Iran announced yesterday that its crash program to develop nuclear fuel is far more ambitious than previously acknowledged. Specifically, the number of centrifuges now being employed to enrich uranium is nearly ten times the 328 that were known before yesterday to exist. But is it possible the effort to produce nuclear fuel on an industrial scale is being driven by a need for…more fuel? 

Such a thought had not even crossed my mind until last week, when an article detailing the country’s ruinous mismanagement of its oil resources turned up in my in-basket. Previously, my skepticism toward Iran’s uranium enrichment program had been tempered by reports that the country was burning off excesses of natural gas at the wellhead. Whether true or not, the impression stayed with me that the last thing in the world Iran needed was alternative sources of energy.

Milking a Cash Cow

Yet, the facts suggest this might be so, and the point was driven home in the article (which unfortunately I am unable to retrieve at the moment). The gist of it was that the mullahs have been milking the cash cow of oil production since the Shah’s departure a generation ago, and that years of underinvestment are now threatening to drastically curtail output. To make things worse, a government subsidy that has brought the price of gasoline down to 27 cents a gallon has caused domestic demand to explode. A surprising result is that Iran must import refined fuel.

I don’t mean to suggest that our fears over the rapid expansion of Iran’s nuclear program are unwarranted, or that the country’s intentions are as benign as Iranian President Ahmadinejad would have us believe. Indeed, any leader of a sovereign nation who has threatened to wipe another country off the map, as Ahmadinejad did Israel, hardly deserves the benefit of the doubt. But putting our worst suspicions aside for a moment, and ignoring the fact that Iran sits atop almost limitless quantities of fossil fuel, it seems indisputable that the country would derive legitimate benefits from nuclear power.  

If Iran is therefore serious about developing a peaceful nuclear program, it should have no qualms about inviting the most rigorous scrutiny of its nuclear facilities as doubters – of which I am stridently one – can devise.  Until such time as that happens, we should reserve our utmost skepticism for any phrase Ahmadinejad utters that contains the word “peace”.