The Iranian dissidents and human rights activists are firmly convinced that the nuclear program is an essential part of the regime's survival strategy. Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi co-authored an article entitled “Link Human Rights to Iran's Nuclear Ambitions”, and the main theme of the article was that the regime sees these nuclear ambitions as the best way to get the international community to back off on the things the regime really worries about, which is reporters, such as all of these reporters they throw in jail or, in Ms. Kazemi's case, kill, and also people-to-people exchanges.
It's very discouraging to think that this is a regime that sees the free flow of information and the exchange of people-to-people contacts as a vital threat to it. It's so foreign to our way of looking at this matter, where we see those as things that can help build confidence and trust among people. It's not how the Supreme Leader and the Revolutionary Guard Corps view this. They're firmly convinced that there's a grand western plot to overthrow them. When an American academic, Haleh Esfandiari, was in jail, a 67-year-old grandmother, 22 governments around the world marshalled, asking the Iranians for her release, and the Iranian television put on a show in which they explained that George Soros and George Bush meet each week to coordinate their activities, promoting a Velvet Revolution inside Iran. It was on nationwide television in Iran. Most of us who are observers of the American political scene do not think that Mr. Soros or Mr. Bush actually get along that well.
The Iranian dissidents are firmly convinced that this nuclear program is designed for regime security and not for national security.