By Paul Van Olson
October 1, 2007
(Crime Library) The War Room — On September 28, the governments of China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States announced their decision to postpone at least until November consideration of economic and other sanctions against Iran for its ongoing refusal to suspend enrichment of uranium at its research facility at Natanz. First brought to public attention by an Iranian exile group in 2002, the gradual disclosure of Iran's nuclear ambitions over the subsequent five years has slowly precipitated a Western consensus opposed to the development of an Iranian military nuclear program achieved under the cover of a civilian energy program. Now the resolve of the Western powers to act decisively to prevent the possibility of an indigenous Iranian nuclear weapon is approaching a crucial test as Iran reaches the point-of-no-return of industrial-scale nuclear enrichment.
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| Iranian Nuclear Program: Natanz Facility |
An inspection of the Natanz facility in April of 2007 revealed that Iranian engineers had already established eight 164-centrifuge enrichment cascades, just under half the 3,000 centrifuges considered to be the benchmark for industrial-scale enrichment required for an ongoing nuclear weapons program. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors considered the facility large enough to ultimately accommodate 5,000 or more centrifuges, easily enough to provide sufficient highly-enriched U235 for several atomic weapons annually. Although Iran disclaims any military intent for its nuclear program, Iran's poor record of disclosure and its acquisition of technological expertise with solely military application, such as bomb design and manufacture, undermine this claim. The case of North Korea demonstrates the path by which a declared civilian program, once established, could be diverted to military use through calculated breaches of compliance with Non-Proliferation Treaty requirements, yielding sufficient material to develop and test a nuclear weapon.
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| Iran Map |
While advocates of diplomatic engagement of Iran have cited estimates that Iran is at least three years away from the development of a nuclear weapon, and point in the worst case to the doctrine of deterrence and mutually assured destruction which guided U.S. defense policy towards the Soviet Union throughout the Cold War as a way forward in dealing with the prospect of a nuclear-armed Islamic Republic of Iran, several observers have already noted the limitations of such a policy given Iran's established use of notionally independent proxies such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and splinter cells of the Mahdi Army in Iraq. Just as the Soviet leadership in the 1970's seized upon American post-Watergate, post-Vietnam demoralization to embark upon a campaign of proxy adventurism in Africa and Latin America, secure in the knowledge that their nuclear deterrent protected them from direct U.S. retaliation, a nuclear-armed Iran would be similarly free to expand its support for stateless terrorist organizations, attacking Israel with renewed vigor and destabilizing more moderate Muslim governments. While an Iranian missile attack on the U.S. or its allies might be forestalled by a combination of deterrence and missile defense programs, the prospect of greatly increased Iranian support for terrorist organizations under cover of an Iranian nuclear deterrent is gravely threatening to U.S. interests.
Beyond the problem of nuclear deterrence proving to be a two-edged sword in the face of Iranian support for non-state terrorist organizations, the prospect of Iranian nuclear technology being turned over to another state or to other proxies cannot be dismissed out of hand, given the amount of information now public concerning the nuclear dealings of Iran, Pakistan, North Korea, Libya and, possibly, Syria.
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| Pakistani Nuclear Mastermind Abdul Qadeer Khan |
The transformation of the quest for nuclear technology from a tightly-held, crown jewel of national scientific research into an anarchic international bazaar was revealed in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks, when U.S. intelligence services' focus on the linkages between North Korea, Pakistani military intelligence services and several aspiring nuclear powers resulted in the unraveling of Pakistani nuclear mastermind Abdul Qadeer Khan's dealings with Iran, North Korea, Libya and others. Khan, building on information he stole during his employment at a Dutch nuclear enrichment facility in the 1970s, was able, probably with Chinese assistance, to acquire the technology and expertise to enable Pakistan to develop and test a nuclear weapon in 1998. Khan simultaneously aided North Korea's nuclear program in exchange for assistance with Pakistan's ballistic missile program. Motivated by a confessed desire to spread nuclear technology throughout the Muslim world, Khan also offered nuclear technological assistance to Libya, Iran and Ba'athist Iraq.
A.Q. Khan's freewheeling attitude toward proliferation of weapons of mass destruction seems in turn to have created a self-perpetuating network, as recent reports of Iranian involvement in Syrian chemical weapons programs and of North Korean nuclear technology in Syria as well indicate.
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