1953, when Eisenhower and Nixon supported Iran's first nuclear reactor. Wikicommons/Abbie Rowe. Some rights reserved.
US President Eisenhower was carried away by the prospect of the widespread international use of peaceful nuclear energy and, in December 1953, proclaimed an international programme called Atoms for Peace with two major declared objectives: encouraging as many countries as possible to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, and cornering as much as possible of the lucrative international market in nuclear technology for the US. The major undeclared objective was, in the context of considerable international concern about Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the nuclear arms race, to legitimise the development of a market for peaceful nuclear energy on a large scale. Interestingly enough, the first three reactors built under this programme, by a US company with expertise in the manufacture of bowling equipment, were in Israel, Iran, and Pakistan. When the US exported highly enriched uranium to as many as 30 countries, the Soviet Union followed its example elsewhere.
