The US and the UK toppled the popular and elected government of Dr. Mohamamd Mosaddegh in a coup in 1953, brought the fugitive Shah of Iran back to the country, and provided him with full support as their puppet ruler. The West, most notably the US, sought to strengthen its puppet dictator in Tehran with the purpose of countering Communism on the verge of the Cold War between the Eastern and Western superpowers. In such circumstances, the Stanford Research Institute of the US advised the Shah of Iran to employ the nuclear capacity to generate electricity instead of using oil. According to the proposal, Iran could take advantage of new technology and at the same time export more oil to the West. The ruler of Iran with his own special ambitions welcomed the idea and unveiled a plan to gain a nuclear power capacity of 20,000-megawatts by the mid-1990s. In 1957, Iran and the US signed an official agreement on nuclear technology. In 1967, the US sold Iran the Tehran research reactor which consumed 90 percent of enriched uranium fuel made in the US. The US, the UK, Germany, and France launched negotiations on contracts with Tehran to construct various nuclear power plants. Young talented Iranians studied nuclear sciences at Western universities, as the best Iranian nuclear scientists were trained in the 1970s, including Head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, Dr. Ali Akbar Salehi, who has graduated from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In other terms, the core idea of technology and the human force of Iran’s nuclear program originated from the US.

 But after the victory of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, the country turned into an independent state with a foreign policy based on the principle of ‘neither East nor West’ from a puppet regime that used to be gendarme of the Persian Gulf as a US proxy. As a result, the US began to obstruct any plan for cooperation or any initiative strengthening Iran, and put confrontation with the new establishment on the agenda. One of the main fields in which Washington did not tolerate Iran’s progress by any means was the nuclear sphere. Accordingly, the nuclear cooperation with Iran was fully suspended and Washington refused to sell Iran even the fuel for the Tehran reactor for use in research, medicine, and agriculture. Gradually, Washington pressured the others into avoiding cooperation with Iran, including the whole countries with which Iran was cooperating or had held talks to complete its peaceful nuclear programs, such as Germany, France, Argentina, Spain, Poland, Italy, and even China and Russia. In other terms, the acts of sabotage by the US and its accomplices to impede and destroy Iran’s nuclear program began practically after the victory of the Islamic Revolution and the formation of the Islamic Republic of Iran's sovereign state. Even during eight years of the Iraqi imposed war on Iran, France provided Saddam with the Mirage fighter jets, which had a longer operational range than the Soviet-made aircraft, and hired out the French pilots to enable Saddam to bombard and annihilate the first nuclear power plant in Bushehr, whose construction by Germans was over 85 percent complete. Such illegal strikes against a peaceful site generating nuclear electricity were launched several times. The US and its accomplices also took other measures in such cruel, unlawful, and arrogant project, such as pressuring the International Atomic Energy Agency to fabricate a case against Iran’s nuclear program, referring Iran’s case to the United Nations Security Council, and imposing inclusive sanctions with the use of nuclear activities as a pretext.

 Such behavior, described by Tehran as a fabricated crisis with the purpose of exerting political and economic pressures and preventing an independent Iran’s scientific progress, continued in various shapes and became a fixed policy during the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s. Gradually, the inauspicious campaign against Iran saw acts of sabotage through the Stuxnet malware in 2010, the sale of defective technology and components, the assassination of Iran’s nuclear scientists, and the cyber-sabotage plots against various Iranian facilities.

 The blast that occurred in ‘Ahmadi Roshan’ nuclear site in Natanz on July 2, 2020 –on whose reason and impacts there has been widespread speculation- is at the most another episode in the series of attempts by the enemies to undermine Iran’s peaceful nuclear program. However, the spokesperson for the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran announced in a statement in the morning of that day that the accident has had no casualties and had not caused any harm to the ongoing activities at the Natanz nuclear site.

 Now the main question is whether the foes have been able to halt the Iranian nation’s resolve and plans to achieve nuclear knowledge and technology after 40 years of disruption, acts of sabotage, and conspiracies.

 The first point is that Iran was a founding member of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1968, and has been an official party to the treaty since 1970. According to the NPT, all Parties to the Teary have the inalienable right to employ peaceful nuclear energy and industry on equal terms.

 Secondly, Iran became the 31st country in the world and the first in the Middle East to generate nuclear power after completion of the Bushehr-I nuclear power plant with a capacity of 1,000 megawatts in 2011 in cooperation with Russia. Construction of the second and third phases of the Bushehr nuclear power plant is underway in cooperation with Russia, as Iran is pursuing plans to produce 20,000 megawatts of nuclear power.

 Thirdly, everybody can remember that when the US launched a fully fabricated nuclear crisis in the 2000s, Iran was enriching uranium in the laboratory with a few first-generation centrifuge machines. But today, the Islamic Republic has gained the know-how to develop a full nuclear fuel cycle. Iran has been able to produce and install fuel plates containing nuclear material enriched up to 20 percent for the Tehran research reactor single-handedly, has manufactured and tested fifteen types of advanced centrifuges, including the centrifuge machines whose enrichment capacity is up to 70 times greater than the first generation, has manufactured medical centrifuges spinning up to 60,000 rpm, and is also carrying out a plan on nuclear propulsion systems to produce nuclear fuel with over 60% purity level to run the ships and submarines. All friends and foes acknowledge today that Iran has an indigenous nuclear industry based upon technical know-how, remarkable achievements, well-trained manpower, and homegrown innovations that are a source of pride to the country.

 In other terms, although the US and its friends have caused harm to Iran’s nuclear program with their disruptive attempts on different occasions, the informed experts assert that those hostile actions have increased Iran’s vigilance and made Tehran adopt more preventive measures and try to strengthen the weak points. The great job of detecting and thwarting the Stuxnet virus laid the foundation for the development of valuable defense power in the nuclear industry. Moreover, each such attack has strengthened Iran’s resolve to gain nuclear capabilities. History of the past 20 years shows that all attempts to impede Iran’s progress in achieving nuclear science and industry have ended in failure, and nobody would be able to stop the Islamic Republic of Iran from pursuing its nuclear goals.

(The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the IPIS)