Some of you may have read Maziar Bahari's interview with Akbar Etemad, the former head of Iran's nuclear program, which was published in the New Statesman under the title "The Shah's Plan was to Build Bombs".
However, you may not have read his letter published in the Dec 1, 2008 issue of the New Statesman about that interview:
Maziar Bahari's interview with me, published in your Iran Special (15 September), contained a number of mistakes, and the headline "The shah's plan was to build bombs" was misleading. I told Mr Bahari that I had to know what the shah had in mind regarding the nature of the nuclear programme. I also said that during a long discussion, the shah told me that Iran did not need nuclear weapons, because our strong conventional forces would guarantee our security and national interests. Furthermore, if we opted for nuclear weapons the western countries would not co-operate with us and this would be detrimental to our civil nuclear programme.
Dr Akbar Etemad
Paris, France
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