Several key figures in Iran's nuclear arms program trained at M.I.T. during the mid-1970s, according to an article by Boston Globe reporter Farah Stockman.
The scientists were part of an optimistic American program to encourage Iran to invest in expensive U.S. nuclear technology because it would help battle poverty and promote peace. But when the shah fell in 1979, the exchange program ended, and some of the students returned to Iran.
Stockman says, "One of the graduates told me, 'Yeah, at the time Iran was like the 51st state.' And I think back then, maybe as many as 20 percent of the foreign students in the United States were Iranian."
Robert Siegel talks with Stockman.
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