to have or to send its own fit wanted to have a self-sufficient nuclear capability not only in terms of technological sort of assets like nuclear reactors and some facilities but also the scientific knowledge and accumulation that will be self-sufficient for advancing or developing its own indigenous capabilities over time and also to identify when Iran and Russia agreed for the completion of the Bushair nuclear reactor instead of this the Russian firm would build two times 1000 megawatt electric nuclear reactors in Bushair and one of which just started operation this past August some technical failures because of some hacking and well that was also an interesting point but anyway in 1995 Russia agreed to finish by the year 2000 the first unit at least and soon after the second unit and the first unit came into operation only in 2010 with some 10 years of delay and of course this delay is not only due to technical reasons but also due to some political reasons that we'll be talking about so therefore this is something that is important and according to the agreement sign the contract signed with Russia Iran would have so many students to be sent well it says here to date which was in 2006 and that was the information that I got back into March 2005 from an Iranian official an authority someone who was in charge of these people and he said to me that there were approximately 430 or 450 Iranian scientists with doctoral degrees and 250 of them received their degrees from Russian institutions and that was between 95 and 2005 and since then since 2005 of course this figure must have increased I don't know to what figure but must still be at least maybe another 100 of them might have received their PhD degrees in nuclear physics nuclear engineering and other sort of scientific degrees that might be significant for nuclear project Ibrahim the question yes yeah yeah the question is what was the motive behind such a deal from Russia's perspective the motivation for Iran is clear to complete its nuclear program which it started back in the mid 70s but from Russia's perspective of course there are many reasons one of which would be possibly the financial issue because the deal would was said to be about a billion dollars some even said 800 million dollars was something in between so approximately a billion dollars Russia at the time in the early 1990s when the economy was in a very difficult shape very difficult condition of course and that would make sense but of course Russia is such a big country that would not only do something just for one billion dollars well that was a significant figure for that period of time but a billion dollars in itself would not be explaining the situation another reason at least something that I think might be one of the important motivations for Russia to agree first of all we should bear in mind that no other country could agree to complete the project because of the pressure of the United States on these countries be it Argentina or European countries or etc or they may have had their own different interpretations but Russia even though the Soviet Union collapsed well in your terms Russia or Soviet Union lost the Cold War but still Russia was significant for the United States and important for the United States because of the existence of hundreds in the thousands of nuclear weapons and hundreds of tons of chemical weapons biological agents material that can be weaponized missiles so Russia was the world's largest weapons arsenal and the authority on top of this sort of weapons arsenal was to a certain extent collapse but of course the Russians have done their best not to lose control on their nuclear weapons and also on some significant strategic weapons so United States was also helping Russia within the context of the cooperative trade reduction program which is also known as non-lugar program and was pouring billions of dollars to Russia in order to keep these weapons safe and secure in their proper places not only the weapons and material but also scientific knowledge and technology was important and hundreds of billions of dollars were spent for scientists to remain in Russia not to go to countries like Iran, Libya, Korea etc so Russia was in a very close cooperation with the United States and the United States was paying a lot of attention to its relations with Russia so of course it had a leverage on Russia but it could not pressurize on Russia beyond a certain limit so therefore Russia had this capability to stand against US pressure but on the other hand of course because of the collapse of the Soviet Union Russia had certain vulnerabilities such as the former Soviet republics many of which had common denominators with Iran and in the early 1990s one of the major concerns of the West was who would lead these former Soviet republics in Central Asia and Caucasus where it would be Turkey or which model they would follow and the West did not want the former Soviet republics in Central Asia and Caucasus to follow the lead of Iran and Russia also was very much concerned about whether Iran would do something in its backyard so in my opinion of course the Russians may not agree this openly but this is something that I strongly believe Russia by giving this technology to Iran in a sense to control Iran's ambitions and prevented Iran from meddling in its Russia's backyard in Central Asia so in a sense that was a something that kept Iran away from Russia's backyard in Central Asia so okay I'm giving you a unique technology that you want the most but don't do anything wrong that would jeopardize my security situation and my interest in my backyard in Central Asia and Caucasus so Iran said okay you give me technology I don't do anything in Central Asia so there was this some sort of a tacit agreement but if you ask an Iranian diplomat or Russian diplomat they will say no there is no such thing but this is their job to say alright let's give a break and we will continue later on