The international community can eliminate the nuclear threat that Iran’s pursuit of nuclear energy and weapon technology poses by ridding the world of all nuclear weapons, associated technology, nuclear material, and bomb-making knowledge. In short, if nuclear weapons are disinvented, the threat of a nuclear Iran, and the greater threat of nuclear terrorism, will vanish. Disinventing nuclear weapons is not possible in the near future, but it could be possible to reduce Iran’s perceived need for a nuclear deterrent.
Several variables make Iran’s nuclear case a great challenge: Iran’s threat perception, difficulties in developing U.S. policy that curbs Iran’s nuclear progress, loopholes in the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), and Iran’s divided theocracy. Policies implemented under the Bush administration, which combined threats, sanctions, and incentives, failed to convince Iran to freeze a program that now could be used for nuclear energy or for weapon production.
Solving Iran is not only a necessary step toward zero, but also essential to maintaining zero. A policy solution to Iran will be needed to sustain a future nuclear weapons–free world, since a nuclear weapon in such a world would be the ultimate deterrent. President Obama’s administration and the international community at large face many challenges as they work toward curbing the proliferation of nuclear weapons and in particular preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear weapon state.
As an important ally of the West during the Cold War, Iran’s drive toward a nuclear capability began as early as the 1950s. The capability was fueled by the United States and Europe. With no plans to enrich or reprocess nuclear material, the construction of nuclear facilities and Shah Pahlavi’s plans for the construction of twenty-three nuclear reactors by the 1990s were of no threat to the West.1
The 1979 revolution brought Iran’s program to a near halt. Scientists fled the country, and the West stopped exporting supplies to it. The popular Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini announced his objection to a nuclear program and the development of nuclear weapons. Khomeini stopped most of the construction on Iran’s twin nuclear reactor plant at Bushehr, which was being built by a West German company, on the grounds that such things were wasteful Western projects.
A decade later, however, in response to an Iraqi threat, Iran restarted its nuclear program.2 Iran felt the threat from Iraq growing as that nation broke the Geneva Protocol and used chemical weapons on hundreds of thousands of Iranians during the 1980–88 Iran-Iraq War. This threat to Iran increased when the international community (in particular the United States) tolerated Iraq’s use of chemical weapons and tried to prevent Iran from importing chemical precursors.3 It increased even more when Iraq restarted its nuclear program (bombarded in 1981 by Israel).
Iran tried to acquire chemical weapons in response to Iraq’s chemical weapon use, and began a nuclear weapons program in response to Iraq’s growing nuclear capability.4 Not long after Iraq began to rebuild its nuclear program, Supreme Leader Khomeini reversed his decision to freeze Iran’s nuclear program. Iran signed contracts with Argentina, Russia, and China to build the program.5 In 1984 Iran secretly contacted Pakistan’s Abdul Qadeer Khan to buy centrifuge designs,6 and in 1987 it received information on how to mold highly enriched uranium into hemispheres for the core of a nuclear weapon.7
Importing centrifuge technology from Khan’s Market, from 1989 to its discovery in 2002, Iran developed a covert enrichment program at Natanz in central Iran. When the program was exposed in 2002, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) began to explore Iran’s case of noncompliance with its safeguards agreement, agreed to as part of Iran’s NPT commitment, and the United States began to lobby members of the IAEA Board of Governors to send Iran’s case to the United Nations Security Council.
In June of 2003, at the request of the United States, IAEA Director General Mohamed El Baradei presented a report on Iran’s nuclear program to the IAEA Board of Governors. This prompted the board to pass a September 2003 resolution requiring Iran to freeze all work at Natanz, cooperate in full with the IAEA inspectors, and sign the Additional Protocol, or face UN Security Council action. Iran did not obey, and in October, the case went to the Security Council and the first UN Security Council Resolution reproving Iran’s nuclear program passed.
IAEA inspections and reports have continually raised questions on a military dimension to Iran’s program. A January 2006 IAEA report states that Iran showed the agency more than sixty documents containing drawings, specifications, and supporting documentation dating from the early- to mid-1980s which had been handed over by intermediaries. “Among these was a 15- page document describing the procedures for the reduction of UF6 to metal in small quantities, and the casting of enriched and depleted uranium metal into hemispheres, related to the fabrication of nuclear weapon components,” reads the IAEA report.8
By February 2009 Iran clearly had built a dual-use (nuclear energy and weapons) program.9 Iran could use its stock of low-enriched uranium to make nuclear fuel or enrich it to bomb grade to put in the core of a nuclear weapon.10 According to Iran, this capability will only be used for energy production, since the production and use of nuclear weapons runs up against the overarching cultural, religious, and ideological concerns of the leaders that took over after the revolution.11 Supreme Leader Khamenei issued a fatwa on the production, stockpiling, and use of nuclear weapons, forbidding them under Islamic law.12 Yet this ideological reasoning does not explain why Iran continued procurement of dual-use technology after 1991, began to conceal construction of additional enrichment plants from the IAEA, and began to enrich uranium to 20 percent
U-235 in 2010.13
In 2009, President Barack Obama went public with intelligence on another hidden enrichment facility, located in Qom (approximately 100 miles southwest of Tehran). Built in secret, the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant (FFEP) was embedded in a mountain close to a Revolutionary Guards base with air defense. Although Iran has indicated that the decision to build the FFEP was made in the second half of 2007, the IAEA reports that “extensive information from a number of sources” indicates that design work for the facility began as early as 2006.14 Concealing portions of its atomic complex underground, Iran’s peaceful intentions are brought into question.
Pushing its dual use capabilities up a notch are Iran’s plans to enrich uranium to higher grades. According to a February 10, 2010, IAEA report, Iran told the agency that it would begin to enrich its stock of low enriched uranium (now at approximately 4 percent U-235) to 20 percent U-235.15 Iran stated that it had run out of the 20 percent enriched uranium needed to produce medical isotopes. U.S. officials stated that this was a “transparent ploy.”16 On February 8, 2010, Iran requested that the agency be present for a transfer of 10 kg of low-enriched uranium (LEU) from Natanz’s Fuel Enrichment Plant (FEP) to its Pilot Fuel Enrichment Plant (PFEP), but started test feeding the pilot centrifuges before the IAEA arrived on February 10. A February 18 IAEA report confirmed that Iran had reached enrichment levels of up to 19.8 percent U-235 and had transferred approximately 1,950 kg of its stocked LEU to the pilot plant’s feed station.17 Enriching uranium from its natural state of 0.7 percent U-235 to approximately 4 percent U-235 is technically a much larger challenge than enriching from 4 percent to 20 percent.18 Likewise, the move from 20 percent to 90 percent (bomb grade) will be even easier and faster for Iran if it chooses to do so.
Allowing Iran to be at the brink of nuclear weapon production leaves its options open. Some nations involved in negotiations with Iran strongly believe that Iran already intends to build a bomb, and they continue seeking ways to end the nation’s nuclear advancements.19 France, the United Kingdom, and the United States persist in their demand that Iran freeze all nuclear enrichment activities. Even if Iran’s intent is peaceful today, several variables could change its intent in the future. These include: stronger threats from the West, an attack from Israel, or even larger internal unrest that leads Iranian hardliners to build a bomb. It could also be a combination of these things that change Iran’s intentions.
One variable that could influence Iran’s intentions and perceived need for a nuclear deterrent capability is its threat perception. In more recent years, Iran’s Iraqi threat was replaced by the United States and Western U.S. allies, especially Israel. Former president George W. Bush labeled Iran part of an “axis of evil” and set up two carrier strike groups, with strategic lift capabilities, in the Strait of Hormuz in front of Iran. The Bush administration made it clear that they were there to deter Iran.
The Obama administration still deploys a strike group and an amphibious assault ship next to Iran’s waters. The carrier strike group, the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, has 6,900 troops on board, a guided-missile cruiser, and two guided-missile destroyers. The USS Boxer, the amphibious assault ship, has around 6,750 U.S. troops on board. This ship is designed to put troops on the ground and can assault from water to land. It can carry several types of helicopters, Harrier jets, and anti–submarine warfare equipment. Thousands of U.S. troops sit in two of Iran’s bordering countries. As of October 2009 there were 124,000 U.S. troops in Iraq and over 60,000 in Afghanistan. As troop numbers decreased in Iraq under the Obama administration, they increased in Afghanistan. Lack of dialogue between the United States and Iran raises the threat that Iran perceives from the United States. U.S.-Soviet relations in the 1980s were easier to manage, since there were constant bilateral dialogue and fewer unknowns.
A policy of sanctions adds stress to U.S.-Iran relations, and increases Iran’s perception of a threat from the United States. To persuade the nation into freezing its nuclear activities, both the Bush and Obama administrations tried policies that put sanctions on Iran’s critical oil and gas markets. On September 30, 2009, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton warned Iran, “If we don’t get the answers that we are expecting, and the changes in behavior that we are looking for, then we will work with our partners to move for sanctions.” On January 28, 2010, the Senate passed the Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability and Divestment Act of 2009. The bill authorizes state and local governments to divest from local companies involved in critical business with Iran, and sanctions companies supporting Iran’s import of refined petroleum products. This policy has done little to persuade Iran to curb its nuclear activity. Rather, to lessen the strain of sanctions on government activities, in 2007 Iran increased its refining capacity and enacted a more effective rationing program, significantly decreasing Iran’s reliance on foreign petroleum products.
The Obama administration spoke early on of a change in the U.S. approach to Iran, but little seems to have actually changed. The EU3 (France, Germany, and the United Kingdom) and the P5+1 (once joined by China, the United States, and Russia) attempted several times to entice Iran into freezing its nuclear program with an incentive package, but a U.S.-enforced precondition of a freeze on Iranian program work has always prevented substantive negotiations from taking place. Signifying a possible change in this policy, President Obama said in Cairo on June 4, 2009, that “there will be many issues to discuss between our two countries, and we are willing to move forward without preconditions.”20 given Iran every opportunity to resolve the issues diplomatically.21
During his campaign and early on in his term, President Obama said he was willing to engage Iran, unlike the Bush administration. Now, the Obama administration defines its dual track strategy as different from President Bush’s, but it sounds virtually the same. “We’ve pursued a dual track strategy of economic sanctions and engagement,” said Obama’s deputy secretary of state, Jim Steinberg, on October 6, 2009, at a congressional hearing on Iran. “They [the P5+1 partners] specifically reaffirmed the dual track, meaning that we are offering negotiations to Iran; but should Iran not be able to meet the terms of those negotiations, we are prepared to sanction them further,” said Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns for President Bush in September 2007.22
It may not be that Obama’s offers are all “talk,” but that Iran’s June 2009 election debacle left U.S. policy-makers with little to work with. After Iranian hardliners cracked down with brute force on peaceful election protests, the Obama administration put little effort into engaging Iran without preconditions. Minus one possible LEU deal brewing with Iran, the current U.S. administration is left following basically the same policy as the Bush administration.
The only truly new initiative coming out of the Obama administration was a proposal to provide Iran with 20 percent enriched uranium, which it needs to keep its Tehran Research Reactor (TRR) running. Iran’s LEU at an approximate level of 4 percent would be transferred to a participating country (possibly France) for further enrichment and fuel fabrication, and shipped back to Iran for use in the TRR. Not only would this deal take away Iran’s need to further enrich uranium, but it would also remove the majority of Iran’s LEU stockpile from the country, increasing the time it would take Iran to build a bomb. Fearing again (as it did with the Russian proposal) that its LEU would be stuck outside its borders, Iran has since backed out of the deal, offering instead an even exchange of its 4 percent LEU for 20 percent enriched uranium on Iranian soil. It is still to be seen if Obama’s team can keep this deal alive and prevent Iran from continuing its plan to produce its own TRR fuel.
Obama’s appointees may also be slowing the possibility of real change in U.S.-Iran policy. Although President Obama is trying to take the focus off state sponsors of terror and put it on America’s gravest threat to security— terrorism—some of his appointees are still giving priority to their battle of the rogues. President Obama is careful not to claim that Iran has already decided to go for a bomb, but rather, leaves room for diplomacy in his public overtures on Iran. In his April 2009 speech in Prague, the president said that Iran had “yet to build a bomb” and that there was time to influence Iran’s intent. In order to influence that intent, the president said we would engage Iran based on “mutual interests and mutual respect,” and “support Iran’s right to peaceful nuclear energy.” We want “Iran to take its rightful place in the community of nations, politically and economically,” he said.
Obama’s vision sounds quite different from that of one of his appointees, Dennis Ross. Ross was Obama’s Middle East envoy, picked to implement policy on Iran at the State Department. In 2009 he was moved to the National Security Council, where he is advising the president more regularly. In November 2008, Ross published an article in Newsweek claiming that the United States needed to put greater economic pressure on Iran to hit its “profound economic vulnerabilities.”23 Like the former Bush administration, he demonized Iran and said that “everywhere you look in the Middle East today, Iran is threatening U.S. interests and the political order.”24 He did not lay out room for diplomacy to convince Iran not to go for a bomb, but said that “Tehran clearly wants nukes for both defensive and offensive purposes.”25
The Bush administration’s Iran policy did nothing to prevent Iran from achieving its nuclear weapon break-out capability; if Obama’s very similar strategy also allows Iran’s program to advance, Iran could soon have a nuclear weapon capability.
Dramatic change in the U.S.’s own nuclear posture and policy could influence Iran and other non–nuclear weapon states, but like change in U.S.- Iran policy, major change in this area is not coming quickly. As both dual-use nuclear fuel cycle technology and terrorism spread, leaders of nuclear weapon states recognize the qualitatively different threat that nuclear weapons represent today and the increasing chance of their use. This new and increasing threat impelled the United States in 2009, and other nuclear states, to commit to steps toward a world free of nuclear weapons. “I state clearly and with conviction America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons,” said President Barack Obama in his 2009 Prague speech.26 Obama warned the international community of going back to an arms race; he said:
There are those who hear talk of a world without nuclear weapons and doubt whether it’s worth setting a goal that seems impossible to achieve. But make no mistake: We know where that road leads. . . . Let us bridge our divisions, build upon our hopes, and accept our responsibility to leave this world more prosperous and more peaceful than we found it.
Although President Obama said this goal would not be achieved in his lifetime, he laid out steps in Prague that the United States could take toward it. Steps included: a new nuclear arms reduction agreement with Russia, U.S. ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), negotiation of a verifiable fissile material cut-off treaty, and the establishment of a new framework for civil nuclear cooperation. Obama also spoke of Iran’s nuclear case. He said his administration would engage Iran with respect and support its right to peaceful nuclear energy, but it was up to Iran to allow for “rigorous inspections” and prove its peaceful intent, or it would face “increased isolation” and “international pressure.”
Taking the steps toward zero laid out in Prague could slightly reduce the chance that Iran builds a bomb in contravention of its NPT commitments. Such steps could strengthen the value of the NPT bargain by proving a U.S. commitment to its NPT Article VI (nuclear disarmament) obligations and reduce any perceived nuclear threat from the United States. However, U.S. nuclear policy will have little effect on nuclear programs in Iran and other non–nuclear weapon states until the majority of the Prague steps are taken, including changes made to U.S. nuclear posture to reduce the chance that U.S. nuclear weapons will ever be used.
Rather than decreasing the threat of a nuclear attack on Iran from the United States, the latest U.S. Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), released after the Prague speech, heightened Iran’s fears. The April 2010 NPR reserves the right for the United States to use nuclear weapons on states in noncompliance with their NPT commitments. The NPR states, “[T]he United States is now prepared to strengthen its long-standing ‘negative security assurance’ by declaring that the United States will not use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapons states that are party to the NPT and in compliance with their nuclear non-proliferation obligations.”27 The Iranians may contest their compliance status in international fora, but they know for certain that the United States views them in noncompliance with their NPT nonproliferation obligations, and therefore still a target for U.S. nuclear attack. Iran took the NPR as an overt threat of nuclear attack. On May 5, 2010, President Ahmadinejad came to the first day of the NPT Review Conference and stated that “under the NPR, some States [including Iran] have been threatened to be the target of a pre-emptive nuclear strike.”28
Iran is a complex case, more complex than North Korea. The international community might have had an easier time with North Korea if the NPT’s Article X (withdrawal clause) provided for penalties in response to a nation’s withdrawal. Iran cannot be solved simply by strengthening U.S. nonproliferation policy and closing the NPT’s loopholes. Iran did not choose complete isolation from the international community by going straight for a bomb and withdrawing from the NPT; rather, it built an enormous enrichment facility and continues to fight for it, citing Article IV of the NPT, which gives non–nuclear weapon states the right to nuclear technology for peaceful use. Iran also has a more diverse political system than North Korea. This system includes reformers who will fight to stay out of international isolation and condemnation, and conservatives who will fight for Iran’s nuclear ascendancy. Strengthening U.S. nonproliferation policy and the NPT will help solve the Iran problem, but it is only one part of the solution. The Iranian nuclear problem will only be solved through comprehensive negotiations that meet a vast variety of Iranian and Western concerns.
It is unlikely that steps toward zero, as laid out in President Obama’s Prague speech, will affect non–nuclear weapon states like Iran until all nuclear weapon states are on the road toward zero. President Obama did say that arms reduction negotiations with Russia would “set the stage for further cuts, and we will seek to include all nuclear weapons states in this endeavor.” It is unlikely, however, that other nuclear weapon states will join in nuclear disarmament negotiations before the United States and Russia reduce their stockpile totals to levels closer to 500 total warheads; that is, numbers closer to the stockpiles of the smaller nuclear weapons states.
There are no near-term plans for the United States and Russia to include their total stockpiles in a disarmament treaty. The New START is the latest arms reduction treaty between the United States and Russia (the world’s leading nuclear weapon holders). Signed in April 2010, the treaty will bring each deployed arsenal down to 1,550 strategic warheads and 700 delivery vehicles, but nondeployed warheads are not included in this treaty.
Even if there were the will and a way to disarm to 500 total U.S. strategic and nonstrategic weapons, it would take the United States a minimum of two presidential terms (that is, eight years), possibly more, to accomplish the drawdown. Core defense policies from nuclear doctrine to highly technical weapons programs will have to be changed, and the entire U.S. weapons complex reimagined.29 Hazardous nuclear waste will have to be safely dealt with and Congress convinced to change the focus of work for thousands of scientists and employees at U.S. national laboratories.
Also slowing and complicating the global shift toward zero is the fact that several nuclear weapon states do not partake in the NPT regime. North Korea withdrew from the treaty, and Israel, Pakistan, and India were never members. Israel’s arsenal is not even officially recognized, so getting them involved in negotiations toward zero could be a great challenge. According to Iran, only if Israel enters the disarmament movement will its own nuclear decisions be affected. It submitted ten of the approximately forty working papers to the NPT Preparatory Committee (PrepCom) Meeting in New York in 2009. It stated in several of its working papers the importance of establishing a nuclear weapons–free zone (NWFZ) in the Middle East, reminding states that it was the first country in the Middle East region to initiate the idea in 1974.30 Iran consistently refers to Israel as an obstacle to NPT success. If concrete steps were taken by NPT parties toward the realization of a NWFZ in the Middle East, it could reduce the probability that Iran would build a bomb. The United States is willing to mention the importance of taking steps toward a NWFZ in the Middle East, and said so at the 2009 NPT PrepCom and the 2010 NPT Review Conference. However, it is a very sensitive topic with a tight ally, and it is very doubtful the United States is prepared to aggressively push for its implementation. Without strong U.S. support for the NWFZ, it will not come about any time soon.
It looks as if a real Nuclear Weapons Convention (prohibiting the use and threat of use of nuclear weapons, as well as providing a phased program for total elimination)31 between all nuclear weapon states is not on the horizon, but even if it were, would it decrease or increase a non–nuclear weapon state’s aspiration to build a bomb? Some experts say that such a convention would decrease Iran’s need for a nuclear security assurance, but others believe it would raise the value of a nuclear deterrent to a state like Iran, since an Iranian bomb in a world without any other nuclear weapons would provide the ultimate deterrent. In any case, states are not yet near consensus on a nuclear weapon convention. At the 2009 PrepCom meeting in New York, the final consensus document started out with the mention of such a convention, but it was quickly negotiated out of subsequent drafts by NPT state parties.32
President Obama set the stage to pursue disarmament policies that will strengthen the NPT, but there are other multilateral initiatives in play that could weaken their positive effect. Many non–nuclear weapon states perceive new initiatives by nuclear weapon states to facilitate the spread of nuclear power while curbing the spread of enrichment and reprocessing technology to be working against their NPT Article IV (peaceful-use) rights. A late 2008 U.S. Congressional House Committee report instructed the Energy Department to continue to foster relations with countries with advanced fuel-cycle capabilities (that is, Britain, France, and Japan), but not with those that do not have them.33
This approach is fostering distrust in the NPT system, and could be weakening Iran’s (and other non–nuclear weapons states’) commitment to the regime. The former Bush administration pursued such an approach with the launch of the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) in 2006. GNEP initially required partner nations receiving fuel services to “forgo their own investments in enrichment and reprocessing technologies.” President Bush outlined the original purpose of GNEP’s international component in his speech at the National Defense University on February 11, 2004:
The world’s leading nuclear exporters should ensure that states have reliable access at reasonable cost to fuel for civilian reactors, so long as those states renounce enrichment and reprocessing. Enrichment and reprocessing are not necessary for nations seeking to harness nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.34
GNEP is one of several fuel cycle initiatives proposed in the international community since 2005. Russia, Germany, Japan, and the United Kingdom also proposed initiatives to better manage the spread of sensitive fuel cycle capabilities. Rather than curbing the spread of enrichment and reprocessing technology, initiatives like GNEP may have provoked a number of nations to announce new policies to resuscitate dormant or launch new nuclear energy and enrichment programs. As soon as the United States launched GNEP, several nations made clear that they would not give up their inalienable right to nuclear technology as granted to them under Article IV of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
The Obama administration is trying hard to change the original vision President Bush laid out for GNEP. U.S. diplomats have changed the tone of GNEP consensus statements, inserting whenever possible the idea that GNEP looks to help non–nuclear weapon states gain access to their nuclear rights under the NPT, not take them away. Negotiations are even taking place to change GNEP’s name to something that a broad variety of states agree on. At the writing of this chapter the name International Framework for Nuclear Energy Cooperation is being strongly considered to replace GNEP. Still, the original GNEP vision is hard to wipe from memory in key non–nuclear weapon states, and turning GNEP into a useful international framework for progress continues to be an uphill battle.
President Obama has emphasized that fissile material, which can be produced at Natanz, poses the greatest threat to U.S. security, not nuclear weapons. He promised to secure fissile material around the globe in four years. It is “the dangers posed by nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism” that “animate President Obama’s call for a new direction and new momentum in pursuit of nuclear disarmament,” said U.S. ambassador Marguerita Ragsdale at the NPT PrepCom, May 6, 2009, in New York.35
The prioritization of managing the spread of sensitive fuel cycle technology over nuclear disarmament could weaken Iran’s, and other non–nuclear weapon states’, commitment to the NPT. Claiming that Iran’s nuclear program blocks nuclear states from fulfilling their NPT disarmament commitment could also weaken Iran’s NPT nonproliferation commitment. Assistant Secretary of State for Verification, Compliance, and Implementation Rose Gottemoeller delivered a statement to the NPT PrepCom in New York on May 5, 2009, stating that her “delegation would like to note how important stopping the spread of nuclear weapons is, to give the nuclear weapons states confidence that further reductions in these weapons can be made without undermining international peace and security.”36 Two days later, U.S. ambassador Ragsdale said that “it is also essential that the vast majority of states who are parties fully comply with its [NPT] provisions. . . . [U]nfortunately we know that some Parties—Iran and North Korea—have broken the Treaty’s rules.”
The United States laid out the argument at the 2009 PrepCom that Iran is blocking NPT progress and the abolition movement. Iran’s NPT delegation called this a “continued unbalanced and discriminatory approach,” and stated that the real threat to international peace and security is that the United States and other nuclear weapon states are “uncommitted to Article VI [nuclear disarmament], and still threatening peace and security.”
According to Iran, clamping down on the spread of sensitive fuel cycle technology raises the value of such technology. Iran claimed that the way in which the United States cracked down on peaceful-use technology in the past forced them to go to Pakistan’s black market for nuclear fuel supplies. “Access of developing countries to peaceful nuclear materials has been continuously denied to the extent that they have had no choice than to acquire their requirements for peaceful uses of nuclear energy, including medical and industrial applications, from open markets, [and] intermediaries,” said Iranian ambassador Ali Asghar Soltanieh on May 8, 2009, at the PrepCom. Iran also views restrictions on nuclear energy technology as a “grave injustice” against their NPT rights. At the NPT Review Conference in 2010, President Ahmadinejad added:
One of the gravest injustices committed by the nuclear weapon states is equating nuclear arms with nuclear energy. As a matter of fact, they want to monopolize both the nuclear weapons and the peaceful nuclear energy, and by doing so impose their will on the international community.37
In no way do U.S. efforts to strengthen nonproliferation policy globally give Iran the justification to pursue a dual use nuclear program, but Iran believes they do, or at least uses this as an excuse for its noncompliance with IAEA safeguards requirements. Recent U.S. efforts to make GNEP a more equal opportunity venture and efforts to insert more language at the NPT on a non–nuclear weapon state’s right to nuclear energy will help counter Iran’s claims. Nevertheless, Iran is a complex case that cannot be solved by U.S. and global nonproliferation policy alone.
Also affecting Iran’s nuclear decisions and negotiations are non-NPT member states Pakistan, India, and North Korea. As nuclear-armed Pakistan becomes more and more unstable, the possibility of a jihadist takeover increases. If Pakistan becomes a recognized safe haven for al Qaeda and other terrorist groups, it will threaten Shia Iran and likely encourage an expansion of the Iranian nuclear program.38 Meanwhile, India signed a nuclear trade agreement with the United States in 2006, reversing thirty years of U.S. law that prohibited the United States from trading nuclear technology with states outside the NPT regime. Some experts say that the India deal set a good example for Iran, proving that if a state follows the rules and does not proliferate, it could gain greater access to the Western market.39 Other experts fear that the U.S.-India nuclear agreement has undermined the NPT regime and forced non–nuclear weapon states like Iran to doubt the value of the NPT bargain. Iran will continue to use the U.S.-India deal as proof that the NPT regime is unfair.
How the international community deals with the North Korean case could also affect Iran’s future nuclear decisions. North Korea illegally withdrew from the NPT, built six to eight nuclear bombs, and tested two. So far, North Korea has faced only reprimands and sanctions for its actions. Iran is watching this situation closely. North Korea is a staunch supporter of Iran’s program, and reportedly provided Iran with technical advice and technology for its nuclear and ballistic missile programs. If North Korea continues to get away with being a nuclear weapon state, Iran may itself choose sovereignty and a nuclear deterrent over peaceful integration in the international community. President Obama called in Prague for “real and immediate consequences for countries caught breaking the rules.” It will be up to his administration to find ways to work with NPT members to close the NPT loophole that allowed North Korea, without immediate consequences, to withdraw from the NPT and, while a party, to use technology toward a nuclear weapon capability. Iran’s choice to go nuclear and drop its NPT membership will likely be influenced by the international community’s future success or failure on redefining the NPT’s withdrawal clause.
U.S. and Western influence on Iran’s nuclear choices in the near future will be negatively impacted by the fragile state of the current Iranian regime. To change the goals of Iran’s nuclear program prior to June 2009, the West could have convinced the single most powerful figure in Iran at the time, Supreme Leader Khamenei.40 Khamenei was likely the only Iranian in the political system who held enough power to change Iran’s nuclear intentions, yet after the contentious presidential elections of June 2009, Khamenei may no longer have enough control over all factions of Iran’s system to effect a change in Iran’s nuclear program goals.
In the wake of the June 12, 2009, presidential elections, tens of thousands of Iranians took to the streets to contest the election of the incumbent conservative, Ahmadinejad, in the largest occurrence of street protests and rioting since the 1979 Iranian Revolution. Reformist leader Mir-Hussein Mousavi ran against Ahmadinejad and continues to lead the opposition, dubbed the “green movement” in honor of the mowj-e-sabz, or “green wave,” a symbol of Mousavi’s campaign. On June 19, 2009, the supreme leader publicly allowed the Basij army, an arm of the Revolutionary Guards, to beat down the ongoing protests. In the days that followed, tear gas, guns, and water cannons were used.
Hundreds of protestors, Iranian journalists, human rights lawyers, and reformist politicians have since been beaten and jailed. Pictures of bloodstained young students killed by the Iranian government are posted all over the internet. Millions of Iranians who were once protesting election results were even more enraged by the government’s violent crackdown. The green movement morphed from its inception as a political campaign, to a campaign to annul the presidential election, and finally, more broadly, into a movement to restore the civil liberties promised by the 1979 Islamic Revolution. President Obama is careful to express only moral support for Iranians fighting for their civil rights, so as not to lend credence to the government’s assertion that the movement is a foreign-inspired plot to foment a “velvet” or “color” revolution. Until Iran’s regime changes or settles down, it will be very hard to engage them on sensitive nuclear issues.
In light of Iran’s current political instability, it is hard to foresee what the real impact of any new U.S. or multilateral policy would be on Iran. A central goal of any new policy should be to decrease the threat Iran perceives from the West and reduce the chance that the nation will build a nuclear weapon as a security assurance. The world is not ready to eliminate nuclear weapons tomorrow, and even if it did, it is unclear if global zero would increase or decrease the value to Iran of building a bomb. In any case, until a less antagonistic and more diplomatic Iranian regime comes to power, any hope to positively influence Iran’s nuclear ambition is lost. This problem is complex, and not solvable in a short book chapter, but it is clear that a solution to the question of Iran will be necessary to achieve the goal of a nuclear weapon–free world and sustain it.
This chapter was completed in the September 2009, before the principal author began her current position in the U.S. government, and updated since by Laicie Olson, Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation.
1. Sharon Squassoni, “Iran’s Nuclear Program: Recent Developments,” Congressional Research Service, November 23, 2005, Order Code RS21592.
2. For more on Iran’s response to Iraq’s nuclear program, see Mahdi Obeidi, The Bomb in My Garden (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley and Sons, 2004), p. 65.
3. Millions of Iranians were affected by the September 1980 to August 1988 Iran-Iraq War; 220,000 Iranians were killed and 500,000 injured (40,000 prisoners of war were taken). Today, there are still 60,000 Iranian survivors that are registered to receive treatment for chemical weapon exposure, according to Dr. Shahriar Khateri, International Relations director for the Society for Chemical Weapon Victim Support: “Acute and Chronic Health Effects of Chemical Weapons: Lessons Learned from the Iranian Survivors,” presentation in Washington, DC, May 8, 2008. For details on President Reagan’s secret tolerance of Iraq’s use of chemical weapons, see Patrick E. Tyler, “Officers Say U.S. Aided Iraq in War Despite Use of Gas,” New York Times, August 18, 2002.
4. Iran failed to persuade the international community to impose sanctions on Iraq for its violations of the 1925 Geneva Protocol, and in response acquired its own chemical weapon stockpile; see Tyler, “Officers Say U.S. Aided Iraq.” For Iran’s response to the restart of Iraq’s nuclear program, see Dilip Hiro, “Why Iran Didn’t Cross the Nuclear Weapon Road,” YaleGlobal, December 11, 2007.
5. For more on Iran’s contracts with Argentina and China, see Taylor and Francis Group, Lucy Dean, The Middle East and North Africa (New York: Routledge, 2003), p. 410; “The China-Iran Nuclear Cloud,” Middle East Defense News, July 22, 1991; and Jack Boureston and Charles D. Ferguson, “Schooling Iran’s Atom Squad,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 60, 3 (2004): 31–35.
6. Bruno Tertrais, leading French nuclear expert, at Fondation pour la Recherche Stratégique, on Iran’s program, email interview with author, May 26, 2009.
7. For a report citing Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapon drawings, see International Atomic Energy Agency, “International Atomic Energy Agency Report on Iran,” GOV/2006/15, February 27, 2006.
8. “International Atomic Energy Agency Report on Iran,” International Atomic Energy Agency, GOV/2006/15.
9. To see Iran’s achievements by this time, see: “International Atomic Energy Agency Report on Iran,” GOV/2009/8, February 19, 2009.
10. With no previous experience in making a nuclear weapon, experts estimate that it could take from six months to two years for Iran to do so.
11. Gregory F. Giles, “The Islamic Republic of Iran and Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Weapons,” in Planning the Unthinkable, ed. Peter Lavoy, Scott Sagan, and James Wirtz (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000).
12. “Iran Holder of Peaceful Nuclear Fuel Cycle Technology,” Iran’s Statement at IAEA Emergency Meeting, August 10, 2005, available at http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/ iran/nuke/mehr080905.html.
13. Ibid.; on Iran procuring dual use technology after 1991, see Tertrais email interview.
14. Reported in “Implementation of the NPT Safeguards Agreement and Relevant Provisions of Security Council Resolutions 1737(2006), 1747(2007), 1803(2008) and 1835(2008) in the Islamic Republic of Iran,” GOV/INF/2010/10, February 18, 2010.
15. Ibid., GOV/INF/2010/2, February 10, 2010.
16. “Obama Official: Iran Medical Isotopes Claim a ‘Transparent Ploy,’” The Cable, March 17, 2010.
17. Ibid.; GOV/INF/2010/10.
18. To understand how it is easier to quickly move from 4 percent to 20 percent enrichment, see Jeffrey Lewis’s post on ArmsControlWonk.Com, “Iran to Enrich 20 Percent LEU,” February 9, 2010, ArmControlWonk.Com.
19. Although a 2007 U.S. National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) states that Iran stopped weaponization work in 2002, the NIE proves that Iran had, and could still have, a weaponization capability. “Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities,” National Intelligence Estimate, U.S. National Intelligence Council, November 2007.
20. “Obama Egypt Speech,” Huffington Post, June 4, 2009.
21. Jay Deshmukh, “Iran to ‘Hide Nuclear Plants inside Mountains,” AFP, February 22, 2010.
22. James B. Steinberg, Opening Statement before the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, October 6, 2009. Nicolas Burns’s statement of September 28, 2007 can be found at http://merln.ndu.edu/archivepdf/iran/State/92953.pdf.
23. Dennis Ross, “Iran: Talk Tough with Tehran,” Newsweek, November 29, 2008.
24. Ibid.
25. Ibid.
26. Remarks by President Barack Obama, Czech Republic, Prague, April 5, 2009.
27. Nuclear Posture Review Report, U.S. Department of Defense, April 2010.
28. Statement by Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, May 3, 2010, Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty Review Conference, United Nations, New York.
29. See the chapter by Judith Reppy in this book.
30. Report submitted by Iran to the NPT Preparatory Committee Meeting, “Establishment of a Nuclear Weapon Free Zone in the ME,” April 21, 2009, NPT/ CONF.2010/PC.III/PC.7.
31. The Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy, text of the “Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Testing, Production, Stockpiling, Transfer, Use and Threat of Use of Nuclear Weapons and on Their Elimination,” April 1997.
32. To view the drafts of the Draft Recommendations to the 2010 NPT Review Conference during negotiations toward a consensus document at the 2009 NPT Preparatory Committee Meeting, see “PrepCom Almost Falls Apart,” blog post from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty Preparatory Conference in New York, Physicians for Social Responsibility, May 14, 2009.
33. Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2009, H.R. 7324, U.S. House of Representatives.
34. President George W. Bush, “President Announces New Measures to Counter the Threat of WMD,” remarks by President George W. Bush at Fort Lesley J. McNair, National Defense University, February 11, 2004.
35. Jill Parillo, “Iran vs. the United States at the PrepCom,” Physicians for Social Responsibility, May 8, 2009, available at http://www.psr.org/nuclear-weapons/blog/iranvs-the-united.html.
36. This and the following three quotations are from notes taken by author at the event.
37. Statement by Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, May 3, 2010, Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty Review Conference, United Nations, New York.
38. Bruce Riedel, “Pakistan’s Nuclear Weapons: Averting the Worst,” Brookings Institution, May 27, 2009, available at http://www.brookings.edu/opinions/2009/0506_ pakistan_riedel.aspx.
39. Stephen Cohen in a talk, “The U.S.-India Nuclear Agreement,” at the Brookings Institution, Washington, DC, July 30, 2008.
40. Akbar Ganji, “The Latter-Day Sultan,” Foreign Affairs 87, no. 6 (November/ December 2008): 45–66.