Seyed Hossein Mousavian - The Iranian Nuclear Crisis: A Memoir

I would like to offer my sincere thanks to a number of individuals and institutions for their help in making this book possible. Professors Frank von Hippel of the Program on Science and Global Security at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, and Zia Mian, a researcher in the program, were the principal investigators who read the manuscript, made valuable comments, and raised funding for the project. George Perkovich, vice president for studies and director of the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a top global expert on weapons of mass destruction, made valuable comments on multiple drafts of the manuscript. The Program on Science and Global Security and its director, Christopher Chyba, steadfastly supported my work and provided me with a base of operations. I thank also the Liechtenstein Institute on Self-Determination, the Institute for the Transregional Study of the Contemporary Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia, and Daniel Kurtzer, Abraham Chair in Middle East Policy of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. The Ploughshares Fund, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace all contributed generously with grants to Princeton University for this research. I am grateful to the reviewers, Mark Fitzpatrick, director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies program on nonproliferation and disarmament, and Pierre Goldschmidt, a nonresident senior associate at Carnegie Endowment and former deputy director general of the IAEA, for the useful comments they made on the manuscript, and to M. Mahdavi Emad Kiyaei, who helped on finding and translating some Persian sources. Lastly, I offer my thanks to my research assistant, Noah Arjomand.

I dedicate this book to my beloved family, who endured great difficultly as a result of my unjust and illegal arrest in April 2007 because of the responsibilities tasked to me on Iran's nuclear file. During this period, our negotiating team did the utmost to resolve the crisis through diplomacy while preserving the nation's rights for peaceful nuclear technology and preventing referral to the UN Security Council that would pave the way for sanctions. My family and I paid a high price for such efforts and I am forever grateful for their unrelenting support, dedication, and belief in me.

D r. Seyed Hossein Mousavian has written a unique book, a hybrid of four genres.

As a contemporary history, The Iranian Nuclear Crisis: A Memoir is the first detailed Iranian account of the diplomatic struggle between Iran and its interlocutors during the nuclear crisis that began in 2002 when news emerged that Tehran was secretly constructing facilities to enrich uranium and produce plutonium. Drawing on extensive research and firsthand knowledge, Mousavian's narrative adds much-needed Iranian material to the historical record. It is a treasure trove for scholars, journalists, and policy analysts.

The Iranian Nuclear Crisis is also a memoir. From 1997 to 2005, Mousavian was the head of the Foreign Relations Committee of Iran's Supreme National Security Council. In 2003 he was named the spokesman of Iran's nuclear negotiating team led by the secretary of Iran's National Security Council, Hassan Rouhani. In this position, he gained an intimate knowledge of Iran's dealings with the International Atomic Energy Agency, France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Russia, China, and, indirectly, the United States. Mousavian provides firsthand accounts of many of these interactions. Rarer still, he takes the reader into Iran's internal deliberations, where Khamenei, Khatami, Ahmadinejad, and other leaders wrestle with their internal and external adversaries. The most vivid memoir sections of this volume recount his arrest and interrogations, beginning in 2007, on charges of committing espionage by allegedly providing classified information to the United Kingdom. Publicly accused by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Mousavian was tried two times on these charges and found not guilty, and then later was charged with criticizing the government of Iran, which he admitted. He was put on probation with the proviso that he not speak or write publicly against government policies. These dramatic episodes, and other insider accounts of diplomatic missions in the 1980s and 1990s, tell much about the author and the swirling dynamics of Iranian politics and diplomacy.

This is also an analytical volume. Mousavian at times steps back to conceptualize the challenges Iran faced and the options it weighed in dealing with them. He analyzes the policies and diplomatic moves of the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Russia, China, and other players in this drama. This analysis extends into the future, as Mousavian compares the potential costs and benefits of the options available to Iran and its counterparts to resolve the nuclear crisis and mend the broader relationship between Iran and the international community. He weighs the likely effects of American and/or Israeli military strikes, of covert action, sanctions, and containment, and of diplomatic engagement, concluding that there is still an opportunity for diplomacy to prevent Iran from deciding to produce nuclear weapons.

The final genre is that of the polemic. In comparing and contrasting the approaches that Iran has taken under the Khatami and the Ahmadinejad administrations, Mousavian does not hide his fundamental and specific disagreements with the latter. Upon first taking office in 2005, Ahmadinejad interviewed Mousavian for the position of foreign minister, only to be told, as the book recounts, that Mousavian could not support the new president's view of the world and the policies he was inclined to pursue. It would be unnatural for the author, after having been arrested and interrogated multiple times, not to have a certain animus toward Ahmadinejad and his administration. Nevertheless, the critiques in this volume are sufficiently analytical to be judged on their merits.

Anything having to do with Iran since 1979 can be the subject of intense controversy in the United States. The current atmosphere of bellicosity-replete with assassinations of nuclear scientists in Iran and an alleged Iranian assassination plot against the Saudi ambassador in Washington-make it all the more difficult for Iranians and Americans to express the value of understanding the interests and perspectives of "the other side." Thus, the question arises of why a Washington-based think tank would want to publish a book by an Iranian protagonist. The answer is that the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace is a global think tank. We believe that the most serious international conflicts cannot be resolved-or mitigated-if the antagonists do not understand each other's perceptions, interests, and strategic cultures. Understanding does not necessarily lead to reconciliation; often, understanding clarifies differences. This is likely to be the case with the present volume. Nevertheless, we are convinced that serious, earnest studies such as Hossein Mousavian's can be invaluable to historical knowledge and contemporary policymaking.