Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare

HEART OF EMPIRE, SIX QUESTIONS — May 6, 2014

Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare

Gareth Porter on the true history of Iran’s nuclear program

By Andrew Cockburn, Harpers

http://harpers.org/blog/2014/05/manufactured-crisis-the-untold-story-of-the-iran-nuclear-scare/

In all the discussion of Iran’s nuclear program, the consequent international economic blockade directed by the United States, and the ongoing negotiations to resolve the issue, Washington’s official history of the program has rarely been challenged. In Manufactured Crisis, The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare (Just World Books), award-winning investigative journalist Gareth Porter traces the true history of the program, as well as how and by whom the official narrative was constructed. I put six questions to Porter about his book.

1. Although the Iraqi nuclear “threat” was discredited as an utter fraud years ago, the idea that across the border Iran has sought, at least in the past, to build a nuclear weapon has long been widely accepted in political and media circles. Are you saying that the claim of secret work on nuclear weapons is equally fraudulent, and that the Iranians have never had a nuclear-weapons program?