Includes bibliographical references (pages 321-329) and index.

Introduction2. In the beginning was the Atom bomb: Nuclear Power and the Post-War World in the Middle East 3. The Peacock Wants to Strut: Aspiring to Nuclear Power under the Shah of Iran 4. Arms and the Shah: Developing Nuclear Weapons under the Shah5. Slow Decline - Quick Fall: The End of the Shah's Nuclear Programme 6. Children of the Revolution: [`An Ideologically Unclean Atom Bomb'] 1979-19807. Restart? 1980-1984 [Reviving the Nuclear option]8. We Are Victims: [Iran's Search for New Nuclear Partners] 1984-19899. Iran's version of an Islamic Bomb? Nuclear Weapons Under the Early Republic10. Restart for Real: Iran's Nuclear Programme Goes Live 1990-199711. Crisis: Nuclear Negotiations 2002-200512. Enter Ahmadinejad: Reversing into the Future 2005-200813. Enter Obama: Trying for Nuclear Detente?14. Qom, the Natanz Site and Everything After15. ConclusionAppendices etc.

The Iranian nuclear crisis has dominated world politics since the beginning of the century, with Iran now facing increasing diplomatic isolation, talk of military strikes against its nuclear facilities and a disastrous Middle East war. There is little real understanding of Iran's nuclear program, in particular its history, which is now over fifty years old. This groundbreaking book, unprecedented in its scope, argues that the history of Iran's nuclear program and the modern history of the country itself are irretrievably linked; only by understanding one can we understand the other. From the program's beginnings under the Shah of Iran, the book details the US's central role in the birth of nuclear Iran and, through the relationship between the program's founder and the Shah of Iran himself, the role that weapons have played in the program since the beginning. David Patrikarakos's unique access to "the father" of Iran's nuclear program, as well as to key scientific personnel under the early Islamic Republic and to senior Iranian and Western officials at the center of today's negotiations, sheds new light on the uranium enrichment program that lies at the heart of global concerns.