http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=67&ItemID=9764

U.S. instigated Iran’s nuclear policy in the ’70s

William O Beeman writes with details of enthusiastic US salesmanship of nuclear power to Iran in the 1970s,� including Bushehr and a full fuel cycle.� Says the famous bulldozing of topsoil never happened, and that much of the clandestine activities IRan is accused of happened many years ago.�� The first paragraphs are worth reading:

(SH) — The White House staff members who are trying to prevent Iran from developing its own nuclear-energy capacity, and who refuse to take military action against Iran “off the table,” have conveniently forgotten that the United States was the midwife to the Iranian nuclear program 30 years ago.

Every aspect of Iran’s current nuclear development was approved and encouraged by Washington in the 1970s. President Gerald Ford offered Iran a full nuclear cycle in 1976. Moreover, the only Iranian reactor currently about to become operative — the reactor in Bushire (also known as Bushehr) — was started before the Iranian revolution with U.S. approval, and cannot produce weapons-grade plutonium.

The Bushire reactor, a “light-water” reactor, produces Pu240, Pu241, and Pu242.

Although these isotopes could theoretically be weaponized, the process is extremely long and complicated, and untried. To date, no nuclear weapon has ever been produced with plutonium produced with the kind of reactor at Bushire.