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Joseph Cirincione, a leading arms control expert, says that although “we haven’t detected any weapons-specific related activities” in Iran, there is enough circumstantial evidence to generate widespread international concern that Iran is secretly planning to build nuclear weapons.
Explaining why Iran may have been secretly seeking nuclear weapons, Cirincione says “it seems that some leading Iranians have drawn the conclusion from the Iraq war that the only way to protect themselves against U.S. intervention is to acquire nuclear weapons.”
“The lesson they got from Iraq was that if you have nuclear weapons, like North Korea, they won’t attack you, and if you don’t have them, like Iraq, then they will attack you,” says Cirincione, director of the Non-Proliferation Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
He was interviewed on June 14, 2004 by Bernard Gwertzman, consulting editor for cfr.org.
The governing board of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is meeting this week and they’re taking up the question of whether Iran is complying with non-proliferation questions. Could you review the current situation and say why there is great concern?
Sure. Just about two years ago, we discovered that Iran had a secret program underway to develop the technologies for enriching uranium and separating plutonium. When these programs were discovered, Iran said they were for peaceful uses only—that is, to enrich uranium for fuel rods in their planned nuclear reactors and then to be able to process the fuel rods for safe disposal, once they had taken them out of the reactors. Very few people believed those explanations because Russia had already offered Iran a guaranteed supply of fuel rods for the reactor, and an arrangement whereby Russia would take the fuel rods back and safely dispose them after they had been used to produce power.
This is the reactor that the Germans had started to build in the 1980s in Bushehr?
Right. Just to go back a few steps, the United States actually started Iran on the nuclear path when it sold reactors to the Shah of Iran. When the revolution occurred, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini froze construction of the reactors at Bushehr. However, in the mid-1980s during the Iran-Iraq war, Iran restarted the program, allegedly for peaceful purposes. The Germans, who had been building the two reactors, had long since pulled out.
Iran struck a [1992] deal with Russia to finish the Bushehr reactors. The deal was that not only would Russia complete those reactors and help operate and maintain them, they would also provide the fuel for the reactors and take that fuel back after it had been used. So the discovery that Iran was secretly constructing these fuel-cycle capabilities—the ability to produce and reprocess the fuel rods—struck most observers as an indication that this program was just a cover for a nuclear weapons program, and the reason is simple: the very same technology that you can use to make fuel rods one year can be used to make nuclear weapons the next.
The technology for enriching uranium to the low levels required for reactors can also be used to enrich uranium to the high levels required for nuclear weapons. And the same facilities that separate the plutonium from the fuel rods so you can dispose of the fuel rods safely can also be used to extract that plutonium and shape it into the softball-sized sphere you need for a nuclear weapon.
That’s the basic problem. And of course, the fact that construction was secretly underway raised suspicions that this was really a nuclear weapons program, not a civilian program. The difficulty comes, however, in proving that this program is for nuclear weapons use, and so far, while there’s very strong circumstantial evidence, there’s no proof that this is a program aimed at producing weapons.
That is, we haven’t detected any weapons-specific related activities—weapons design, blueprints for weapons, the manufacturing of weapon components. This kind of activity is hard to detect, and the fact that we haven’t detected it doesn’t mean it’s not going on; it just means that we lack the proof. Therefore, international efforts have focused on getting Iran to suspend the program while international inspectors come in and construct an accurate history of this program and determine whether Iran is compliant with its treaty obligations.
Last year I remember there was great excitement because Iran had formally agreed with the British, French, and Germans to do this. What happened?
Last October there was a diplomatic breakthrough when the foreign ministers of Britain, France, and Germany reached an agreement with Iran to suspend all its uranium enrichment activities and open up to far more intrusive inspections by the IAEA. A path seemed to be established that could walk Iran back from its nuclear program. There’s been tremendous progress since then, but not complete progress.
That is, while Iran has opened up, while it’s provided a history of its program, while inspections are underway, while it’s committed to suspending its uranium enrichment program, it has done so haltingly and incompletely. There are still major unanswered questions about the program. Iran’s answers to these questions have been incomplete and often inaccurate and misleading, and therefore, suspicions have increased that Iran has more to hide, and, in the end, will not give up this program.
What are the major questions that Iran has not answered?
They initially supplied a so-called “full” declaration of their nuclear facilities, which turned out not to be full. And if this sounds a little like the experience we had with Iraq, you’re not far from wrong. They told us they had a certain level of equipment—for example, that they were using centrifuges that are known as P-1s, a basic Pakistani design based on a European centrifuge. Only later did inspectors discover that they had a far more advanced centrifuge—the so-called P-2, which can enrich uranium much more quickly.
Where did they get that from?
Unfortunately for Iran, Libya has been cooperating fully with international inspectors, disclosing the history and sources of its nuclear program. Libya had P-2 centrifuges and told the IAEA that they got them from Pakistan. The IAEA inspectors logically inferred that since Iran likely had the same supplier, it probably had the same equipment. It’s like busting drug dealers on the corner and having them roll over and give information on their suppliers; once one starts giving you information, you are able to go to the others and pressure them to give you more information as well.
That’s exactly what happened with this Libya-Iran dynamic. Confronted with this evidence from Libya, the Iranians admitted that they had P-2s, and the IAEA inspectors went to an air force base outside of Tehran and found P-2 centrifuges and parts for centrifuges. So that’s one example.
The second issue is the contamination of centrifuges. Iran originally said they had built all the centrifuges themselves. Then, the IAEA inspectors found they were contaminated with highly-enriched uranium. Now, under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), a country is allowed to develop the technology for enriching uranium but cannot actually use it to start this enrichment process before they have declared it to the IAEA. Clearly, if there was contamination of the centrifuges, Iran had started the process before declaring it, and therefore, would be in violation of their treaty obligations.
The Iranians then said, “We didn’t actually build these centrifuges ourselves; we bought them from other countries, and the centrifuges must have been contaminated by those other countries.” The isotopic traces are like fingerprints; not all isotopes are the same—they have different concentrations of different elements in them. Right now, it doesn’t look like the isotopic fingerprints we found on the Iranian centrifuges match the fingerprints that we would expect from Pakistan. So there’s a strong circumstantial case that this residue was actually produced by the Iranians themselves in the process of enriching uranium. There are a couple of other wild cards in the mix—for example, [the residue] might be similar to the [isotopic] fingerprints of the Russians. There are other jokers in the deck that have yet to be sorted out, but all this could be sorted out if the Iranians just made the full declaration that they promised they would, but they haven’t yet delivered and they are clamming up.
Are there other questions?
Here’s another one: the Iranians are set to begin construction later this month on a 40-megawatt heavy water reactor at Arak. This is a new reactor in addition to the Bushehr reactors. A heavy water reactor is ideally suited for maximizing the production of weapons-grade plutonium. That is, while the Iranians say the reactor is for research and the production of radioisotopes for medical and industrial uses, in the process it produces a very high concentration of plutonium in the fuel rods.
The IAEA and the international community would like them to stop construction on this reactor; Iran insists that it’s their national right to produce this reactor and they will continue to do so.
Finally, there’s this issue of production of uranium hexafluoride (UF-6. Uranium hexafluoride is the feedstock of the uranium enrichment process. This month, the Iranians are starting the production of this uranium hexafluoride. The EU ministers are asking them to suspend this process as part of their pledge to suspend all uranium enrichment activities. The Iranians say this wasn’t included on their list of [prohibited] activities, and therefore, they are going ahead with it. And the Iranian foreign minister issued a very strong statement over the weekend that the demands over the uranium hexafluoride production and the construction of the heavy-water reactor go far beyond anything the EU had demanded, and it was an insult to Iran and they were not going to agree to it.
So where do we stand now? The Board of Governors is going to be very critical of Iran, I take it.
And the sponsors of the [critical] resolution are the three ministers that struck the deal with Iran back in November.
What is the U.S. attitude? “We told you so?”
Well, the U.S. position is actually complex. There are internal divisions within the administration, with some wanting to take this issue right to the Security Council of the United Nations and find Iran in violation of its NPT obligations. Others in the administration don’t want another international crisis at this time.
The United States is deeply suspicious of Iranian intentions, but at this point, the administration is not willing to push this to a showdown at the Security Council. It appears the United States would be pleased by a strongly worded declaration coming out of the IAEA Board of Governors—a declaration that criticizes Iran, demands that Iran immediately provide more complete information, and basically edges this whole thing toward the U.N. Security Council without going there yet.
Let me ask you two questions: First, I presume the United States is trying to get Iranian cooperation in Iraq, and second, why would Iran want nuclear weapons now that Iraq is knocked out of the nuclear ballgame?
Well, those are two very good questions, and I think you’re absolutely right. The U.S. position with Iran has become much more complicated as the U.S. position in Iraq continues to deteriorate. The Americans need Iranian help in Iraq, and that’s another factor that’s taken the hard edge off established U.S. policy towards Iran.
We’re looking for ways to solve both crises—the Iranian nuclear crisis and the Iraqi military crisis. Why would Iran want nuclear weapons? Iran is a very complex society, and there are sharply different views on nuclear weapons within Iran. The government has denied, of course, that it’s seeking nuclear weapons, and it has said repeatedly that it doesn’t seek them, and has even concluded that nuclear weapons are against the tenets of Islam.
However, it seems that some leading Iranians have drawn the conclusion from the Iraq war that the only way to protect themselves against U.S. intervention is to acquire nuclear weapons. The lesson they got from Iraq was that if you have nuclear weapons, like North Korea, they won’t attack you, and if you don’t have them, like Iraq, then they will attack you.
It seems that view was a strong factor in Iran’s acceleration of its nuclear program in the last couple of years. Now that Iraq has proved to be such a disaster for the United States and it appears the United States is not in a position to threaten any other country with military action, that view may be waning among the Iranian elites. And that gives hope that there may be a chance to get a full suspension of the Iranian program, if not a total termination.
The other factor for Iran is, of course, Israel. Israel is the only nation in the Middle East that has nuclear weapons—we believe they have 100 or more nuclear weapons. And finally, of course, there are Iran’s regional ambitions. As long as nuclear weapons are seen as the currency of great powers, Iran, which aspires to restore its position as a great power within the region, continues to view nuclear weapons as beneficial to its national and regional strategic interests.
I suppose they ask, “Why should India and Pakistan have them?”
Same reason. India views nuclear weapons as one of the elements it needs to achieve global status as a great power. It looks at the Security Council and sees that all five permanent members of the Security Council have nuclear weapons, and it draws an obvious conclusion that to be a permanent member of the Security Council, you should be a nuclear power.
Has Senator John Kerry enunciated a position on Iran? Is it any different from the current administration’s?
The short answer is no. The more complex answer is that it’s more probable that under a Kerry administration, you may get a more comprehensive approach to Iran. That is, few people think you can solve the Iranian nuclear problem just by focusing on that question. The entire situation with Iran has to be treated as striking a new strategic deal with Iran—one that provides benefits for good behavior as well as penalties for bad behavior and one that includes some security guarantees from the United States that it does not have any intentions of invading Iran or overthrowing its government. [Such a deal would] both compel Iran to comply with its treaty obligations and give them a vision of the trade, economic, and diplomatic benefits that would flow from an Iran firmly committed to a non-nuclear path.
It seems similar to what North Korea would like.
Yes, though the Iranians haven’t articulated it as clearly as North Korea has.
Well, of course, the difference is that North Korea is claiming to be a nuclear power, and Iran is not.
The suspicion is that Iran has internally decided it needs at least the capabilities to become a nuclear weapons state, and that it wants to pursue those capabilities within the treaty for as long as possible. This Iranian problem exposes a basic and fundamental problem of the NPT. States can legally acquire the technologies needed to produce nuclear weapons, and then leave the treaty and go and produce those nuclear weapons.
This is the issue that everyone is now grappling with. There’s a growing consensus that this deal needs to be reconsidered. The difficulty is finding the right solution for a new interpretation of the NPT bargain. It’s almost impossible to renegotiate or amend the NPT. It would have to be a new agreement on how to implement the guarantees in the treaty for peaceful uses of nuclear energy.
