Abstract
The deadline is now. Will Iran come clean about its nuclear doings?
Iran has been secretly developing the capability to make nuclear weapons–in particular, developing the wherewithal to produce separated plutonium and highly enriched uranium (HEU).
Since they first learned of Iran's secret activities last year, officials of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have been concerned that Iran has been violating the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), and they have struggled to convince the country to make its nuclear activities more transparent. Citing Iran's failure to disclose various nuclear materials, facilities, and activities, on June 19 a “Chairwoman's Statement” summing up the meeting of the IAEA Board of Governors criticized Iran for its failure to fulfill its safeguards obligations under the NPT.
Worries about Iranian nuclear activities were heightened in early July after Iran conducted a successful test of the Shahab-3 missile, which can carry a 2,200-pound payload as far as 1,500 kilometers. The timing of Iran's announcement about the Shahab-3 and the size of its payload suggest that the missile is intended to carry a nuclear warhead.
Although the IAEA acknowledged that Iran has taken some cooperative steps since its facilities at Natanz were first revealed a year ago, it called upon Iran to take additional steps, including answering additional questions about alleged undeclared uranium enrichment activities, uranium conversion work, and programs involving heavy water.
As for whether Iran will comply, Mohammed El Baradei, the IAEA's director general, said after the board meeting, “the jury is still out.” He expressed the hope that by the next IAEA Board of Governors meeting in September, the agency would be in a “much better position to make a judgment” about it.
The board wants Iran to “promptly and unconditionally” implement an additional protocol to its safeguards agreement. Unless the protocol is implemented, the IAEA said in a safeguards implementation report, it will have limited ability to provide credible assurances that Iran's nuclear program does not include a secret nuclear weapons component.
In an unusual move, the chair's statement encouraged Iran to delay introducing nuclear material into the Natanz pilot uranium enrichment plant, calling the delay a “confidence-building measure.”
Although the statement did not call on Iran to end the program, there is growing support for the view that acceptance of the protocol may not be enough to resolve the nuclear issue. Iran may need to abandon or sharply limit its construction or operation of facilities that can be used to produce separated plutonium or HEU. Unless it is stopped, Iran will eventually be able to rapidly break out of the NPT, creating an even more dangerous situation in the Middle East.
Iran's reaction
Iran's immediate reaction was to reject the notion that it had a nuclear weapons program. It intends, Iranian officials said, to install some 7,000 megawatts of nuclear electrical generating capacity over the next 20 years, which will require a substantial investment in a wide range of peaceful nuclear activities. Iran described its level of transparency as typical, and reiterated that it had been cooperating fully with the IAEA and would continue to do so.
A satellite image of Natanz.
Iran rejected the request to implement the additional protocol without a quid pro quo. On June 29, Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi told the Associated Press, “When Iran signs the protocol, others should take positive steps,” including providing nuclear assistance. Iranian officials want additional power reactors, or at least a U.S. commitment to stop its attempts to block Iran's acquisition of nuclear power reactors from Russia or elsewhere. Some Iranian officials have implied that more reactors may not be enough, that Iran wants access to all peaceful technology, including sensitive fuel-cycle facilities like enrichment plants and plutonium separation facilities.
In late February, Gholam Reza Aghazadeh, the head of the Iranian Atomic Energy Organization (IAEO), told the Boston Globe's Elizabeth Neuffer that Iran wanted Germany to fulfill its prior obligation to provide low-enriched uranium fuel, part of the deal when Germany was building the Bushehr power reactor. Germany decided over a decade ago not to finish the reactor, but Aghazadeh complained that Iran now has to pay to get the fuel from Russia.
Truth and consequences
Although the United States did not succeed in its attempt to convince other nations that Iran had violated the NPT sufficiently to warrant a harsh international response, the chair's June statement represents a dramatic international rejection of Iran's demand to receive something in return for signing the protocol. Most nations resisted taking action based on the U.S. evidence, which they viewed as circumstantial. They were particularly hesitant given the widespread skepticism about U.S. intelligence information about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. But the United States did manage to gain support for putting additional pressure on Iran to be fully transparent, with an implicit deadline of the September board of governors meeting.
Russia, Japan, and the European Union have historically rejected the U.S. policy of isolating Iran, choosing engagement instead. But they are now all firm in demanding that Iran sign the protocol and fully answer the IAEA's questions.
Before the recent crisis, the EU had a policy of engagement with Iran known as “conditional dialogue,” which aimed at improving trade and cooperation, provided Iran made improvements in the areas of nonproliferation, terrorism, and cooperation with the Middle East peace process. However, EU foreign ministers emphasized in a statement on June 16 that Iran must cooperate fully with the IAEA and “implement urgently and unconditionally” the additional protocol, declaring that trade talks and the nuclear issue were “interdependent.” British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw traveled to Tehran in late June with a message that unless Iran implements the protocol unconditionally and quickly, “confidence will not be improved, and the international community will be profoundly reluctant to lift the sanctions.”
Russia has been Iran's main nuclear supplier, selling Iran the $800 million Bushehr reactor, which is scheduled for completion in 2005.
Russia is expected to start sending fuel for the first loading in mid-2004, after it has obtained an agreement from Iran to send spent fuel back to Russia. Russia, embarrassed by all the revelations of secret nuclear activities, has also urged Iran to be more transparent.
July 9: Mohammed El Baradei (left), director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, meets with Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi in Tehran
September 2000: The Shahab-3 as shown at a military parade in Tehran.
In May and June, President Vladimir Putin was reported to have told the United States and Britain that Russia would not provide fuel for Bushehr unless Iran implemented the safeguards protocol. Although subsequent messages from senior Russian officials appeared to contradict Putin's statement, the overall message from Russia is that Iran must be significantly more transparent.
One Western official pointed out that Russia could hesitate to finalize its spent fuel agreement with Iran, and without it, not send fuel for Bushehr. Or, he said, Russia could delay the shipments, permitting it to exert pressure on Iran without formally conditioning the completion of Bushehr on Iran signing the protocol.
Japan is also putting pressure on Iran. Senior foreign ministry officials visited Tehran in mid-July to convey the message. Media reports did not indicate any significant breakthroughs. Japan has so far resisted U.S. pressure to link Iran's signing of the protocol with its current negotiations with Iran to develop the large Azadegan oil field in southwest Iran. Japan fears that if it makes such a linkage, Russia or China will win the contract instead, undermining Japan's objective of securing long-term oil supplies. Still, lack of progress on transparency may lead Japan to slow down negotiations or take other actions.
Although U.S. efforts did not convince its allies to cut off economic or nuclear assistance, if Iran refuses to address the IAEA's concerns by the end of summer, in September the board of governors may refer the issue to the U.N. Security Council. The Security Council could then decide to impose economic sanctions. Many states would feel compelled to reduce trade with Iran or halt joint energy projects.
The latest safeguards report
At the heart of the current dispute is the IAEA's report on Iran's implementation of safeguards, issued publicly in June 2003. The IAEA describes a series of developments and concerns that were the basis of the board's finding that Iran had failed to meet its obligations. This report also provides the most detailed publicly available information about Iran's extensive nuclear activities.
Iran has built significant parts of its nuclear program in secret over the last decade. Aghazadeh has said that Iran accelerated its uranium enrichment and heavy-water production programs in about 1998.
Iran revealed many of its activities to the IAEA only after they were revealed publicly in the last half of 2002, and the IAEA suspects that Iran may have additional undeclared nuclear activities or facilities. As a result, the inspectors have asked Iran for considerably more information and access than they normally do without a protocol in effect. But they have not yet asked formally to make a “special inspection” at any site, preferring to seek voluntary cooperation instead.
Gas centrifuges
The most important unresolved issue centers on Iran's gas centrifuge uranium enrichment program, which El Baradei characterized as “sophisticated” when he visited Natanz in February. Following that visit, the IAEA asked for details about the program.
The IAEA has been trying to understand the centrifuge program's history–the experiments Iran conducted to prove its centrifuges, and the sources of its technology, including foreign procurement. Iran has provided written information, permitted inspectors wide access at the Natanz facilities, and allowed the IAEA to take environmental samples at Natanz and other centrifuge-related locations. These samples are critical to modern inspections because they can detect minute traces of enriched uranium and plutonium. The results of the environmental samples were not available by the June board meeting, but on July 18 and 19 the media reported that an environmental sample taken at Natanz in the winter or spring contained traces of enriched uranium. The enriched uranium was probably brought to the site inadvertently on equipment or tools from elsewhere, perhaps from an overseas supplier or from an undeclared Iranian facility. Other samples from Natanz have also been found to contain enriched uranium. Results from other sites have shown no enriched uranium.
Iran had told the IAEA it had not enriched any uranium, despite having installed a large number of centrifuges in a cascade at the Natanz pilot plant. Normally, a program would operate single-centrifuge “test stands” that would enrich small amounts of uranium to test and optimize centrifuge designs. Iran declared that although it began research and development about five years ago, it depended on extensive modeling and simulation, including tests of centrifuge rotors with and without inert gases. These tests were conducted at several locations, including Amir Khabir University and the IAEO in Tehran, without using any nuclear material. Iran said it intended to start single-machine tests with uranium at the Natanz pilot plant this summer.
This approach is very unusual, and the IAEA doubts that Iran could be so far along in the development process without enriching any uranium. Absent considerably more detail–possibly including the extent of information and expertise gained from abroad–the IAEA will have a difficult time accepting Iran's statement.
Based on open source information about possible enrichment activities at the Kalaya Electric Company in Tehran, the IAEA asked to visit it in February and take environmental samples to determine if any enriched uranium was produced at the site. Iran responded that the facility is a watch factory, but that it also makes certain centrifuge components. It initially denied the inspectors' requests, claiming that it did not have to allow access until it implemented the protocol.
Iran subsequently reconsidered and allowed the IAEA limited access in March and full access in May, but it refused to permit environmental sampling. Iran still refused to allow sampling during El Baradei's visit in July.
In March, the IAEA was denied access to two rooms or workshops. A senior Western official interviewed in late March worried that Iran had denied access to allow time to clear out any evidence of uranium enrichment. He suspected that the rooms had held centrifuges, perhaps in a cascade, and had enriched uranium. According to U.S. media and experts quoting Bush administration officials, satellite images showed trucks going in and out of the site, implying that the rooms had been sanitized. The images, however, were inconclusive upon close scrutiny, according to a member of the media who asked senior officials about them. Because of all the suspicions, environmental sampling may be the only way to determine conclusively whether the site has enriched uranium.
The IAEA has asked to visit additional sites, some of which were selected based on information provided in May by the National Council of Resistance of Iran, an opposition group. The group identified two sites west of Tehran that it said were related to small-scale gas centrifuge development work, which, when finished, could serve as alternative locations for cascades. According to a senior Western official, two of the people listed by the opposition group as involved at these sites are known to be involved in Iran's gas centrifuge program. Commercial satellite images show that at least one of the sites has extensive physical security.
Iran has told the IAEA that the sites are related to its nuclear organization, but are involved in agricultural and medical work–a description at odds with the high security seen at the sites. By mid-July, the inspectors had not visited or obtained sufficient information to make any judgments about their purpose.
Questions have also been raised about the uranium conversion facility that Iran is building at Esfahan. This plant is designed to make large quantities of uranium hexafluoride in addition to uranium dioxide and uranium tetrafluoride. Iran claims not to have operated any laboratory or pilot facilities before building this major plant. Because learning to make uranium hexafluoride, the feedstock for a gas centrifuge plant, is not easy, some believe that Iran must have an undeclared pilot plant or have operated one in the past.
Additional issues
The safeguards report laid out other developments that contributed to the board's finding that Iran failed to meet its safeguards obligations. These include:
Iran said it did not have to report the import of a relatively small amount of natural uranium. The IAEA, however, said reporting was required for the material, its subsequent processing, and the locations where it was received, processed, and stored. Iran had provided none of this information until the IAEA asked for it. To make matters worse, China provided the IAEA with information about its export only after repeated inquiries.
The question is whether plutonium was also separated from these targets, or whether other undeclared targets were produced, irradiated, and processed to obtain separated plutonium. Such activities would allow Iran to learn to separate plutonium, a necessary step in using plutonium in nuclear weapons.
The IAEA is still investigating this claim. A small centrifuge testing program would be expected to use about 10-15 kilograms of uranium hexafluoride, but it could get by on 1-2 kilograms. And the fact that Iran used much of its imported uranium dioxide and tetrafluoride makes it harder to accept the possibility that it did not use any of the hexafluoride.
Iran has said that this reactor is part of a long-term program to manufacture heavy-water power reactors. But long before any such plan might be realized, the reactor at Arak would produce 8-10 kilograms of plutonium annually, or enough for about two nuclear weapons each year. Before it could use any of the plutonium in a nuclear weapon, however, it would first have to separate the plutonium from the irradiated fuel. Although Iran is not reported to have stated that it has conducted any plutonium separation activities, the irradiation and processing of natural uranium targets increases suspicion that Iran is researching plutonium separation.
The Natanz enrichment plant
The IAEA report includes new information about Iran's gas centrifuge program at Natanz. This site houses a pilot gas centrifuge plant and a much larger, production-scale centrifuge facility.
The pilot plant is slated to hold about 1,000 centrifuges by the end of 2003. In February, it had about 160 centrifuges operating without uranium. Iran said it planned to introduce uranium in June. Despite the board's request, Iran introduced uranium into single test centrifuges soon after the board meeting. Initially, at least, Iran planned to use another safeguarded source of uranium hexafluoride in these early tests–a small stock that has been maintained under safeguards, acquired years ago from a European country.
The imminent operation of this plant alarmed the board of governors and led to the request that Iran delay the use of uranium. The IAEA had not had sufficient time to implement a safeguards plan for this important facility, another reason why it asked for a delay.
According to senior Western officials, the current Iranian centrifuge has a separative capacity, or ability to enrich uranium, of about 2 separative work units (swu) per year, per centrifuge. Media reports of significantly higher capacities are erroneous, according to these knowledgeable officials.
Because the centrifuge uses an aluminum rotor with a diameter of about 100 millimeters, this capacity would be consistent with a supercritical, optimized aluminum-rotor machine of the “G2-type.” Gernot Zippe was involved in building this type of machine in Germany in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It is composed of two almost 50-centimeter-long aluminum rotor tubes connected by a bellows.
Media reports state that Iran got design assistance from Pakistan or from individual Pakistanis more than a decade ago. Iran's centrifuge design is similar to the type that Pakistan obtained secretly in the mid-1970s from Urenco facilities in the Netherlands. The G2 and its predecessor G1-type aluminum machines, developed by Zippe and his colleagues, were not very efficient. Zippe's G1-type machine had a capacity of about 0.6 swu per year, implying an output of 1.2 swu per year for the G2 design. Iran is believed to have optimized or otherwise increased capacity to about 2 swu per year.
Although the pilot plant is relatively small, it could produce as much as 10-12 kilograms of weapon-grade uranium a year, depending on the “tails assay” (the fraction of uranium 235 remaining in the waste) and the manner in which the centrifuges are organized into cascades. Because centrifuges are flexible, even if the cascades are arranged to produce only low-enriched uranium, weapon-grade uranium can be produced by “batch recycling” the end product back into the feed point of the cascade until the desired level of enrichment is reached. Thus, by the end of 2005, this plant could produce 15-20 kilograms of weapon-grade uranium, enough for a nuclear weapon.
According to the IAEA safeguards report, Iran plans to start installing centrifuges in the main enrichment halls of the Natanz facility in 2005, after testing and confirming its centrifuge design in the pilot plant. Eventually, these cascade halls will hold 50,000 centrifuges, according to the report. No project completion date was provided, but indications are that it would take five to 10 years to install this number of centrifuges.
Separative capacity of later centrifuges would probably increase, but Iran may not succeed in installing all 50,000. In any case, based on the current plan, we project that the Natanz facility will eventually have a capacity of at least 100,000 swu per year. This is roughly the capacity to provide annual reloads of one Bushehr reactor, but far short of the enriched uranium needed to provide fuel for all the nuclear power reactors Iran plans to build over the next 20 years.
The same capacity would be sufficient to produce about 500 kilograms of weapon-grade uranium annually. At 15-20 kilograms per weapon, that would be enough for roughly 25-30 nuclear weapons per year.
If Iran operated Natanz to make low-enriched uranium fuel until it decided to make weapon-grade uranium, it would be able to rapidly enrich the low-enriched material to weapon-grade. For example, if Natanz was operating at full capacity and recycled low-enriched uranium (5 percent uranium 235) as “feed,” the facility could produce enough weapon-grade uranium for a nuclear weapon in a few days.
What should be done
In the worst case, Iran could have a nuclear weapon by the end of 2005. Under many scenarios, it could obtain and significantly expand its nuclear arsenal in the second half of the decade by producing both HEU and plutonium. Although some would argue that a solution to the Iranian nuclear problem can be delayed, the longer the wait for a solution, the more extensive Iran's program will become and the harder, politically, for Iran to reverse itself.
March 2003: The main building of the nearly completed Bushehr nuclear power plant
The international community is justified in demanding that Iran become fully transparent as soon as possible. No one can dispute Iran's growing capabilities to make nuclear weapons. Certainly, increased nuclear transparency, including answering the questions raised by the IAEA in its June safeguards report and implementing the protocol, is both important and necessary. In addition, Iran's implementation of the protocol would severely complicate any effort to conduct clandestine nuclear fuel-cycle activities and could act as a deterrent against significant clandestine activities.
Toward those goals, El Baradei met in Tehran with senior Iranian officials on July 9. He was armed with results from IAEA environmental sampling of various locations in Iran.
Although Iranian officials promised cooperation and reported positively about their meetings with El Baradei, he left without gaining a commitment from Iran to sign the protocol or to resolve the remaining safeguards issues. Senior safeguards officials who remained were also unsuccessful in achieving any major breakthroughs and returned to Vienna earlier than scheduled.
Nonetheless, the IAEA received a pledge from the senior leadership of the Iranian government that it would reach a decision by the end of July on whether it would agree to the IAEA's proposed actions and a schedule for resolving each major safeguards issue. These issues center on Iran's uranium enrichment activities, allegations of undeclared enrichment of uranium, the ability to take environmental samples at Kalaya Electric and elsewhere, the role of uranium metal in Iran's nuclear fuel cycle, and its heavy-water production and reactor programs. The IAEA needs Iran's full and prompt cooperation so that it can finish its work and send a positive report to the board of governors in late August.
The IAEA has also told Iran that it must sign and at least provisionally implement the protocol soon.
If Iran does not meet the IAEA's conditions, the board of governors will be under intense pressure to send the issue to the U.N. Security Council. That step could result in the imposition of punitive measures, including economic sanctions by key nations or the Security Council. These actions might well lead Iran to reconsider and accept the IAEA's conditions.
But assuming Iran agrees to all of the IAEA's major conditions–which remains highly uncertain at the time of this writing–the controversy will not be over. The protocol is unlikely to be sufficient by itself to stop an emerging Iranian nuclear threat that could manifest itself if Iran renounced the NPT at some point in the future and began rapidly acquiring nuclear weapons. Because of the complex and dangerous security situation in the Middle East, an Iran perpetually on the brink of building nuclear weapons, even with advanced safeguards, poses too great a threat to regional and international security. Such a situation is likely to provoke its neighbors to seek nuclear weapons or improve their existing arsenals, significantly increase their conventional armaments, or obtain chemical or biological weapons. Predicting the outcome of such buildups is very difficult.
Iran cannot be expected to cancel its fuel-cycle programs unconditionally, though. Many nations would oppose any demand that it do so, and Iran can argue that having such facilities, if they are fully inspected, is completely legal under the NPT.
Coercive, unilateral options are undesirable and could be counterproductive, regardless of Iran's choices. Military strikes against nuclear sites are unlikely to succeed, given the dispersed and advanced nature of the Iranian program. Such strikes would only serve to accelerate and expand Iran's efforts to obtain a nuclear arsenal. In addition, a strategy of regime change may be unsuccessful, or could easily lead to a new government that also seeks nuclear weapons. The United States should decouple any proposed solution to the nuclear problem from regime change efforts and preventive military strikes.
The United States, in cooperation with its allies–particularly the EU, Japan, and Russia–needs to develop a set of incentives to entice Iran away from developing nuclear weapons capabilities. There are a wide variety of items that could be put into an incentive package–lifting economic sanctions, high-tech assistance, assurances of a nuclear fuel supply for the Bushehr nuclear reactor, and other energy or economic assistance.
Iran's motivations for seeking nuclear weapons should be taken into account. Discussions should be considerably easier now, given the downfall of the regime of Saddam Hussein. Such discussions could contribute to achieving a Middle East free of weapons of mass destruction. International efforts should focus on both preventing countries in the region from obtaining nuclear weapons capabilities, and seeking ways to eliminate such capabilities where they already exist. Inevitably, restraints on Israel's nuclear capabilities make sense.
To achieve such a goal, the United States and its allies should seek to restart the Middle East regional arms control discussions that have been moribund since the mid-1990s. These discussions may have a greater chance of success with the inclusion of Iran and Iraq, two countries excluded from earlier talks.
Behind these inducements, the United States, the EU, Russia, and Japan must be willing to exert concerted and tough diplomatic and economic pressure on Iran. Former Defense Secretary William Perry has called such efforts “coercive diplomacy” in the context of North Korea, but a similar strategy can be applied to Iran. Perry was quoted in a July 15, 2003 Washington Post article: “You have to offer something, but you have to have an iron fist behind your offer.”
With the protocol in place, a package of economic and political incentives, and reduced tensions with the United States and its neighbors, Iran would have no need or excuse to maintain a nuclear weapons capability. Because Iran has many motives to reduce its international isolation, it would have a difficult time resisting such a package.