Lessons of History

If anyone has a unique insight into Iran’s nuclear program, it’s F. W. de Klerk. When South Africa’s last apartheid president took office in 1989, he also took control of the country’s six clandestinely built atomic bombs. Four years later, he confirmed to the world that his white minority government had indeed defied sanctions and become a nuclear power—and that he would be the first leader ever to destroy all of those weapons voluntarily.

Historical parallels, of course, seldom offer perfect symmetry. But during a week in which Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s grandstanding letter to President George W. Bush offered some rare insights into the thoughts of the Iranian president, the similarities between Afrikaner-ruled Pretoria and mullah-led Tehran are worth examining. Like Pretoria’s former leaders, Iran’s theocrats feels themselves beleaguered and have convinced even citizens with little love for Ahmadinejad that the ability to enrich uranium—regardless of whether it will be used for nuclear power or to launch a weapons program Tehran claims not to want— is a matter of national pride .

Some commentators have also noted the religious rhetoric employed in both nations. “Intriguingly (and worryingly) present in both cases is an element of apocalyptic messianism,” wrote nuclear analysts Terence McNamee and Greg Mills in a recent op-ed column syndicated in South African newspapers. “Just as apartheid leaders employed biblical and apocalyptic imagery to describe potential threats to their regime—a world of good and evil, chosen people and heathens, redemption and fall—Iran’s new president delights in a Manichean rhetoric—a battle against an evil West that seeks to impose ‘the logic of the dark ages’ and divide the world into ‘light and dark countries’.” The former president, who shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Nelson Mandela in 1993, agrees that there are “some comparable circumstances.” Nukes, or the threat of them, “keep the world guessing,” says De Klerk. “In that sense, they are both a powerful weapon and a formidable tool.”

De Klerk’s measured style has changed little since the ebullient days of 1990, when he broke through South Africa’s political logjam by releasing Mandela from prison, lifting a 30-year ban on the African National Congress and paving the way for the negotiations that would eventually give black citizens the right to vote. In New York this month to promote his nonprofit Global Leadership Foundation—a group of former political leaders who offer confidential advice on governance to troubled governments—the 70-year-old De Klerk spoke to NEWSWEEK’s Arlene Getz at his midtown Manhattan hotel. Excerpts:

NEWSWEEK: What’s your view of Iran’s nuclear program?

F. W. de Klerk: As I understand it, there’s no allegation that Iran actually has nuclear weapons at the moment. The whole debate is about Iran enriching uranium, and [the] suspicion that they’re moving toward a [nuclear] capability and maybe actually moving toward manufacturing nuclear weapons. This differs from the situation in South Africa when I became president [in 1989]. We had six nuclear bombs already on the shelf, and the seventh was near to completion. In our case, I had to decide, do I keep them, or do I cancel the program? Our decision to cancel was a unilateral decision. We didn’t use it any way whatsoever as a negotiation tool.