Iran’s interest in nuclear technology dates back to the 1950s. Iran signed a nuclear cooperation agreement with the USA in the mid-1950s as part of the Atoms for Peace Initiative. However, Iran’s progress in nuclear technology remained slow until the 1970s. In 1973, the Shah of Iran announced an ambitious plan to build a 23,000-megawatt (MW) nuclear power plant in Iran by the end of the century and tasked the newly established Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) with overseeing this task. In the five years that followed, Iran signed numerous nuclear technology-related contracts with the USA and European countries and invested in the training of its personnel. Under these agreements, foreign suppliers have provided Iran with key technologies in the nuclear field, such as uranium enrichment and plutonium separation technologies (Kibaroğlu, 2013). Thus, by 1979, Iran had begun to build the basic infrastructure for nuclear science and technology (Nuclear Threat Initiative, 2020). ...