Iran's Nuclear Weapon and Negotiation with America (Research Paper Sample)

Iran Nuclear Weapons and Negotiations with America
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Abstract
Iran and their nuclear weapons has been a major discussion in the last one decade. This research paper makes an effort to enlighten the reader on the history of the Iran nuclear program. In addition, the paper looks at the responses by the current and the previous leaders in respect to the nuclear programs. It deals with the consequences of the nuclear program on the Iranian population and its government as well as the interactions with other countries on the issue. It gives focus on negotiations between the Iranian and United States governments to ensure that the reader gets a complete understanding of the current nuclear issues and situation.
Introduction
The international interest on Iran heightened drastically due to the revelation made by an Iranian resistance group member who was in exile in the wake of 2002. In less than a year later, word broke out to the international community that Iran was having a major project that would assist them to produced enriched uranium. The enriched uranium was to be used to fuel nuclear reactors and generate nuclear weapons. A uranium mine in Saghand was one major location that was identified while a pilot plant for uranium enrichment was located at Natanz. The Iranian government had planned to build a water reactor that stood at 40 Megawatts at a plant in Ark. The Iranian government had successfully concealed their nuclear projects from the international atomic energy agency for a considerable amount of time. Thus, the revelations that came into place in 2003 on the locations were not received well by the international community.
Iran has continuously argued that their nuclear programs are both legal and authorized through its membership in the non-proliferation treaty (NPT). They have also argued that their nuclear program is benign asserting that the treaty gives its members the authority to develop nuclear energy and constricts it to peaceful purposes. On the other hand, the United States differs and questions the intent of nuclear energy in Iran. The United States insists that Iran do not need nuclear energy and are concealing the development of nuclear weapons. United States has asserted their position by adding that Iran has sufficient gas and oil reserves and that they would have to incur numerous costs if they were to use nuclear energy as opposed to petroleum. In 2003, the United States government under George W Bush started their firm positions that America and its allies would not support the development of nuclear weapons by Iran. The American government 11 years later still holds the same stand. This paper discusses the nuclear weapons on Iran and its negotiations with America.
The Iranian Nuclear History
The development of nuclear energy in Iran is believed to date back to the 1970s. According to International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA] (2009), Iran started its nuclear research projects and education in their universities as early as 1970. The research had been centered on reactors supplied by the United States that had been in operation since 1967 and started with 5 Megawatts. In mid-1970s, Iran launched programs on nuclear energy. In 1974 was a scientist by the name Shah had a breakthrough producing 23,000 Megawatts of power in form of electricity through the use of nuclear power stations, a process that took twenty years to set the nuclear goals in track for the country. Iran decided to commercialize their efforts and was able to seal deals with the then West Germany and France to develop 1,200 and 900 Megawatts reactors respectively. During the same year, the Iranian government is reported to have invested $1 billion on a uranium plant in France that was the property of a Euro Pen Consortium, Eurodif (Khan, 2010).
The war between Iraq and Iran that occurred in 1979 stopped the nuclear research projects. The resources of the Iranians had been depleted due to the war and their nuclear infrastructure had been destroyed by several bombings to the power reactor plants. President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani revived the nuclear projects in Iran during the late 1980s. Iran had recovered from its war with Iraq by 1990 and was able to revive their nuclear projects and secure the support of countries such as Russia, Pakistan and China. Despite signing deals with these three countries, some of the procured materials were never delivered due to mounting pressure from the United States. Russia and China continued to sponsor and support the Iranian projects in acquiring uranium enriched technology from a Pakistani scientist, Khan, in the black market (IAEA, 2009). This ensured that Iran would make significant progress by the 21st century.
In the year 2003, it became clearly evident that Iran was involved in nuclear projects, and had already mastered the technology required for enriching uranium. Due to the violations made with the International Atomic Energy Agency, they were required to disclose information on their projects and it was published alongside with the agency's report on their investigation. In September of the same year, the agency discovered that Iran had already produced a radioisotope known as polonium 20 which has 138 days half-life. Iran defended their action by asserting that their experiment was on the study of sources of neurons although they unable to provide documented evidence on the research project (IAEA, 2009).
It was further speculated that Russia had provided Iran with deuterium gas as they are unable to produce the gas domestically. Iran and Russia are believed to have entered into an agreement that allowed Iranian middlemen negotiate the sale of this gas with Russian companies. The significance of these compounds is that they are able to provide isotopes of hydrogen that fuse in thermonuclear explosions to produce both energy and neutrons (Nazemroaya, 2012).
The intentions of Iran have led to a number of suspicions in feeding the need to acquire knowledge on nuclear energy and weapons. In addition, the suspicions are furthered by the failure of Iran to cooperate with the atomic agency. In 2008, the agency tabled a report that gave damaging evidence that Iran had engaged in nuclear weapons related activities. The Iran government has rejected the documentation terming it as fake and has declined to assist the agency in carrying out the investigations that followed the report.
The Iranian government prevented the agency from questioning the former leader at the research center for physics. They have alleged that he is a military official and is directly in charge of the nuclear efforts made by Iran. The report also showed the existence of an Iranian company that deals with conversion of uranium and contacts with designers of missile reentry inner cores. The inner core designs are for devices that would “accommodate” nuclear warheads, although they did not have clear evidence to support this allegation. The culmination of these issues led to a lot of mistrust between the American and the Iranian government since 2002 (Sherrill, 2012).
Sanctions on Iran
Iran is not new to sanctions being employed on them by the international community, especially America and its allies. The history of sanctions on Iran is dated dates back in 1979, immediately after the revolution. America sanctioned imports of crude oil from Iran into their country. Later, the sanction mutated to include all Iranians products as well as the 1980s embargo of exports from United States of America. During the Clinton administration in the 1990s, America enacted the Libya – Iran sanctions so as the US could not make any investments in Iranian energy. The implications of this particular sanction were that any country that decided to trade with Iran would only pay Iran in their currency and not through the US dollar. Sanctions have disastrous effects on the economy of the affected countries and Iran has suffered a great deal over the last couple of decades due to the sanctions imposed on their economy (Sherrill, 2012).
In addition, the sanctions have restricted Iran from trading directly at the world markets that often use the United States dollar. The sanctions ensure that the country does not have any supply of the dollar and they are at crippling the economy of a country. The sanctions are as a form of punishment to the country and countries served with them have to change their behavior in order to survive. Iran has been defiant and refuses to change its direction, perception and response to the nuclear weapons (Abdo, 2014).
As a result, the sanctions have affected the Iranian economy and the former president Mohammed Ahmadi Nejad, at one particular time termed the sanctions as “absurd behavior." Despite this, the government has not changed their stand on nuclear weapons. The economy of the country has been the worst hit by the sanctions that were placed more than 2-3 decades ago. The Iranian economy faces major challenges as it continues to deteriorate. The main challenges which have been in existence for a good number of years have been escalating including unemployment, inflation, depreciation of the currency and abolition of subsidies schemes.
Unemployment is a major issue affecting the Iranian people. Since there is no development, there are no jobs. As the population continues to mature, they find that they do not have jobs because no new jobs are availed. The situation becomes worse when the elders and the youth are both competing for the same jobs. Due to their lack of expertise and experience, the youth end up being locked out and are when the employees become old, senile and redundant.
Secondly, the currency has faced a major blow due to inflation. The inflation rate continues to rise by over 15 percent annually. Since the currency is not stable, the eco...