The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report made public Thursday reveals that Iran has actually reduced the amount of 20-percent enriched uranium available for any possible “breakout” to weapons grade enrichment over the last three months rather than increasing it.
Contrary to the impression conveyed by most news media coverage, [...]]]>
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report made public Thursday reveals that Iran has actually reduced the amount of 20-percent enriched uranium available for any possible “breakout” to weapons grade enrichment over the last three months rather than increasing it.
Contrary to the impression conveyed by most news media coverage, the report provides new evidence that Iran’s enrichment strategy is aimed at enhancing its bargaining position in negotiations with the United States rather than amassing such a breakout capability.
The reduction in the amount of 20-percent enriched uranium in the Iranian stockpile that could be used to enrich to weapons grade is the result of a major acceleration in the fabrication of fuel plates for the Tehran Research Reactor, which needs 20-percent enriched uranium to produce medical isotopes.
That higher level enriched uranium has been the main focus of U.S. diplomatic demands on Iran ever since 2009, on the ground that it represents the greatest threat of an Iranian move to obtain a nuclear weapon capability.
When 20-percent uranium is used to make fuel plates, however, it is very difficult to convert it back to a form that can enriched to weapons grade levels.
When data in the Aug. 30 IAEA report on the “inventory” of 20-percent enriched uranium is collated with comparable data in the May 25 IAEA report, it shows that Iran is further from having a breakout capability than it was three months earlier.
The data in the two reports indicate that Iran increased the total production of 20-percent enriched uranium from 143 kg in May 2012 to 189.4 kg in mid-August. But the total stockpile of 20-percent enriched uranium that could be more easily enriched to weapons grade – and which has been the focus of U.S. diplomatic demands on Iran ever since 2009 – fell from 101 kg to 91.4 kg during the quarter.
The reduction in the stockpile available for weapons grade enrichment was the result of the conversion of 53.3 kg of 20-percent enriched uranium into fuel plates – compared with only 43 kg in the previous five months.
Iran was thus creating fuel plates for its medical reactor faster than it was enriching uranium to a 20-percent level.
But although that reduction of the stockpile of enriched uranium of greatest concern to the United States was the real significance of the new report, it was not conveyed by the headlines and leads in news media coverage. Those stories focused instead on the fact that production of 20-percent enriched uranium had increased, and that the number of centrifuges at the underground facility at Fordow had doubled.
“Nobody has put out the story that their stockpile is shrinking,” said Joe Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund and a leading independent specialist on nuclear weapons policy, in an interview with IPS.
David Sanger and William Broad of the New York Times asserted in an Aug. 30 story that Iran had “doubled the number of centrifuges installed” at Fordow and had “cleansed” the site where the IAEA believed there had been nuclear weapons development work. The story made no reference to fuel plates or the effective stockpile of 20-percent enriched uranium.
A second story by Sanger and Jodi Rudoren on the same day, datelined Jerusalem, was even more alarmist and inaccurate. It declared that the nuclear programme was “speeding up” and that Iran was “close to crossing what Israel has said is its red line: the capacity to produce nuclear weapons in a location invulnerable to Israeli attack.”
Reuters and AP stories also focused on the doubling of centrifuges as the main message in the IAEA report, and Reuters also said Iran “seems to be struggling to develop more efficient nuclear technology that would shorten the time it would need for any atom bomb bid”.
The Washington Post headline said that Iran was “speeding up” uranium enrichment, and the lead said Iran had “substantially increased the production of a more enriched form of uranium in recent months”. But in the second paragraph, it added, somewhat cryptically, that Iran “appeared to take steps that would make it harder to use its uranium stockpile to make nuclear bombs”.
Only a few paragraphs later was it made clear that the lead was misleading, because the IAEA had found that Iran had “converted much of the new material to metal form for use in a nuclear research reactor.” It even quoted an unnamed Barack Obama administration officials said it could not be “further enriched to weapons-grade material….”
In fact the IAEA data showed that it had converted all of the uranium enriched to 20 percent during the quarter to fuel plates, and had converted some of the production from previous quarters as well.
The media reports of a doubling of the number of centrifuges at the underground facility at Fordow were also misleading. When the information is examined more carefully, it actually provides further evidence that Iran is not striving to amass the higher level uranium needed for a breakout capability but is maneuvering to prepare for a later negotiated settlement.
Although the IAEA report shows that the number of centrifuges in place in Fordow has increased from 696 to 2,140 over the past six months, it also makes it clear that the number of centrifuges actually operating has not changed during that period.
The reason for that striking anomaly in the deployment at Fordow does not appear to be technical problems with the centrifuges. The 1,444 centrifuges that are not operating were never even connected by pipes, as the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) observed in its Aug. 30 commentary on the report.
The noncommittal character of the deployment of centrifuges at Fordow suggests that Iran has not decided whether those 1,444 centrifuges are to be committed to 3.5-percent enrichment or to 20-percent enrichment.
The Obama administration appears to understand that this uncertainty about the purpose of the centrifuges is aimed at strengthening Iran’s diplomatic hand in future negotiations. “They have been very strategic about it,” a senior U.S. official told the New York Times just before the report was made public. “They are creating tremendous capacity, but they are not using it.”
The official added, “That gives them leverage, but they think it also stops short of creating the pretext for an attack.”
Cirincione agrees with that senior official’s analysis. “The Iranians are excellent chess players. They are moving their pieces very carefully,” he said. “They are continuing to enhance the value of their bargaining chips.”
The implication of the IAEA report, Cirincione believes, is that Iran is still maneuvering to position itself for a more advantageous agreement in future negotiations. “If you were the Iranians, why would you negotiate right now?” asked Cirincione. “You would want to wait for a better deal.”
In previous rounds of negotiations with Iran in 2012, the United States demanded an end to all 20-percent enrichment and even the closure of the Fordow facility but offered no alleviation of the harsh financial sanctions now being imposed on Iran.
*Gareth Porter, an investigative historian and journalist specialising in U.S. national security policy, received the UK-based Gellhorn Prize for journalism for 2011 for articles on the U.S. war in Afghanistan.
]]>I haven’t read the book yet, [...]]]>
I haven’t read the book yet, but got an overview from the authors on Monday at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. What seems to be remarkable about the book is that Allin and Simon — from the U.K. and Washington’s establishment think tanks – wrote it. And their views are eminently reasonable.
Take this statement from Allin: “War with Iran would be a mistake, not just bad or tragic, but a mistake in the sense that it would be worse than not going to war.”
That was just the launching point.
Allin and Simon gave a frank talk — at a Congressionally-funded establishment think tank, no less — about the need to reevaluate the direction of U.S. policy toward Iran. Namely, because war is worse than not going to war, they think that perhaps it’s time to address “containment” as a potential policy.
“The U.S. will have to build and rely on a regime of contaiment aginst Iran, whether or not it succeeds in building a nuclear weapon,” Allin said.
Containment means two things: 1) Living with a potentially nuclear Iran; and 2) making sure the Israeli-Palestinian conflict stops being the gift that keeps on giving for Iran — that is, contra Israeli and neoconservative statements, linkage is very much a concern.
“In thinking about containment, there is an important element of linkage to the Israel-Palestine issue,” said Allin. He quoted Mark Heller, an Israeli researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University, who told the New York Times over the weekend that linkage is “a total illusion.” But Allin said Heller’s construction was setting up a “straw man.” Allin responded that if Heller wants to talk about “illusions,” it is also appropriate to speak of “delusions”:
It is a delusion to deny that there are things Israel can do and has been doing that makes the US ‘s challenges in the Middle East more difficult… The building of settlements in the Occupied Territories is near the top of the list.
Containment, as constructed by Allin and Simon, is not some policy of quiescence to all Iranian demands. Rather it’s a multi-pronged strategy of conventional power, nuclear superiority, and political deterrent. As Allin said, their plan is intentionally ambiguous about whether it seeks to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon or using one once it does — because the plan seeks to do both.
However, containment presupposes a rational actor in Iran — something Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, with all his blustering about the “tyrants of Tehran” and the “messianic apocalyptic cult” that is the government, might be loathe to accept.
Nonetheless, Simon explicitly does not view Iran this way:
I think I’m speaking for both of us here: We tend to see Iranian foreign policy as essentially cautious and opportunistic… We tend less to see the Iranians as doing something really outrageous. Against this background of caution and opportunism, they can do some nutty things.
Simon went on to say that, obviously, the Israeli calculus is that a nuclear armed Iran will be emboldened to do even more “nutty things.”
“When we talk about an undeterrable, crazy, messianic regime, it is a little scary to acknowledge those elements,” added Allin. “On the other hand, it doesn’t mean that we throw strategic cost benefit out the window.”
And therein lies the rub: Simon and Allin didn’t take on the usual mantra that U.S. and Israeli interests dovetail perfectly — instead, there was a brutally honest discussion of where they diverge, bringing linkage back into the fold.
“The respective issues of Israel and Palestine and what to do about the Iranian nuclear question raise questions about what are the reciprocal obligations of allies,” said Allin. “Jerusalem does not trust Washington when Washington says that a nuclear Iran is unacceptable, particularly because there are now people in this city, like now [Simon] and I, who are writing that the U.S. may have to live with a nuclear Iran.”
“There are differing threat perceptions at work,” acknowledged Simon. “At the end of the day, Iran is simply not as threatening to the U.S. as Israel. This differential threat perception is something that concerns Israelis quite a lot.”
“The second [issue] is a gap between U.S. redlines and Israeli redlines on the Iranian nuclear program. It seems that at the moment, our red line is a breakout capability and their red line is an enrichment capability,” he went on.
Allin added: “We hedge it and we’re mushy in the end, but we do argue that our version of redlines include weaponization” — or taking the actual step of turning a breakout capability into a nuclear weapon.
It’s worth noting the Israeli red line posited here — enrichment — has already been (and continues to be) transgressed by the Iranians. What exactly would drive Israel to act militarily against Iran to enforce an end to enrichment? Or, as Simon put it: “The question is: under what circumstances do they do it?”
“There’s a poster that is ubiquitous in the Israeli Defense Ministry and Air Force (offices) of Israeli warplanes overflying Auschwitz,” he said. ”This is a useful image to have in mind when you think about how Israelis view the stakes.”
The first Israeli consideration, said Simon, would be what the U.S. thought about an attack — it’s not in the interest of any Israelis to “fundamentally alienate the U.S.” That said, Simon acknowledged the possibility that Israel could nonetheless take action that “would disappoint any U.S. administration” — noting that former President George W. Bush opposed an Israeli attack on Iran during his tenure at the White House.
Secondly, said Simon, Israel has its own cost-benefit analysis: “Israelis would have to think that they’re going to get three to five years relief out of a raid. That is to say that they’d push back the Iranian (nuclear) program three to five years before having to go back and mow the lawn.”
But many analysts think an airstrike against Iran’s nuclear facilities would delay the program less than three years, due to the dispersal of Iranian nuclear assets and the difficulty in simultaneously wiping them out. Furthermore, as Defense Secretary Robert Gates noted, an attack on Iran “will make them absolutely committed to obtaining nuclear weapons.” Many analysts think that, absent an attack, the Iranian regime will stop short of a weapon and be satisfied with a breakout capability.
Simon added three further conditions for an Israeli strike: that diplomacy had run its course (in order to protect what’s left of Israel’s international standing); that no one else (i.e., the United States) was going to strike; and that the prospects for regime change in Iran become very dim, meaning so too would prospects for a regime that is less threatening even with bombs.
Simon added, “Historically Israel has acted when it sees its back against the wall. In 1981 (attack on Iraqi reactor) and (a 2007 strike on a Syrian facility) are examples of this. Each of these bold military moves took place when the Israeli cabinet sees their backs as against the wall.” Simon said the U.S. should try to “keep them from feeling this way.”
And how to do this? The aforementioned “containment regime,” for one. But there is also another tack that hasn’t been fully tried — and can’t be tried in ernest amid military threats (despite the latest version of an old canard that Arabs only understand force, as articulated by Netanyahu’s calls for a “credible threat of military action” to back up diplomacy).
“There is an argument you hear made that real game-changing engagement with Iran has not yet been tried,” said Allin. “That might be true. If you wanted real game-changing engagement with Iran you wouldn’t be talking about military options and tightening the noose of economic sanctions.”
]]>Many Western governments insist that Iran’s nuclear program is aimed at creating weapons, a charge Iran denies. The accusation [...]]]>
Many Western governments insist that Iran’s nuclear program is aimed at creating weapons, a charge Iran denies. The accusation also misses some of the nuance between an Iranian “breakout capability” — the ability to quickly weaponize a fully-realized peaceful nuclear program — and an actual nuclear weapon.
Reuters has the report on Soltanieh’s comments:
Ali Asghar Soltanieh, Iran’s ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), suggested the Islamic Republic could never compete in terms of the numbers of warheads possessed by the nuclear-armed major powers.
It would therefore be at a disadvantage in relation to these countries if it developed atomic bombs, Soltanieh said.
“That is the reason we will never make this strategic mistake,” he told a conference at IAEA headquarters in Vienna. “We are as strong as those countries without nuclear weapons.”
Iran’s revolutionary leader and subsequently, first Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, reportedly used to say that nuclear weapons are evil and kill innocent civilians, which is prohibited by Islam. Therefore, nuclear weapons are un-Islamic.
But a letter from Khomeini, released in 2006 by former Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani, has challenged this assertion.
The 1988 letter reportedly said that Iran would need nuclear weapons to end the then-long-running war with Iraq, according to the BBC.
Soltanieh’s position gets some support from former Australian foreign minister Gareth Evans. In the latest Reuters report, Evans implies that Iran merely seeks a breakout capability:
]]>Gareth Evans, co-chair of an international commission which last year issued a report on eliminating nuclear threats, told the same gathering he believed Iran “is to be taken seriously when it says it will not actually weaponize.”
There are “a number of reasons for thinking that Iran will … stop well short of actually making nuclear weapons that it may soon have the capability to produce,” the former Australian foreign minister said in a speech.
They included the risk of an Israeli attack, zero Russian and Chinese tolerance for an Iranian bomb, even tougher international sanctions and the fact that Islam does not accept weapons of mass destruction, he said.
“This is not a factor to which Western cynics would give much credence but I have to say it is echoed very strongly in every private conversation I’ve ever had with Iranian officials,” Evans, a veteran diplomatic trouble-shooter, said.
An Iranian breakout capability would be “as bad as [...]]]>
An Iranian breakout capability would be “as bad as a detonation. In fact, in some ways that’s worse than a detonation,” he said, speaking at the Stimson Center. “That gives them all the effects of having a weapon.”
Hayden recently said on CNN that war with Iran “seems inexorable,” though a spokesperson later walked the comment back. Nonetheless, his comment was used by liberal hawks as a launching pad for drawing plans to attack Iran.
In his most recent appearance, Hayden said that even an Iranian breakout capability might spur a Saudi-Pakistani alliance.
At Fox News‘s website, Lee Ross reports:
Hayden expressed concern that whether Iran actually develops a weapon or is simply capable of doing so presents security challenges to the country’s regional neighbors. Saudi Arabia, Hayden suggested, might be forced to seek a military alliance with Pakistan to counter the Iranian threat. That alliance and others could rapidly escalate tensions leading to significant problems.
It sounds a bit conspiratorial and alarmist. Extremists in Pakistan are already awash with Saudi cash, and this seems to irk the Pakistani leadership, at least insofar as making a moderate amount of war with someone is a sign of that. If Pakistan were to share its nuclear program with Saudi Arabia, I can see how that might put the fear in Hayden, but Islamabad isn’t exactly handing its nuclear trigger codes to Riyadh yet. And I’m not so convinced that such an alliance would actually make much difference. Both countries are ostensible U.S. allies who are, nonetheless, both epicenters of extremism.
That aside, it’s also worth noting that hawks — Jennifer Rubin, for one — already see the status quo (of Iran in the relatively early stages of a nuclear program) as unacceptable. (A strong Saudi-Pakistani alliance might make her head explode!) So if no advanced program is acceptable, and no break out ability is acceptable, and a bomb is certainly not acceptable, then that leaves us just where Rubin wants us: at war.
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