Iran and the Bomb: How Tehran Views the Nuclear Question

How did Iran's nuclear program evolve from a U.S.-supported initiative during the Cold War into one of the world's most contentious national security challenges?

In this episode of At the Boundary, GNSI Non-Resident Senior Fellow Manolis Priniotakis sits down with Dr. Seena Azodi, Director of the Middle East Studies MA Program at George Washington University and author of Iran and the Bomb: The United States, Iran, and the Nuclear Question.

In his studies, Dr. Azodi found a lack of information on Iran’s nuclear history and politics from the Iranian’s point of view, most being from the western perspective. The conversation in this episode will take you through his findings as he compiled this information. They will discuss the historical context, events leading up to Tehran’s decisions, and the growing tension between Iran and the United States.  

This is an excellent deep dive into Middle East affairs and nuclear strategy from two experts in their fields. 

Subscribe to At the Boundary for expert conversations on global affairs, defense strategy, cybersecurity, emerging technologies, great-power competition, and the issues shaping the future of national and international security.

Links from this episode:

• “Iran and the Bomb: The United States, Iran and the Nuclear Question” by Dr. Sina Azodi.

• The Journal of Strategic Security: Volume 19, Number 2

• “Leaning Seaward: Japan as a Maritime Great Power” by Dr. Geoffrey Gresh

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At the Boundary  from the Global and National Security Institute at the University of South Florida,  features global and national security issues we’ve found to be insightful, intriguing, fascinating, maybe controversial, but overall just worth talking about.

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The mission of GNSI is to provide actionable solutions to 21st-century security challenges for decision-makers at the local, state, national and global levels. We hope you enjoy At the Boundary.

Look for our other publications and products on our website publications page.

Transcript

 EP 134 - 8 June (Azodi)_Edit-1

Thu, Jun 04, 2026 1:55PM • 42:49

SPEAKERS

Sina Azodi, Jim Cardoso, Manolis Priniotakis

Jim Cardoso  00:03

Jim, welcome to this week's episode of At the Boundary, the podcast from the Global and National Security Institute at the University of South Florida. I'm Jim Cardoso, senior director at GNSI, and your host for At the Boundary. Today on the podcast, we're going to be discussing a new book published later this week, tracing the evolution of Iran's nuclear program and strategy. It's not only a timeline of what happened, and when it examines the program in the broader context of Iran's relationship with the US, from the early days of partnership in the 50s to the staunch opposition and conflict we see today. That book's author, Dr. Seena Azodi, will join us in a few minutes. First, a couple updates we want to tell you about GNSI academic journal, the Journal of Strategic Security published its latest issue last week. An impressive lineup of articles examined diverse topics like Pakistan's military AI divergence, using YouTube as a serious tool for diplomacy, and the dangers of insider threats and national security. Those, and many more, are available online right now. We'll drop a link in the show notes. Speaking of JSS, congratulations to our editor in chief, Dr. Jeffrey Gresch, who recently published his latest book, Leaning Seaward: Japan as a maritime great power, published by Yale University Press. Jeff's book is the first to examine Japan as a comprehensive maritime power in the 21st century. The book argues that Japan has grown its maritime capability and influence across an array of economic, industrial, and security sectors throughout the Indo-Pacific region, and that the nation is vital to both regional and international stability. It's available now on all major booksellers. Also, be on the lookout this week for our latest research on deep-sea mining and critical minerals and resources. GNSI research fellow Dr. Linden Young is the author of the new research article, Race to the Bottom: Is Seabed Mining Worth the Cost? In partnership with Dr. Mark Luther from USS College of Marine Sciences, Linda is spearheading our work in this area. In fact, she's playing a key role in the development of our next Florida Security Forum, which will be a three day deep dive, and yes, that pun was completely intended into critical minerals and resources scheduled for October the 20th to the 22nd So be sure to read Linda's articles this week and keep track in our website, social media, and newsletter for more details on that event. All right, it's time now for our featured conversation today. Dr. Seena Azodi is a globally acclaimed expert on the Middle East, and more specifically, Iran. He's the director of the Middle East Studies MA program at George Washington University, and you can frequently see him on BBC, CNN, Al Jazeera, and Sky News. He's no stranger to GNSI, as he was a featured speaker at our 2024 Policy Dialogs Conference, focused on Iran. His new book, Iran and the Bomb: The United States, Iran, and the Nuclear Question, will publish later this week and examines the complex evolution of Iran's nuclear program. Joining him for the interview today is Gennasi non-resident senior fellow Manoli Prinia Takus. Manoli is the CEO of Intelligence and National Security Directions, LLC, and a retired member of the Senior National Intelligence Service. Let's listen in on the conversation today on At the Boundary, you

Manolis Priniotakis  04:03

Thanks for being part of the podcast to talk about your book, Iran and the bomb.

Sina Azodi  04:08

Good to be with you, Manoli. Thank you for having me.

Manolis Priniotakis  04:11

So, before we dive into the the content of the book and and the way you've approached it, I would be interested in hearing just a little bit of background on where it came from, your inspiration for writing at your motivation.

Sina Azodi  04:24

Sure, so two things: my parents are nuclear scientists, they actually met the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, so I was, you know, always, you know, connected to the program, you know, very intimately, and that actually that personal connection led me to write a lot about the Iranian nuclear program when I was in grad school, and there I realized that most, if not all, of the literature produced on Iranian nuclear program is a. Written by Western experts who didn't bother check with Iranian sources, talk to Iranians, how they think. There is plenty of oral history projects on Iranian policy makers, decision makers, nuclear scientists, and so that I thought had led to a one-sided Western-oriented narrative of the Iranian nuclear program, and so I really tried to stay away from these orientalist perspectives that really portrayed Iranian leadership as these, you know, crazy, you know, ideological zealous who are bent to bring the end of the world, and just give you some, you know, examples of it. Some of the books that I've seen on the Iranian nuclear program, even the cover of the book is just so orientalist, this, you know, brown-looking, you know, angry Middle Eastern man with some nuclear blast in his eyes, or a bomb detonating. So, I really, this is why I try to stay away and show that the Iranian leadership, they're not crazy people, they are rational actors. They think about the world, they do have internal debates, they look at the region, and they're strongly convinced that the world is there somehow to get them.

Manolis Priniotakis  06:38

So, you talked a little bit about your, your family connections, but it's clear from the book that you had the ability to interact with some people that, as you said, most scholars or journalists or authors on the topic do not or have not, and clearly relying on both original language sources, but also from what I saw as a number of declassified documents that are available in the public public realm now, so you just give a picture of the kind of sources that you relied on, both the people you talk to, but also some of the documentary evidence that perhaps had not appeared in previous kinds of, so

Sina Azodi  07:19

I look at a lot of Froos documents foreign relations of the United States, but the problem with the Frus documents and Nara documents, National Archive documents, are that they ultimately end up with the Ford administration, and since then the documents are not declassified, the documents that are that I'm interested are not open to public, so on the American side I had to rely on a lot of interviews that I did with American officials and to get their sense of Iranian nuclear program, there was a batch of documents related to Secretary Clinton's emails that was declassified. I was able to use some of them for more recent years, including, for example, the negotiations that ultimately led to the signing of the JCPOA. I did a lot of American policy makers, I looked at their memoir, their interviews, but on the Iranian side, of course, I looked at, I interviewed two Iranian foreign ministers. One of them didn't want to be named. One of them is on the record. I spoke to two Iranian nuclear scientists. I spoke to one member of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, who was in charge of the nuclear file for a few years, and I also looked at a lot of oral history projects that that are available online, so I tried to get a balanced perspective of what Iranians were thinking and what at the time the American side was thinking of Iran's thinking,

Manolis Priniotakis  09:22

well, that definitely comes through. And you mentioned the first documents prior to the Ford administration. I know on some of the past connections that I've had with related to Iran, you know, some of the things that are somewhat surprising is just the degree of connectivity that we kind of, I think, a lot of contemporary analysts overlook, in particular, even the origins of the Tehran Research Reactor, but one of the things that does come through, especially in the sort of chronological order that you cover the development and changes over the program over. Course of the program, but the quite striking degree of continuity between the Shah's nuclear ambitions and those of the Islamic Republic.

Sina Azodi  10:09

Yes,

Manolis Priniotakis  10:10

that is something that does come across clearly, and I guess from the chronological perspective, I was talking to my wife about the having read the book, and one of the things I characterize as things happening, and then something happening, and just that there's there is this sort of episodic nature that I think you do address in the chapters, but going back to that first question I was asking, be interested in your thoughts on on that observation of the question of continuity from the Shah's ambitions to the Islamic Republic,

Sina Azodi  10:43

so yes, the main argument of the book is that yes, there was a revolution happening in 1979 but the ultimate objective of the nuclear program has not changed. Why I argue that because the fundamental worldview of Iranian political leaders has not changed. If you look at the epigraphs of my first and second chapters, from one of them is from, excuse me, my introduction, and the first chapter, one of them is from Masuda Pesachian, who is the current president, and one of the comments made by the Shah in 1976 So the argument, and I showed that these leaders are extremely concerned and traumatized by the experiences of their past, which informs their current security thinking, their threat perceptions, and the policies that they try to devise to address them, and their thinking is, if Iran is not strong, it has to go, it will go through the same humiliations that it went through in 19th century and 20th century, the treaties that Iran was forced to sign with Russia with foreign powers the occupation of Iran, which really traumatizes the Shah and leads him to arm or try to arm Iran as much as he could, because from his worldview, which really was the same view that Iranian leaders, still Islamic Republic leaders, think is that international law means nothing, international norms mean nothing, and when push comes to shove, none of them will protect Iran, and ultimately Iran has to stand on its own feet to defend itself

Manolis Priniotakis  12:43

at the same time with the change from the after the revolution, the language about effectively justifying the program does shift from independence to, from excuse me, from modernization to independence,

Sina Azodi  13:03

so I say from westernization to independence. So, for the shop, when you look at his, you know, I looked at his as the books that he has written, and for him, you can see it's very obvious that for him modernization meant westernization, meaning that if Iran was like the West, it meant that Iran was modernized, right, and back then nuclear programs were in fashion, all Western countries, especially France, which was a model for the Shah Dugal was the Shah's role model, had nuclear programs, so the Shah wanted to emulate that policy and make Iran like the West, right? That was his modernization plan for the Islamic Republic. As you pointed out correctly, modernization had to go through Iran's own experience, step by step, Iran standing on its own feet, trying to absorb that technology, and then do it on its own,

Manolis Priniotakis  14:14

and at the same time, it's in both eras, if you separate into two, it's still responsive to what's happening in the international community. So early on, the Shah is an early proponent of Atoms for Peace. This is a US and international program to bring in nuclear energy more broadly, and then things change, and we see changes in US nonproliferation policy, and one of the things that I was really struck by, and frankly I find really historically interesting, is the impact of the Indian test in 1974 so maybe if you address a little bit about, you know, the Shah's aspiration. Operations for a weapons program,

Sina Azodi  15:03

right,

Manolis Priniotakis  15:04

which you do address, but then also how things, in particular, like the 74 Indian test had an impact on US policy that then had a knock on impact on how everybody else was having to behave.

Sina Azodi  15:16

Excellent question. So, on India's perspective, from on India's P and E, it's quite fascinating, as I detail in the book. It was an happened as an American delegation was in Tehran to negotiate the sale of American nuclear reactors to Iran, and as Dixie Lee Ray, who was then the Atomic Energy Commission chief, she's sitting in a meeting with Iranians, and all of a sudden somebody passes a note to her, and then it turns out that India just tested a bomb, and that fundamentally changed the perspective of United States, despite the fact that Nixon was not a believer in arms control, that much. Kissinger was not for them. It was all about allies doing whatever, pretty much whatever they wanted to do, but they also became under pressure, and this is why you see the creation of the nuclear supplier group, NSG, where the US and Western countries tried to prevent the transfer of the technology that they deemed to be sensitive to the countries that they didn't have, and the Shah really resented that approach, telling the Americans that your demands from us are beyond the NPT. This is a violation of our sovereignties, and so on and so forth. But really, India's P and E didn't impact the shots, at least from what the sources that I've seen didn't. His didn't impact his security thinking, and Iranians really tried to play it down when India tested with the with the Iranian foreign minister saying that, oh, of course, we are, you know, opposed to any non-peaceful uses of nuclear technology. Prime Minister Hoveda saying, "Oh, this is a domestic matter, and the Shah simply had said, "I have no comment on it. So they had really tried to play it down, despite the fact that India was on the other side of, let's say, Iron Curtain, it was, you know, I had good relations with the Soviet Union, and Iran was supportive of Pakistan, which was the enemy of India, but I think the main threat that the Shah perceived was coming from the West, meaning Soviet-aligned Arab countries in the region, namely I would say Iraq and Syria. Iraq was particularly posed a threat to Iran because it had a nuclear program. It was receiving a lot of armaments from the Soviet Union, and this is why Iranians were, and I highlighted in the book that Iran, under the Shah, was working on nuclear weapons, and Shah had made some remarks about some little countries in the region developing nuclear weapons would leave Iran with no choice, but ultimately I think that he was trying to prepare the country for the time that if he made, if he wanted to make the decision and develop the bomb, so yeah, that's that's I guess what happened.

Manolis Priniotakis  18:39

Well, so then in the aftermath of the revolution, as you're talking about the Soviet relationship with countries in the region, in particular with Iraq, we're striking that the coup in Iraq in the 50s has an impact on decisions in Tehran as it relates to pursuing nuclear program, as you outlined, but if you talk a bit about the impacts that of the Iran-Iraq war in the 80s, and what the, how that, what the impact was on on all sides of the nuclear equation for Iran.

Sina Azodi  19:17

Well, I start immediately after the revolution when the Shah's nuclear program becomes yet another victim of the Islamic Republic's new policies, that everything that the Shah had done was bad. The nuclear program, of course, made Iran dependent on the West. Back then, they even argued that Iran has oil and gas, it doesn't need nuclear technology, and they put a geologist that I don't know, Sahabi, in charge of the AEOI, the Atomic Energy Organization, which really hated the organization that he was leading, and he was one of the people who was responsible for the downsizing and curtailing of the activities of AEOI, but then. And when the Iran-Iraq war starts, there's a fundamental shift in the perspective of the new leadership on everything nuclear. Why? Because Iranians realize two things: one, the experience and the science and the technology that they had absorbed through studying nuclear issues can come handy in supporting the war front. One of the people that I interviewed, he actually told me that AOI was collaborating closely with Iranian Air Force in fixing radar stations, defense industries, so if the AOI becomes very critical to the support of the war, despite the fact that many people had left it, so and also a fundamental and really a critical point in Iran security thinking was Iraq's use of chemical weapons against Iranians, which was with the support of the West, France, West Germany, UK, US, all these countries were either helping Iraq in providing chemical agents or ignoring Saddam's use of chemical weapons, and the Americans knew it. So Iranians realized, or were concerned, rather, that if Iraq uses chemical weapons on Iran and they don't say anything, Iraq could also use nuclear weapons on Iran, and nobody will say anything. And this is why one of the scientists that I quote, and there's actually a subheading there that says we were all alone, so Iran had to prepare itself for the moment that Iraq got nuclear weapons, and so by 1982 there's a fundamental shift in the Islamic Republic's approach to the nuclear program. They reconstituted, and everyone who opposed it or was skeptical of nuclear energy in Iran, was either sent abroad as a diplomat to exile or forced to leave the organization, and the people who supported the nuclear energy were actually brought into leadership positions, and 1982 is the critical point in the history of Islamic Republic's nuclear program.

Manolis Priniotakis  22:25

How so?

Sina Azodi  22:26

Oh, because there's a.. so this gives

Manolis Priniotakis  22:28

a change in perspective,

Sina Azodi  22:30

in perspective, in change of leadership. So this guy, Fareed Duna Sahabi, the geologist, is forced out. A new head of AOI arise, Raza Amul Lahi, who was really a proponent of the nuclear program, he was a nuclear engineer himself, he supported it. Yeah,

Manolis Priniotakis  22:49

yeah, okay. And then, so moving forward, actually, before we move forward, one thing that is also striking, whether it's the early days of in the pre-Islamic pre pre-revolutionary period, through that, the period that we're just talking about, later into the JCPOA, one of the key issues has been, in particular, as you mentioned, the MPT enrichment, and to a lesser extent, reprocessing. It's quite remarkable how repeatedly it comes up, and you started to address a little bit about, you know, the connection to sort of the, you know, we're alone or national park. Just can you talk a little bit more about why you see this coming up time and time again in the in the history of the program,

Sina Azodi  23:42

another excellent question, and I think it goes back to the this national strong nationalistic sentiments of Iranians, regardless of the regime, as I documented in the book, when the US was demanding from Iran that Iran would give up on its reprocessing rice, plutonium reprocessing. De Shah and his nuclear chief were adamant that no, this is our NPT rights, we're not going to give this up. And after the revolution, the reprocessing changed to enrichment, that again the US is asking Iran things that is beyond the NPT. Again, they say this is our MPT rights. Who's the US to tell us what to do, so on and so forth. And why? Because they see the themselves as a special case coming from a, you know, old civilization that, you know, deserves to be treated not differently. They strongly believe that the US is discriminating against Iran, and because of their nationalistic sentiments, they're very, very much opposed to it. This is why they put up with two decades of sanctions; they went through two wars in the past year. Just to maintain what they believe is their NPT rights,

Manolis Priniotakis  25:07

which leads to a question of at what point you mentioned that there was a potentially a sweet spot where a deal could have been done, but perhaps the reconstituted program, I'm jumping ahead a ways, but perhaps during the Biden administration, but the reconstituted program had, after the collapse of the JCPOA, gone too far forward, you know. Has there been a time where there was actually an opportunity for a durable nuclear settlement or nuclear agreement, and if not, maybe I'm being overly simplistic about this, but has it all been worth it? Is the tie to the domestic politics so important to the national identity, so important that even the pursuit of the Ahmad plan and a weapons program, and everything like, why, why do this.

Sina Azodi  26:06

So, there was a point in 2022 in March 2022 I think that, and I explained it in chapter eight of the book, that Iranians and the p5 plus one had reached on a draft agreement, but Iranians miscalculated. They thought that time is on their side, and then they can get more concessions from the Europeans and the Americans, despite the fact that the Americans and the American official that I spoke to, he told me that they made it abundantly clear to the Iranian side that the deal is not going to get any better than this. You should just take the deal, but Iranians thought that by waiting just a little longer they can get a better deal, which, as I said, they miscalculated, they rapidly expanded the program, which made returning to the Iran nuclear deal, or the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the JCPOA, even more difficult, because you couldn't, you could have, you couldn't undo the, or unlearn the knowledge that you, that they had gained, so it made it very difficult. Now, whether it was worth it or not, this is a debate that many Iranians continue to have, whether enrichment even was worth it. Why pay all this price? Now, I fall on the side that says that argues that nuclear programs are not cheap. There are long-term investments. You cannot see the benefits of this right now, but 20 years from now, 30 years from now, this is when you will see it. When, and that's what the Iranian leadership has argued, that if and when we run out of oil and gas, what are we going to do with this? How are we going to pay and provide energy for ourselves? The counter argument, of course, to that is, well, nuclear energy is providing only 1% of Iran's power generation capacity, so it is very difficult to say, but I think that ultimately for Iran's modernization this was necessary. The maybe the current generation may not see it, but in the future I think the next generations will see it, and one this Iranian scientist that I spoke with. I don't think I use this code, but he told me that it was very interesting to me, and it stuck with me. He said that Iran entered the 20th century on unpaved roads and mules and animals, but Iran entered the 21st century with uranium enrichment, right,

Manolis Priniotakis  29:12

and has it been so tightly connected to domestic political issues, is our is the general public deeply aware of this? Well, okay, now they're clearly deeply aware with what's happening, but have they historically been, has it been as closely tied to the domestic political discussion, or how tightly coupled to the domestic political discussion,

Sina Azodi  29:43

very much so, and the Islamic Republic has done a great deal to connect the issue of enrichment to the nationalization of oil. They've repeatedly said that this is even more important than nationalization. Of oil in 1951 and Iran's experience with, you know, controlling its own assets, but I don't believe, and it, this nationalistic sentiment has been used to provide domestic support for the nuclear program, but I don't believe that the majority of the population at least has a good sense of the history of this, and why Iran is doing this. One of the things that I mentioned in the book is that, I mean, a lot of people just recently, Secretary Rubio, not recent, when I say recently, it was last year, he said that Iran can buy nuclear fuel just like any other country, which is technically true under the NPT, but the experiences that Iranians have had with buying nuclear fuel or trying to get other countries to complete their nuclear reactors is a, it's an awful experience rather, and one episode that I mentioned in the book, so when almost immediately in 1983 1984 when Iranians go to the French and they ask for the nuclear fuel that they had spent, they paid money for it, and with Eurodif they say, Can you give us our nuclear fuel back the money, the fuel that we purchased, and they say, well, you don't have any nuclear reactors, why do you need nuclear fuel? And they say, okay, can somebody help us with finishing the reactors that Germans started, and they say, well, you have oil and gas, why do you need nuclear energy? And then the writers would say, okay, fine, can you give us our money back, and the French would say, oh, sorry, there's a court injunction, we cannot refund your money, so Iranians were kind of stuck in, you know, there was a chicken and egg story, they were stuck in between, they couldn't move forward. Now, I guess I'll just stop here, but I think that the general population does not have a good sense of the reasoning behind this, and there is a lot of propaganda out there. There is a lot of propaganda,

Manolis Priniotakis  32:12

but just in terms of the connectivity with foreign partners, one of the really strong points of or takeaways from reading the book is just the interactions over time, whether it's with the French, whether it's with the Germans, whether if the Boucher story in and of itself is one of, you know, establishing one relationship, building it, then stopping, then restarting, and then you know ultimately another group picking another country's personnel picking it up and finishing the same was on workforce development, that there was agreements to send people in different directions. Yeah, and then that worked in some cases, and in other cases,

Sina Azodi  32:53

and that that was another angle of continuity that I saw, that yes, the Shah sent them to MIT, and MIT charged them double the tuition. Well, I mean, after the revolution, they couldn't send them to MIT, so they just sent them to Italy to learn and bring back that science and knowledge to the country, so they can do it on their own. That's another angle that I saw.

Manolis Priniotakis  33:18

The towards the end, there's a phrase that you use that I thought was striking, that you said that Iran, perhaps since 2003 or so, is practiced nuclear forbearance, and maybe I, maybe I'm reading into the timing a bit, but what did you mean by that?

Sina Azodi  33:40

So nuclear forbearance, meaning that Iran has not actively tried to develop nuclear weapons. We know that under the Ahmad plan, and I documented in the book that Iran was actively pursuing activities that covered different angles of producing nuclear weapons, right? And I say, and by the way, I have to say this: they've always, on the record and off the record, denied any weaponization under the Shah and Islam Republic. So this guy I interviewed, I said, 'Well, okay, so I know that publicly they deny it, but what about off the record? And said no, I don't care. You can say on the record or off the record, we never have wanted to have the bomb, but of course the IAEA documents that I cite in the book, they show that the Iranians were pursuing nuclear weapons. So when the US invaded Iraq, they.. I guess there were so much concern that they would be on the target list of the US, and I cite one sentence, one quote from Hashem, Johnny, who said we have to be careful of a dinosaur that is led by the brain of a sparrow. So, so they were so concerned that they put aside everything, the so-called halt order of fall 2003 comes in, and ever since we have not had a structured and organized attempt to develop nuclear weapons. I do mention in the book that they try to fill in the gaps of producing nuclear weapons, but they never had it. So, this is why I say nuclear forbearance.

Manolis Priniotakis  35:27

Yeah, that's what's interesting, that you talk about nuclear forbearance, but then there's a number of things that occur that are inconsistent with cessation, well, suspension, or cessation or challenge that idea, there's, you know, a series of frankly forced acknowledgements, whether it's something from the IA or the MEK, or there's been the various things that they then had to acknowledge after the fact. I think that's from a maybe this is the Western perspective, that that's what's really been challenging to accept some of, even you know, that's even in 2007 with the NIE, that's declassified. Say, okay, there's the fatwa in 2003 and then moving on from that, we see a number of things that occur that challenge that notion that there's not an active program.

Sina Azodi  36:20

The MEK revelation was in 2002 the August 2002 which really put the spotlight on the nuclear program, and what I do mention in the book is that their attempts to produce enough highly enriched uranium had to be postponed for the five warheads that they wanted to pursue, according to IAEA. So they had to postpone it from March 2002 to March 2003 and then they get caught in between. So this is what I say in the book. I don't. So one of the things that I cite in the book is Tulsi Gabbard, now the former DNI, who's

Manolis Priniotakis  37:06

almost another month or so,

Sina Azodi  37:08

who's who she argued in March of 2025 that Iran does not have an active, they have not made the political decision, and this is despite the fact that there was a lot of public support based on what I've seen for weaponization, but they didn't do

Manolis Priniotakis  37:28

it. As we close out, one of the real challenges of writing about an active situation is, you know, having to stop and publish at some point.

Sina Azodi  37:41

Yeah,

Manolis Priniotakis  37:42

and obviously you provided extensive history, but you didn't have to, you know, stop and hand over manuscript to an editor at some point, and and then obviously the world continues to go on from there. So, you know, there's still obviously extraordinary value in reading the book to understand the breadth and depth and sweep of the history of the program. I would be interested in your thoughts, though, about some of what's happened in the in the period since you cut off, and if there are ways in which you would, you know, what would the next volume look like in terms of understanding what's happened since

Sina Azodi  38:23

then, so I finished a manuscript in April of 2025 excuse me, in May, and then the June war happened, and then I thought, well, you know, the June war needs to be discussed, so this is why I wrote the epilog. In for, I mean, if I have to, and I am planning to do another one. I do want to cover the recent war, but the recent events do not fundamentally challenge my main argument, and that is Iran is not going to do it. I can't say there's no way, zero chance, but it is very unlikely that Iranians would agree to dismantle their nuclear program and go the so-called Libya model, they saw what happened to Qaddafi, and they, they made a point that, you know, Qaddafi did this, he made a mistake, and then they went after him, so in the, I think, in the most likely scenario, I think Iranians, one way or another, maintain some capacity on their own soil. Now, the parameters of that capacity, I don't know. We're hearing some moratorium of enrichment in Iran that I think is something they're open to, but I don't think that this mantleman. It will will happen. It just goes so much against their national pride, the history, and the experiences, and other cases, especially Libya, that they've seen.

Manolis Priniotakis  40:13

Well, in your book, you've provided a really very, very useful portrayal of the strategic calculus for the entirety of the post World War Two period, and I think provided a real service to anybody trying to understand the role of nuclear technology and nuclear weapons and nuclear program in general in the country, both from a practical and symbolic perspective. So, thank you for that, and thank you for being part of this conversation.

Sina Azodi  40:48

Thank you for having me. Great to have it.

Jim Cardoso  40:55

Special thanks for both our guests today, Dr. Sina Zody, Director of the Middle East Studies MA program at George Washington University, along with Manoli Prinia Takus, GNSI non-resident senior fellow and CEO of Intelligence and National Security Directions, LLC. Dr. Azzoti's book, Iran and the Bomb: The United States, Iran, and the Nuclear Question, will be available later this week on all major booksellers. Next week on the podcast, we'll be discussing the use of nuclear weapons and nuclear platforms in space. As a follow-up to Tampa Summit Six, this past March, we'll catch up with the authors of a special report for the American Foreign Policy Council that warns it is increasingly likely the US will confront the reality of a nuclear explosive device in space. Peter Gerren and Richard Harrison will join us next week to get into the details of that alarming report. If you don't want to miss that episode or any other episode, be sure to like and subscribe to At the Boundary on your favorite podcast platform. And thanks for sharing some time with us today. You can find GNSI on YouTube, LinkedIn, and X. Be sure to follow, like, and subscribe, and tell your friends and colleagues as well. And be sure to sign up for our monthly newsletter. You can find all this on our website, usf.edu/gnsi That's going to wrap up this episode of At the Boundary. Each new episode will feature global and national security issues we found to be insightful, intriguing, maybe controversial, but overall just worth talking about. I'm Jim Cardoso, and we'll see you at the boundary.