It looks as if the Iranian nuclear program is unstoppable.  How far do you think Mahmud Ahmadinejad will go?

Yektafar: Well, first of all, I think it’s wrong to put it all on Mahmud Ahmadinejad.  It’s fascinating that when Khatami, a reformer, was president for eight years, what we kept hearing from the West was, ‘Well he’s just the president, he’s not really the power behind the real decisions.’  And now everybody is giving so much credit to Ahmadinejad and what he says, because, by the same token, what he says is more superficial, more for show then actual substantive policy declarations … Still, the main decisions, particularly with regards to nuclear energy, are really decided by a hierarchy of the Supreme Leader Khamenei and some other more powerful people like Mr. Rafsanjani and so on.  Now having said that, what President Ahmadinejad and his people are essentially pushing for - they are playing off the sense that they’ve created within the Iranian society that we need to be strong, we need to preserve our dignity as a sovereign country, and having this nuclear program is alright.  What they have done with success is change the real argument here; as you know, the atomic energy committee essentially says, ‘You Iranians have a lot of questions that you have to answer.’  Where as the Iranians and Ahmadinejad have essentially turned the argument into something political about why India, Pakistan and Israel can have a bomb, and now you are picking on us.  Well of course none of those countries are members of the Non-Proliferation Treaty.  Iran is, and they have not complied with their NPT obligations.  But that’s not what they are saying.  So concerning how far it is going to go, I think they are going to take it as far as possible.  I doubt very much that it will be all out enrichment in all senses of the word.  As you know, in next week’s emergency board meeting the likelihood is that they are going to refer them to the UN, but what action the UN will take is debatable.  Almost everybody says that they are going to give a warning and not necessarily boycott the country.  But Ahmadinejad and his people are going to play off that.  Politically, they’re going to take it as far as they can.  In practice, there are other powers at stake here. 

What is the Iranian perspective on the issue?

Yektafar: The amazing thing is that the Iranian people that I’ve come in contact with over the past year and a half or two originally didn’t care about it at all.  Still, the main concern in Iran is that you wake up one morning and the price of meat has risen twofold, or that onions are three times more expensive than they were yesterday. And the fact that people have to work two or three jobs just to make ends meet.  The economy is still the main focus in Iran among Iranians domestically. And that’s one of the main reasons why Mr. Ahmadinejad became the president, because he pointed to some of the corruption.  We are selling oil at 60 dollars a barrel now, and still we cannot afford to have a middle class, a growing middle class.  So that’s their main concern, it never really was nuclear energy.  However, now that it has become such a big issue - and I think the West and particularly the U.S. have made it a bigger issue then it needed to be or should have been - now they are talking a little bit more about it; the newspapers are definitely talking much more about it.  The majority of the newspapers are also saying that it is Iran’s right to have a peaceful nuclear program.  This is something that the Iranian government has maintained and they point out some of the discrepancies and hypocrisy that is involved with the way that the West has approached it.  Essentially, a lot of them in secret say that if the U.S. was really interested in nonproliferation, really wanted Iran not to get the bomb, they could easily do that, they can track arm movement, they can stop shipments, they can cause interruptions and so on and so forth, and it could go on forever.  But the fact that they’ve made it into this whole theatrical show really is because their main goal is to overthrow the Islamic regime and nothing more, they don’t do the same thing with North Korea, they don’t make such a big fuss as much as they do with us. And it could have been handled much easier. So I think the newspapers are pointing to that direction a lot.

Every country that attempts to develop nuclear capability does it with an opponent in mind.  The U.S built a bomb to fight the Germans and the Japanese; the Soviet Union, to defend against the United States; Israel, against its Arab neighbors; India and Pakistan each developed nuclear weapons to defend against the other.  Who could be the target of the Iranian nuclear bomb?

Yektafar: I think it is wrong to say that Iran is against everybody.  I think Iran’s main concern is that they want to be a major player especially in the region, if not on the world stage.  Iran has always thought that they are the center of the Earth; I’m sure a lot of countries feel that way.   But Iran thinks that they have to follow that way with action.  They certainly have the resources to do so.  The main concern is having a bargaining chip, and to them having a bomb is a nuclear chip.  Because that way, if for example the Chinese could go kill their own people in Tiananmen Square and nobody said anything to them, and in fact, they expanded economic ties with them, and trade and so forth, is because they have the bomb.  If [the West] is not making such a theatrical show with North Korea, it is because they have the bomb, same thing with India and Pakistan.  So to them [Iranians], it’s almost a guarantee that they can do what they want without anyone telling them what to do, more than, ‘I’m going to kill that person, and this person.’  Because the misperception is that they are stupid people in Iran running it. They may be fanatical, they may be extremist, but they are not stupid.  You can’t hold on to a country, a regime, for twenty years by being stupid…They are not dumb enough to think that they can just have a bomb and kill somebody else with impunity. So it’s important to think of it not so much in terms of having a bomb to kill [others] as it is to use it as a bargaining chip, to use it in a way that would allow you to grow as a power without anybody else trying to stop you. They just want to be a player, and to them, that is the easiest and possibly, in some ways, the cheapest way to get there without having to compromise their ideological beliefs, without having to become a so-called democracy the way the U.S. wants them to be.  They can keep their Islamic regime and be a major player at the same time. 
There has been some talk about the Russians suggesting to have an enrichment plant in Russia and to compromise with that.  You have to understand Iran had that experience with France in the 1970’s.  The Shah’s regime invested about a billion dollars in a French facility, along with a couple of other countries (I think Belgium was one), for enrichment purposes. After the revolution, the Islamic regime that won the power struggle decided they did not want nuke fuel from the plant and wanted the money back. Before issues were resolved about money, the regime changed its mind and wanted to get the fuel, but by then the French plant was not willing, and so the whole thing went to international court and dragged on for a few years. In the end, Iran never got any nuclear fuel. That’s one of the many reasons that they are still debating, they are not too excited about doing it…It’s important to realize that these aren’t a bunch of crazy, mindless people...  They do have certain things in mind, and it’s not to destroy the world necessarily, but to have a bargaining chip.