Power of Ignorance: Iran’s right to peaceful use of nuclear power under imperialist assault

Primary purpose

The primary purpose of this critique of the USA military-industrial-media complex is to demonstrate how imperialism uses its total power to miscreate the power of ignorance. The ignorance is not the absence of, but the presence of harmful, knowledge.

Historically, it was triggered by the need of its then young intelligence services to manipulate the imperial disorder to provoke the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki – 80 years ago.

Iran’s sovereign right to the peaceful use of nuclear power for public good serves as a mini case study.

Manhattan Project of Princeton University

During WWII the USA army had its top-secret Manhattan Project for the construction of nuclear bombs. It had three secret missions, called Alsos Missions, spread across fascist Italy, occupied France, and Nazi Germany, with headquarters in London. The original Alsos corps consisted of seven soldiers and six scientists, who had prior knowledge of the R&D programs of USA and Britain. The programs had served as the excuse for arresting eminent German scientists, imprisoning them without trial, and interrogating them. Lt. Col. Boris Pash was the first commander of Alsos. Samuel Goudsmith, a criminologist, was the chief of the sub-corps of scientists.

Alsos Project
The USA army established its own Manhattan Engineer District under the command of Captain Horace Calvert. Goudsmith headed the Alsos Project of the new American Intelligence Services (AIS), under the command of Pash. Goudsmith in his revelatory book, Alsos, concedes that the German scientists did not think of weapons of mass destruction. The nuclear scientists working in the Metallurgical Laboratory at the University of Chicago went by rumors, whispers, assumptions, beliefs, facetiousness, misunderstanding, fear, opinions, ‘Washington thoughts’, ‘might be’, ‘must be’, and intellectual vanity to speed up the manufacture of a nuclear reactor. It was an imaginary race against German scientists. (Alsos Mission: Robert Furman et al: Atomic Heritage Foundation: June 6, 2014)

Ransacking of German universities
As AIS, CIA, and FBI had weak capacity and ability for intelligence gathering they ransacked German universities for evidence of a suspected Nazi nuclear bomb program – to the consternation of German scientists of integrity. They found none.

The private intelligence agency of International Telephone & Telegraph (ITT), which did business in the Americas and Western and Eastern Europe had greater capacity for intelligence than did the three government agencies. ITT acted as ‘double agent’ and sold and supplied the Nazis with raw materials such as zinc sulphate and mercury but not uranium.

Atomic Energy Commission (AEC)
Clinton Bastin, chemical engineer and nuclear scientist, served AEC for 25 years in various technical and scientific fields. He is an authority on reprocessing and an insider to imperial machinations.

Bastin’s email to Israel
In 2008 Bastin emailed his concern about false information on Iran’s peaceful use of nuclear power to the Consul-General of Israel in Atlanta, which was followed up with a detailed discussion at a meeting in March 2009. After the meeting Benjamin Netanyahu, instead of attending to the genuine concern, issued a statement to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that Iran’s ‘nuclear weapons’ were meant ‘to kill Jews like Hitler’s during WWII’.
Bastin then emailed Netanyahu that Nazi Germany did not have a program for nuclear weapons but one for peaceful nuclear power.

Bastin’s letter to IAEA
On March 27, 2009 Bastin addressed a letter, titled “False Claims of Weapon Threat”, to Yukiya Amano (IAEA DG), Netanyahu, Iranian UN Ambassador Khazaee, and President Obama.
The letter called for the refutation of IAEA’s false claims that:

Supported devastating sanctions and dangerous threats against the Iranian people.
Could lead to military actions and war.
Undermined international safeguards.
Supported the construction of useless missile defense systems, which impede negotiations to reduce nuclear power.
Denied the importance of peaceful uses of nuclear materials and technology.
Precluded negotiations to resolve conflicts resulting from many years of mistakes and misunderstandings.

He insisted on a quick correction of the IAEA report that explained why the claims were false. There was no correction.

Bastin’s letter to President Obama
On January 13, 2012 Bastin addressed a letter to Obama and the Iranian Ambassador to UN, in which he stated that:

There was no threat from Iran’s fully safeguarded nuclear power and research program;
The false claims of threat have “disrupted Iran’s economy and Iranians’ day-to-day lives”;
The false claims “increase world dangers”.

He asked, “Please share this information with your cabinet, Members of Congress, all Americans, and leaders of other nations, and the UN; end sanctions against Iran’s nuclear programs and support strengthening Iran’s economy.” There was no reply.

Bastin’s courageous battle with the military-industrial-media-complex
Bastin as a professional scientist of integrity who was the recipient of the Distinguished Career Service Award from the USA Department of Energy did scientific battle with the all-powerful complex. It denied him a voice in its media.

He fought against the complex’s linear no-threshold hypothesis, which fallaciously holds that one rad of radiation to 1000 people can kill one person in 1000 people. The AEC, even without epidemiological evidence, supports this false hypothesis.

He said that Iran’s alleged nuclear weapon threat was as fallacious as the linear no-threshold hypothesis and that the media disinformation campaign was too advanced. The USA media manufactures and distributes 80% of ‘news’ in the world.

Bastin on ‘gas-to-metal-conversion’
Bastin, on evidence concluded, ‘Iran could not produce a nuclear weapon with its existing materials, facilities, and technology…Iran would not need to develop processes and design and build new facilities to convert gas to metal, fabricate two fifty-pound components and assemble them with high explosives for a gun-type weapon…(which is) small enough for delivery by an Iranian missile, would have an explosive equivalent yield of about one kiloton – comparable to USA gun-type tactical weapon.’

‘Iran,’ he continued, ‘would not sacrifice a multibillion-dollar nuclear program for the dubious possibility of having a low-yield nuclear weapon fifteen years from now.’

Bastin on IAEA inspectors
Bastin observed that IAEA inspectors lacked experience with, and do not understand, nuclear weapons or the technology for their production. They were provided with long checklists of processes or items that may or may not indicate work on weapons.

Bastin on the planted fake drawings
Bastin described the realistic-looking drawings, which purported to indicate work on weapons as fake and political fantasy, planted by dissidents to cause problems. Genuine sketches were supposed to have been stored in vaults and not left lying around only for others to find them.

He said that the drawings for assembling a hypothetical nuclear weapon with missile were unrealistic because it was necessary to know what the whole missile looks like when the warhead is being attached to the weapon. It was impossible to work meaningfully on a hypothetical missile or even a real missile.

He said, ‘Former IAEA DG, Mohamed Elbaradei understood the problem and did not support claims of an Iranian nuclear weapon threat.’

Bastin on politicized IAEA
Bastin said that the IAEA DG position was highly politicized in favor of the USA; that there was a culture at Department of Energy for scientists to accept political discourse; that there were politically motivated criteria set for inspectors, who do not really know anything about nuclear weapons production; and that the criteria were mainly normal chemical engineering processes-type used in operations.

He also said that IAEA did not have people who know about nuclear weapons because they do not build weapons and that this was also a problem in Washington DC. He further said that most politicians at UN and elsewhere except perhaps those in Russia and China could not understand scientists.

The complex used its power of ignorance to outmaneuver Bastin.

The USA Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI)
DNI on 20 March 2025 confirmed that ‘Iran is not building a nuclear weapon.’ It included the work of National Security Agency (18 entities) and the evidence provided by spy satellites.

The Trump letter to Ayatollah Khameini, delivered on 12 March 2025, is part of Trump’s transactional diplomacy – not one of statesmanship. It seeks to reshape West Asia’s power structure in the image of USA’s 26-strong billionaire class. It is part of an imaginary ‘pragmatic statecraft’. It tries to redefine the coercive dynamics of negotiation that marks a shift from consensus-building. Trump’s offer of ‘peace’ either through negotiation or war is conditional on the acceptance of USA hegemony.

USA has 236 sanctions against Iranians involved, mainly, in economic activities. (Center for a New American Security Report 2024)

The scientific principle
The scientific principle of Iran’s nuclear reactor is that a moderator (like water), as a control material, is added to fissile material to absorb some neutrons harmlessly so that each atom, which splits triggers only one more critical fission.

Electricity generation, nuclear medicine, and radiopharmaceuticals involve fission.
The power of ignorance defies even this scientific principle.

* * *
Prelude to Hiroshima-Nagasaki bombing
John Bryden (historian) in his revelatory book, Fighting to lose: how the German secret intelligence service (‘Abwehr’) helped the Allies win World War Two, reveals how the British MI6 used its double-agent system and German triple-cross system to provide usable intelligence to Sir Winston Churchill in order for him to provoke President Roosevelt to lure the Japanese into attacking Pearl Harbor.

MI6 used Admiral Canaris who was the chief of Abwehr, the German military intelligence to act as the triple-cross. Canaris supplied the intelligence as ammunition that resulted in the retaliatory death of about 200000 civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan in 1945.

It ended WWII, ignobly – much to the deep regret of scientists involved in the Manhattan Project, under the hegemonic control of soldiers and powerful ignorant politicians who misused scientists. More importantly, the USA demonstrated its genocidal power to USSR.

Although WWII has ended it continues as WWIII in the form of profitable multiple regional proxy wars including new forms of livestreamed genocide, principally, in Muslim and African lands.

Israel is heir to nuclear bombing
Israeli has seriously stated its deep-seated intention to use nuclear bomb in Palestine.
It also has 6.5 nuclear bombs, which it had acquired from Apartheid South Africa before its political demise. It stole bomb quantities of uranium-235 from privately owned NUMEC facility in Pennsylvania; illicit purchase of high-speed switches (krytons) for triggering nuclear weapons in the 1980s; and the joint nuclear test by Israel and Apartheid South Africa in 1979 in the seas off South Africa in violation of the 1963 Limited Test Ban Treaty.

Israel-USA conjoined
To this day Israel and USA are conjoined at the hips of nuclear secrets.
President John F Kennedy was the last USA President who tried to rein in Israel’s nuclear program. His successors did not even try. (Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: The US hypocrisy about Israel’s nuclear weapons must stop: by Victor Gilinsky and Leonard Weiss: March 25, 2025).

Legacies of nuclear bombing

Power of ignorance
Genocide
Toxic radioactive fallout
Need for combined science and ethics
Embedded distrust between politicians and scientists.