Not all Iranians seem to assume this conventional wisdom is true:
National Review Online: What do the Iranians you know think of Iran's nuclear program?
Amir Abbas Fakhravar: The regime is trying hard to tell to everybody that the nuclear activities are like the nationalization of oil 50 years ago. They are telling the world that this is somehow a national interest and that it's something the people want. But it's not like that at all. I'm very much speaking on behalf of the students and the youth that I'm in contact with, and nobody thinks about it like that. We are lacking elementary necessities, schools, hospitals. These are the things we think of as our national interests, not the nuclear program. If this nuclear technology were something coming out of the minds of our own people, and promoted by our own people, we would say O.K., this is by all means our national interest. But it was a technology smuggled in from the borders of Pakistan by people working through A. Q. Khan's network. What I hear from the students, the youngsters who are 70 percent of Iran's population, is that if this were such a national thing, why did the regime spend 18 years hiding it from us? Only two or three years ago we found out that [the regime] was spending billions and billions of dollars in oil revenue on this technology instead of on our basic needs.
NRO: One argument we hear in the West against confronting Iran, whether through sanctions or through military action, is that doing so will make the regime more popular with the Iranian people — that it will actually strengthen the regime.
Fakhravar: Please don't ever say that the people of Iran are going to have resentment or anger in their hearts toward America or Western countries for doing this. That is 100 percent false. To see this, all you need to do is contact some Iranians inside the major cities. Just send your journalists to interview the people in the streets and ask them. It was Saturday [February 4] that the people here found out that Iran was going before the [U.N.] Security Council, and there was celebration all over Tehran. I heard from my own family, the families of my friends, that it was one of the busiest days of the year for the pastry shops — that people were buying pastries and cookies and candies in the streets of Tehran and going to each other to celebrate. They think we have nothing to lose and everything to gain with action that, no matter how long the time period, leads to the downfall of this regime. If you overthrow the regime, we will welcome you with open arms and open hearts. People are counting the minutes for this regime to be over and gone.
The mullahs have every incentive to want us to believe that the people will rally around the mullahs if we attack or pull down the regime. Why should we peddle this theory, too?
We cannot let Iran under the mullahs go nuclear. Don't let the supposed latent nuclear nationalism of the Iranian people stop us from protecting ourselves from the craziest of the crazy possessing the most deadly weapons known to man.
