Persian Pride: At the Heart of Iran’s Drive for Nuclear Power Is the Belief That It Can Be Great Again
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For many foreign observers, Iran’s determination to pursue a nuclear program appears both incongruous and nonsensical. This is particularly the case in light of the growing international isolation and the economic costs being inflicted through increasingly punitive sanctions, culminating in an embargo on Iranian oil by the European Union.
Few are convinced by Iran’s repeated protests that the program is wholly peaceful: Why is it that a country lavishly endowed with oil and gas resources should require nuclear power? Why is it that for all the enriched uranium, there appears to be no extant plan for the construction of power plants? These questions, along with the persistent reckless rhetoric about the existence of the state of Israel and the veracity or otherwise of the Holocaust, have combined to reinforce a sense of unease among international observers, especially in the West.
Even those who remain agnostic about a weapons program agree that Iran has questions to answer and contradictions to clarify. Subject to satisfactory clarifications and reassurances over the peaceful nature of its program, they argue, Iran would be permitted to continue within the rubric of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Iran, of course, argues that it has not broken the terms of the NPT. It argues that, unlike some other states, it signed the NPT, that a number of signatories have not strictly adhered to its terms, and that fundamentally the persecution of Iran is politically and legally driven.
It should be apparent from even this briefest of surveys that the legal arguments around the NPT are underpinned by a much more powerful narrative of distrust that has emerged between Iran and the West over the better part of three decades. But there are deeper sentiments shaping Iranian attitudes that stretch back further into a history of greatness, decline, and a yearning to recover a status once enjoyed and now denied. At its heart is a nationalist narrative that few in the West have understood and many in Iran have exploited.
