Linzer and her researcher, Robert Thomason remind us that in 1976—with Gerald Ford president, Dick Cheney his chief of staff, Donald Rumsfeld secretary of defense, Paul Wolfowitz responsible for nonproliferation at the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, and Henry Kissinger national security adviser—the Ford administration bought the Shah’s argument that Iran needed a nuclear program to meet its future energy requirements.

This is precisely what Iranian officials claim today. There is legitimacy to that claim. Energy experts note that oil extraction in Iran is already at or near peak and confirm that the country will need alternatives to oil in the coming decades. At the same time, it seems altogether likely that the Iranian leaders also believe they need a nuclear weapons capability and are preparing to produce one.

Here’s to the Shah...and Westinghouse

Ford’s advisers persuaded the hesitant president to offer Iran a deal that would have meant at least $6.4 billion for U.S. corporations like Westinghouse and General Electric, had not the Shah been unceremoniously ousted three years later. The offer included a reprocessing facility for a complete nuclear fuels cycle—essentially the same capability that the U.S., Israel, and other countries now insist Iran cannot be allowed to acquire.

Not surprisingly, given Vice President Dick Cheney’s success in orchestrating the overture and accompaniment for the invasion of Iraq, he is now choreographer/director of this year’s campaign against Iran. Last week Cheney told reporters that he was uncertain as to whether the Iranians already have nuclear weapons, but, as he put it, “We have made the judgment that they are seeking to acquire” such weapons. (In the intelligence business a source is evaluated largely on his/her past reporting record. And one does well to recall that it was Cheney who assured us before the invasion that Iraq had “reconstituted” its nuclear weapons program.)

To the degree that Cheney’s reasoning is based on the supposition that Iran has no civil use for its nuclear development program, his new “judgment” requires a 180-degree turnabout regarding the future energy needs of the Iranians. But White House PR guidance apparently suggests that when there is a disconnect, no problem; ignore it. Following that dictum, Cheney recently said:

“They’re already sitting on an awful lot of oil and gas. Nobody can figure why they need nuclear as well to generate energy.”

Go Figure

With the cat out of the bag on the advice given President Ford by these same officials, one might conclude they would be embarrassed into abandoning that argument. Think again. The White House embarrassment threshold is quite high. And the simplistic syllogism—like the weapons-of-mass-destruction-in-Iraq canard of recent memory—has the distinct advantage of simplicity.

The American people prefer something they can understand—true or not. It’s simple: Iran has so much oil that it does not need nuclear power—just nuclear weapons. There are canards for all seasons, and the administration is unlikely to jettison the latest one until it can be proved to have outlived its usefulness. Better to wait to see if Linzer’s story elicits more resonance than can be expected from the relative few who made it to the bottom of page A15 of the Washington Post on Easter Sunday. The story is hardly likely to end up on cable TV news.

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