A Calculated Risk

THE NEW YORKER

BY STEVE COLL

In 1974, the Ford Administration conducted nuclear talks with Iran. Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, heir to the Peacock Throne and an American ally, had asserted his country’s right to build nuclear power plants. Henry Kissinger and Brent Scowcroft sought a deal to reduce the risk that Iran could ever make an atomic bomb. They had to manage a restive Congress. A secret White House memo summarizing the problem noted that “special safeguards [that] might be satisfactory to Congress . . . are proving unacceptable to Iran.”

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