Extent of Iran's nuclear program made US change approach: Historian

The extent of Iran’s nuclear program ultimately made the United States change its approach from one of “dictating” to that of negotiating with the Islamic Republic, says an American historian and investigative journalist.

Gareth Porter, author of Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of Iran Nuclear Scare, argues that some elements within Iran’s power structure had for long sought to reach an agreement with the world over its nuclear program.

However, the desire to resolve the standoff was always met with resistance from the US administrations, Porter says.

“In 2005… the Iranians made their first proposal that offered to limit their nuclear program. That did not succeed with the [George W.] Bush administration or the Europeans because the Bush administration was only interested in regime change,” he said in an interview with Press TV on Thursday.

“The American response… was not to be willing to negotiate on a ‘give and take’ basis, but rather to want to insist on dictating to Iran that: a) it couldn’t have a nuclear program and, b) we are not going to lift sanctions,” the journalist explained.

“That really did not change until the second Obama administration,” Porter said. “It was 2013 when President Obama agreed to negotiate with Iran on a basis that it was not going to put pressure on Iran to give up its nuclear program.”

“What I have observed in my reading of the history of this process,” the historian noted, “is that the only way that Iran could get the attention of the United States to carry out negotiations rather than giving a diktat to Iran was to get the United States to see that it had a nuclear program that the United States should be interested in trying to negotiate about.”

“So it was only when Iran began to build up a very substantial stockpile of low-enriched uranium and also began to enrich uranium to the 20 percent level that the Obama administration finally said, ‘Ok, we’re now going to have to do something about this,” Porter said.

After more than two weeks of marathon talks, Iran and the P5+1 group of countries - the US, Britain, France, Russia, China, and Germany – announced the conclusion of nuclear negotiations in the Austrian capital, Vienna, on Tuesday.

According to the text of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), Iran will be recognized by the United Nations as a nuclear power and will continue its uranium enrichment program.

The White House has launched a sales pitch to Congress, which remains deeply skeptical of the nuclear accord with Iran, and has 60 days to vote to either approve or disapprove of it.

“I think you can expect to see enormous effort being made by the Israelis and by their minions in Washington, DC to target the swing votes, particularly the Democratic swing votes in the Senate… to try to get them exposed to all the arguments that the Israelis will be making” against the Iran agreement, Porter concluded.