Why Iran's Nuclear Story Never Added Up | Scott Horton

Link to full episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTNBhMZz2Ao Scott Horton explains why the standard story about Iran's nuclear program leaves out the history that matters most. The clip begins with Danny describing a recent Shane Smith interview in Iran, where Iranian officials show a nuclear facility and point out that the United States helped give Iran its first reactor under the Atoms for Peace program. Horton uses that opening to explain the difference between a civilian nuclear program, uranium enrichment, and an actual nuclear weapons program. He argues that Iran's position has long been that it has the right under the Non-Proliferation Treaty to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes. The gray area is that mastering enrichment can make a country a threshold state without proving it is actively building a bomb. Horton also explains why the nuclear threshold issue is so easy to weaponize politically. A country can legally develop civilian nuclear technology, learn enrichment, and still remain short of building a weapon. But once the public hears that a country could build a weapon, hawks can collapse the difference between capability, intention, and active construction. That distinction is the heart of the clip. Horton is saying the Iran debate often begins after the most important facts have already been removed. If Americans only hear that Iran enriches uranium, they miss the reactor history, the treaty language, the strategic deterrence logic, and the double standard applied to other countries with similar technical capacity. Subscribe to this channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQ_piSR8gm-TfHZcDWOJciA?sub_confirmation=1