Abbas Amanat

And of course, he is at the focus of all the criticism that he receives from the demonstrators in today's Iran.

You can argue that for a long time, even under the Shah, but much more expressively and more

decisively under the Islamic Republic, there was a determination to have a nuclear power or nuclear weapon, in a sense.

I think the bottom line of all the negotiations, everything else, is that Iran of the Islamic Republic had the tendency of having its own nuclear weapon.

The reason for that is that Iran was subject of nearly nine years, eight and a half years of Iran-Iraq war, when not only Iran faced an aggressor, Iraq, that actually attacked Iran at a very critical time at the very beginning of the Iranian Revolution, but the fact that

Iran felt kind of helpless in the course of this war and has to make great sacrifices, actually, which supported the Islamic regime and consolidated the Islamic regime because of this war.

And most of the time, the support of the United States was behind Iraq vis-a-vis Iran.

And Iran felt that it's been isolated and has to protect itself.

So there is some argument for having nuclear capabilities.

But in reality, this has resulted in a completely mindless, crazy argument

a wasteful attempt on the side of the Iranian regime to try to develop a nuclear power.

And therefore, the rest of the world, particularly in this region, were very worried that if Iran would get access to a nuclear weapon, then the entire region of the Persian Gulf

might, particularly Saudi Arabia, possibly Turkey, possibly Egypt, all of them may require, may demand to have also nuclear weapon, given the fact that Pakistan and India has already have it.

So there was a determined attempt, as you might know, on the side of the Western communities or now gradually world communities to try to, as much as possible, to control Iran from getting access to a nuclear capability or actually limit Iran's nuclear capabilities to what was defined usually in a euphemism as a peaceful fashion, okay?

That being said, there was also Israel, which viewed the Islamic Republic as an archenemy.

And some of it might be due to the Israelis' own exaggeration of Iran's threat.

And some of it is because Iran has developed a fairly strong military, as we see today.

And as such, this attempt to try to prevent Iran from ever getting access to nuclear weapons, which resulted, as you might know, in these massive sanctions that were imposed upon Iran.

ever since the beginning of the revolution in 1979, and of course, more intensively since 2015, 2016, even prior to that, probably a little bit earlier.

This agreement, the nuclear agreement, was supposed to control or monitor Iranian nuclear industry or nuclear setup