The American spokesperson’s advice to India to impress upon Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, during his visit to Delhi, that he desist from going ahead with Iran’s uranium enrichment programme has with some justification infuriated many of our members of Parliament. Minister for External Affairs Pranab Mukherjee has given a measured response that the responsibility for determining whether Iran had deviated from the path of peaceful application of uranium enrichment vests with the International Atomic Energy Agency. But he has discreetly omitted to mention that the IAEA has not yet found itself in a position to give a clean chit to Iran. In all this controversy, the Indian public has not yet been given a clear picture of Iran’s nuclear effort and why India, very rightly, voted against Iran in the IAEA in 2006 and 2007. Nor has the central figure in this issue, Dr A.Q. Khan, received adequate attention in this country.

Iranian efforts to acquire a clandestine nuclear-weapon capability go back to 1987. At that time, Iran was fighting the last year of its eight-year war with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Saddam’s aggression was supported by the United States and many Arab countries. The Muslim Ummah, the world over, did not condemn Saddam’s aggression and his use of chemical weapons on Iran, or the hundreds of missiles he sent raining on that country. The Indian government of that day did not worry about Shia feelings. When Iran took the issue of the use of weapons of mass destruction to the United Nations, the US and European countries sat on their hands and took no action against Saddam. At that stage, Iran approached Khan to help it with the uranium enrichment programme.

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