Nuclear Swap Agreement with Iran
Nuclear Swap Agreement with Iran

Summary/Abstract: It’s a great pleasure to be able to address such a distinguished audience. I do not have a prepared statement but I think I am prepared to make a statement on the recent nuclear swap agreement made with Iran. This is a topic that I am covering almost on a full-time basis. My first interest in Iran’s nuclear program was back in 1995 when I was a research fellow at the UN Institute for Disarmament Research UNIDIR. My article titled “Is Iran Going Nuclear?”, was published in the Foreign Policy Institute’s quarterly “Dıs Politika – Foreign Policy” journal in its Vol. 20, Nos. 3- 4 issue of 1996. It was a coincidence because at the very same time Russia and Iran had signed a deal, an agreement for cooperation in the nuclear field, on 8th of January 1995. My fellowship began on the 1st of February 1995 and it took only several days for me to see the text of the agreement between Russia and Iran. Actually, the text of the agreement was no different than any other bilateral or multilateral nuclear cooperation agreements. But one item which attracted my attention more than others was Iran’s request, which was also approved by the Russian side, to send every year 20-30 graduate, mostly PhD students, to Russian institutions. That actually triggered in my mind that Iran might have other desires than simply generating nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. But that was of course an immature thinking at the time

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