by Jasmin Ramsey
It’s not unusual for evidence supposedly indicating an Iranian nuclear weapons program to be leaked to the press, but how credible is that evidence and how should the press be handling it? For example, late last year, the Associated Press reported on a graph, allegedly from [...]]]>
by Jasmin Ramsey
It’s not unusual for evidence supposedly indicating an Iranian nuclear weapons program to be leaked to the press, but how credible is that evidence and how should the press be handling it? For example, late last year, the Associated Press reported on a graph, allegedly from Iran, that they said was indicative of Iranian nuclear weapons work. It was quickly revealed, however, that there were multiple errors in the graph, casting doubt on its credibility, authenticity and provenance. In that case, the Associated Press admitted the error promptly. More recently, a Washington Post headline declared, “Iran’s Bid to Buy Banned Magnets Stokes Fears about Major Expansion of Nuclear Capacity.” But according to nuclear physicist Yousaf Butt, the evidence for that claim may be thin at best.
During this interview with Prof. Butt, currently a research professor and scientist-in-residence at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, we discussed these issues and the Iranian nuclear standoff more generally.
Q: What do you make of recent claims that Iran may have ordered magnets for its centrifuge program?
Yousaf Butt: The first thing to note is that there is no evidence of any actual magnets. The Washington Post story mentions “purchase orders” for some ceramic ring magnets but there are no “purchase orders”. The whole story is based upon a web-inquiry someone in Iran allegedly made for 100,000 ceramic ring magnets. So this is a simple mischaracterization. The evidence presented (Figures 3 and 4 in the source report) merely show a web inquiry, but we don’t know whether the supplier had any interest in discussing the question further. Such a web-inquiry is one step above a google-search. There is no mention of money, delivery dates or letters of credit, all of which would be part of a formal “purchase order”.
The other problem is in jumping to the conclusion that such magnets can only be used for centrifuges. This is a fault both in the source document as well as the news story. Such magnets have a host of other applications, for instance, in loudspeakers, DC motors, in the blower fan units of car radiators, military field telephones, etc. The article characterizes these magnets as “highly specialized” — they are not. They are common magnets. As I mention in my piece in The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, “Although magnets with an energy product of 3 MGO could be consistent with applications in suspension bearings of the older IR-1 centrifuges, they are also consistent with a host of other applications.”
The story is not necessarily completely wrong — it is simply based on very thin evidence (which it exaggerates) and it’s unbalanced because it does not mention the various possible uses of these very common magnets.
Q: If these magnets are so common why would Iran need to import them?
Yousaf Butt: Again, there is no evidence that Iran was importing or even trying to import such magnets — there is merely an alleged web-inquiry, possibly to check prices. In fact, Iran can and does make such magnets within the country. For example, the Taban Magnetic Materials Development Co. has a website where they advertise the fact that they “produce ceramic permanent magnet (hard ferrite)”.
Q: Let’s assume for a moment that this story is correct and Iran does intend to add 50,000 centrifuges — is that a violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), to which Iran is a signatory?
Yousaf Butt: No, not at all. So long as enrichment is done under International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards, it is legal, regardless of the number or type of centrifuges. Enrichment does not equate to a bomb factory. The Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov has been quite explicit about this and Russia is one of the major P5+1 nations negotiating with Iran. Lavrov has made clear the distinction between what is legally required of Iran and what is being politically requested: “We were told by the IAEA that they (the Iranians) will install next generation centrifuges. However, (Iran) is doing everything in line with their commitments under the Safeguards Agreement. The IAEA has been notified, and the IAEA will be there and will supervise this, but I’d like to repeat that this is a legal aspect of the matter, while the political aspect is that we, along with the other Security Council members, have called on Iran to freeze enrichment operations during the negotiations.”
Q: What about the fear – expressed most strongly by Israel — that Iran may quickly accumulate the material needed for a bomb?
Yousaf Butt: Just last week, the US Director of National Intelligence came out with a brand new Worldwide Threat Assessment, which says quite explicitly: “we assess Iran could not divert safeguarded material and produce a weapon-worth of WGU [weapons grade uranium] before this activity is discovered.” As for Mr. Netanyahu’s red line on Iran: his track-record on predicting Iranian weaponization has been notoriously bad. As I point out in a recent piece for Reuters, in 1992 Mr. Netanyahu said Iran was three to five years from a bomb.
Q: But doesn’t Iran have a history of being less than forthright on nuclear issues?
Yousaf Butt: That’s a very subjective question, but there are often “feelings” and “concerns” voiced informally that Iran has been sneaky in the past, hence it cannot be trusted. Indeed, this may have been the case in the past, but one has to dig deeper into history to find out why. Among the very first things Iran did after the revolution in 1979 was stop its nuclear program because of opposition to nuclear power by its new leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. (Ironically, Iran’s nuclear program was kicked off in the 1950s with the full encouragement and support of the United States, under the auspices of Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace program.) In 1982, Iran decided to resume work on the Bushehr reactors, partly because it was financially complex to just drop the project.
In 1983, Iran went to the IAEA in an overt, non-sneaky way, to solicit help in setting-up a research-level facility for uranium enrichment. The IAEA agreed and was very receptive to the idea, since helping member nations with such work is part of its duties. However, when US government officials caught wind of this, they intervened politically to stop the IAEA from helping Iran. This was documented by Mark Hibbs in an article for “Nuclear Fuel” which is excerpted here.: “…the U.S. government then ”directly intervened” to discourage the IAEA from assisting Iran in production of UO2 and UF6. ”We stopped that in its tracks,” said a former U.S. official.”
One can debate whether or not that was a smart move on the part of the US, but what is beyond question is that it constitutes politicization of the IAEA. So, indeed, Iran may have done some sneaky things in the past, but their hand has also, to some extent, been forced.
The IAEA is a technical agency and, in my view, it should steer clear of all politics. And this is not just my view, many people in the technical and legal arms control community feel this way. For example, Robert Kelley, who twice served with the IAEA as a director of the nuclear inspections in Iraq has said that “IAEA work to date, including the mischaracterization of satellite images of Parchin, is more consistent with an IAEA agenda to target Iran than of technical analysis.”
Unfortunately, a possible consequence of business as usual at the IAEA is the loss of faith in, and the subsequent collapse of, the non-proliferation regime. One way to start afresh would be to think about an “NPT 2.0” which would demand more of both Nuclear Weapon States as well as of non-Nuclear Weapons States, as I outlined in an article for Foreign Policy.
Photo: Iran’s Arak IR-40 Heavy Water Reactor. Credit: Nanking2012
]]>via Lobe Log
Politico has the scoop on an expensive advertisement funded by a mideast-focused hawkish advocacy group featuring an aggressive speech that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made on Sept. 11. The ad is scheduled to air in several cities in Florida tomorrow, where the Jewish vote [...]]]>
via Lobe Log
Politico has the scoop on an expensive advertisement funded by a mideast-focused hawkish advocacy group featuring an aggressive speech that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made on Sept. 11. The ad is scheduled to air in several cities in Florida tomorrow, where the Jewish vote could determine who wins the key state if it’s a close presidential election. Chilling music plays in the background as the Israeli leader proclaims: ”The fact is that every day that passes, Iran gets closer and closer to nuclear bombs. The world tells Israel wait, there’s still time. And I say wait, for what? Wait until when?”
The $1 million slot was paid for by Secure America Now (SAN), which conceals the identity of its donors with its 501(c)4 status. SAN claims it operates in a “non-partisan” manner but doesn’t publish a list of its board or members. Nevertheless, one high-profile member is Frank Gaffney’s sister and fellow neoconservative activist, Devon Cross, who said in a SAN press release (now removed) about a 2011 poll showing American views of Iran as a top national security threat that:
Though both the Bush and Obama administrations have been reticent to consider military options to address the threat posed by Iranian nukes, the American people are prepared to support such action should sanctions fail. Americans across the political spectrum are focused on security, even though these issues get far less attention from politicians than these polling numbers indicate they should.
SAN has been accused of using flawed techniques for its polling. The Washington Post’s Adam Serwer described one such poll showing that Obama had lost Jewish support for the Democrat party because of his dealings with Israel “laughably bogus” because
Not only does their sample skew conservative, (only 64 percent of respondents voted for Obama, as opposed to the 77 percent of Jewish votes he actually got) but many questions in the poll are phrased in as leading a manner as possible. Indeed, given the wording of the questions, it’s actually surprising that 63 percent of respondents overall approved of Obama.
SAN’s media productions also repeat neoconservative talking points about the Obama administration’s mideast foreign policy, including a 2012 SAN ad claiming that in his first interview as president, “Obama chose Arab TV for an apology.” The ad goes on to show Obama saying that it is “important for us to be willing to talk to Iran,” with a voiceover in the ad claiming that “Iran answered with terror, attacks on our troops and nuclear weapons development. … Tell President Obama: no apologies, no weakness. It’s time to stop Iran.”
In its assessment of this ad Politifact.com concluded:
Obama’s first television interview after taking office was with the Al Arabiya network at the White House. But the ad gets nothing right beyond that. By saying ‘all too often the United States starts by dictating,’ Obama was not apologizing but being diplomatic about past strategies that failed to yield results. What’s more, the ad criticizes Obama’s approach to Iran, but his quote actually referred to the Israelis and the Palestinians.
Another ad features a suburban mother complaining that Obama has made the US less secure in many ways, including by ceasing the use of “enhanced interrogation” techniques, “all but abandoning Israel,” “apologizing for America,” failing to stop Iran from allegedly trying to develop a nuclear weapon, and “making clear the era of American exceptionalism is over.”
As Politico’s Maggie Haberman notes, “Bibi Netanyahu is not running a campaign in the US – it just looks that way in this new ad.”
]]>Joe Cirincione, the President of the nuclear non-proliferation-focused Ploughshares Fund, explains why Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney “further undermined his national security credentials, showing a fundamental misunderstanding of nuclear threats” with remarks he made during a private fundraising dinner in May. “Iran’s nuclear program has nothing [...]]]>
Joe Cirincione, the President of the nuclear non-proliferation-focused Ploughshares Fund, explains why Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney “further undermined his national security credentials, showing a fundamental misunderstanding of nuclear threats” with remarks he made during a private fundraising dinner in May. “Iran’s nuclear program has nothing to do with dirty bombs”, writes Cirincione, and a potential president should be well aware of that fact:
]]>Dirty bombs (which have never been used) are very different from nuclear bombs, which trigger a chain reaction in a small core of fissile material — highly-enriched uranium or plutonium — to produce a massive explosion. The explosion produces heat, blast, and radiation that all cause catastrophic damage.
…
Iran’s production of enriched uranium has nothing to do with dirty bombs. The core problem is that Iran is enriching uranium it says is for reactor fuel but could be turned into fuel for nuclear weapons. The most important reason to contain Iran’s nuclear program is to prevent a dangerous, destabilizing nuclear arms race in the Middle East and an emboldened Iranian regime — not to prevent Iran from giving terrorists nuclear materials for a dirty bomb. And it is crucial that anyone involved in the discussion of Iran’s nuclear program — and certainly the Republican presidential nominee — understand this.
News and views relevant to US foreign policy for Sept. 10
“Nuclear Mullahs”: The former executive editor of the New York Times, Bill Keller, summarizes the debate over Iran’s nuclear program and concludes that no war with Iran is far better than a preemptive war and hopes for a [...]]]>
News and views relevant to US foreign policy for Sept. 10
“Nuclear Mullahs”: The former executive editor of the New York Times, Bill Keller, summarizes the debate over Iran’s nuclear program and concludes that no war with Iran is far better than a preemptive war and hopes for a change in US policy toward Iran following the 2012 presidential election:
At the end of this theoretical exercise, we have two awful choices with unpredictable consequences. After immersing myself in the expert thinking on both sides, I think that, forced to choose, I would swallow hard and take the risks of a nuclear Iran over the gamble of a pre-emptive war. My view may be colored by a bit of post-Iraq syndrome.
What statesmen do when faced with bad options is create new ones. The third choice in this case is to negotiate a deal that lets Iran enrich uranium for civilian use (as it is entitled to do under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty), that applies rigorous safeguards (because Iran cheats), that gradually relaxes sanctions and brings this wayward country into the community of more-or-less civilized nations.
That, of course, won’t happen before November. Any U.S. concession now would be decried by Republicans as an abandonment of Israel and a reward to a government that recently beat a democracy movement bloody. We can only hope that after the election we get some braver, more creative diplomacy, either from a liberated Obama or (hope springs eternal) a President Romney who has a Nixon-to-China moment.
“U.S. Attack on Iran Would Take Hundreds of Planes, Ships, and Missiles”: Noah Shachtman breaks down Anthony Cordesman’s assessment of what the United States would have to commit militarily if it were to launch “preventive strikes” against Iran’s nuclear sites. Cordesman seriously doubts Israel’s capacity to execute an effective attack and doesn’t necessarily favor the US doing it for the Israelis as Matthew Kroenig did late last year. In short, the costs would likely be monumental while the benefits would be short-lived:
* “Israel does not have the capability to carry out preventive strikes that could do more than delay Iran’s efforts for a year or two.” Despite the increasingly sharp rhetoric coming out of Jerusalem, the idea of Israel launching a unilateral attack is almost as bad as allowing Tehran to continue its nuclear work unchallenged. It would invite wave after wave of Iranian counterattacks — by missile, terrorist, and boat — jeopardizing countries throughout the region. It would wreak havoc with the world’s oil supply. And that’s if Israel even manages to pull the mission off — something Cordesman very much doubts.
* The U.S. might be able to delay the nuclear program for up to 10 years. But to do so, it’ll be an enormous undertaking. The initial air strike alone will “require a large force allocation [including] the main bomber force, the suppression of enemy air defense system[s], escort aircraft for the protection of the bombers, electronic warfare for detection and jamming purposes, fighter sweep and combat air patrol to counter any air retaliation by Iran.”
Here’s a visual representation of what a strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities would like.
“How to Tackle Iran”: The RAND corporation’s Dalia Dassa Kaye writes that Israel’s Iran policy and the US’s response to Israeli sabre-rattling can have damaging effects including a war that few want or need. Meanwhile there are other options and existing assurances that should be considered:
Rather than public posturing aimed at encouraging the United States to make such firm declaratory policies – creating a sense of mistrust and tension in U.S.-Israeli relations that can only benefit Iran – Israeli officials should work with their American counterparts to quietly seek common strategic understandings on what type of Iranian endgame is acceptable and what conditions would need to be in place for force to be contemplated.
At the same time, the United States can continue the wide array of “assurance” policies already underway to ease Israeli concerns over Iran and bolster its military capabilities. With all the apparent doubts among Israel’s political elite that they can’t count on the United States, it is easy to overlook the unprecedented levels of military assistance and cooperation between the two countries.
U.S. military aid to Israel has reached record levels, providing Israel with the most advanced American weapon systems. President Obama and other senior administration officials have also made a number of public statements suggesting that U.S. policy is not to contain Iran but to prevent a nuclear weapons program. In the backdrop of such statements is a steady U.S. military buildup in the Gulf region, including the bolstering of naval vessels and fighter aircraft that could reach targets throughout Iran.
“‘America the brittle?‘”: Stephen Walt reminds us that the US is secure and that the only way to get Americans to support militarist foreign policy is by scaring them into believing otherwise:
…The United States is very secure by almost any standard, and most countries in the world would be delighted to be as safe as we are. For this reason, most Americans don’t worry very much about foreign policy, and the only way you can motivate them to support the sort of activist foreign policy that we’ve become accustomed to since 1945 is to constantly exaggerate external threats. Americans have to be convinced that their personal safety and well-being are going to be directly affected by what happens in Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria, or some other far-flung region, or they won’t be willing to pay the costs of mucking about in these various places. Threat-mongering also depends on constantly overstating our adversaries’ capabilities and denigrating our own. So senior officials tell sympathetic journalists that our foes are “resilient” and clever and resourceful, etc., while bemoaning our alleged lack of fortitude. The good news is that it’s not true; if anything, Americans have been too willing to “pay any price and bear any burden” for quite some time.
“Tenacious Sanctions”: Paul Pillar writes that a US trade sanction from 1974 targeting the Soviet Union that’s still in effect even though it’s economically damaging demonstrates how this diplomatic tool can easily morph into a double-edged sword:
This baggage demonstrates how it is far harder to remove a sanction—either a special-purpose injunction such as Jackson-Vanik or placement on a list such as the one for state sponsors of terrorism—than to impose it in the first place. Imposition is usually a gesture of disapproval rather than a well-conceived tactic to elicit a change in behavior. Moreover, lifting of a sanction, regardless of changes in conditions that may justify lifting, gets perceived as making nice to the regime in question, and that can be a domestic political liability. As a result, sanctions that have already demonstrated their ineffectiveness get perpetuated; any disagreeable behavior by the targeted regime, even if it has little or nothing to do with the reason the sanction was imposed, is portrayed as a reason to keep the sanction in place.
“Remaking Bagram”: A day after the New York Times reported on US efforts to transfer its detention operations to the Afghan government in accordance with a March 9 Memorandum of Understanding, the Open Society Foundations (OSF) released a report finding that the agreement and US-retained management and authority over parts of the Detention Facility in Parwan (DFIP) at the Bagram airbase have resulted in an “Afghan internment regime” and “differences in understanding” about who controls the handling of suspects and detainees. (Find my related report here.)
]]>Wall Street Journal: The hawkish editorial board argues that the best way for the United States to avert what Western defense experts
Wall Street Journal: The hawkish editorial board argues that the best way for the United States to avert what Western defense experts warn will be a disastrous Israeli war on Iran is by reassuring Netanyahu’s government that the US shares its views on Iran. The Journal’s board also criticizes the top US General Martin Dempsey for his recent discouraging statement about an Israeli attack:
The irony for the Administration is that its head-in-the-sand performance is why many Israeli decision-makers believe they had better strike sooner than later. Not only is there waning confidence that Mr. Obama is prepared to take military action on his own, but there’s also a fear that a re-elected President Obama will take a much harsher line on an Israeli attack than he would before the first Tuesday in November.
If Gen. Dempsey or Administration officials really wanted to avert an Israeli strike, they would seek to reassure Jerusalem that the U.S. is under no illusions about the mullahs’ nuclear goals—or about their proximity to achieving them. They’re doing the opposite.
Since coming to office, Obama Administration policy toward Israel has alternated between animus and incompetence. We don’t know what motivated Gen. Dempsey’s outburst, but a President who really had Israel’s back would publicly contradict it.
Tim Pawlenty, Foreign Policy: Romney campaign co-chair Gov. Tim Pawlenty tells reporter Josh Rogin that the time for diplomacy with Iran is nearing its end and the United States should soon “start the clock ticking” as a warning that it can use military force to stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapon:
]]>Pawlenty endorsed the idea floated by Romney advisor Elliott Abrams last week that now is the time for Congress to pass an authorization of the use of military force against Iran.
“As for me, I thought Elliott had a good idea. I don’t know that it would be dispositive, but it couldn’t hurt and it probably would help,” he said.
In the end, even a military strike might not be effective in eliminating all of Iran’s nuclear facilities, Pawlenty cautioned.
“I don’t think anybody can say with certainty that if there were an attack on Iran it would have precisely predictable outcomes and consequences,” he said. “I think you can increase the likelihood of favorable outcomes, but given the complexity of the situation I don’t think you can give any guarantees.”
Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and former Israeli spy chief Meir Dagan have both made waves over the past months with statements asserting that a military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities could only delay, not destroy, the Islamic Republic’s alleged nuclear weapons program. Speaking in Tel Aviv last week, Michèle [...]]]>
Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and former Israeli spy chief Meir Dagan have both made waves over the past months with statements asserting that a military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities could only delay, not destroy, the Islamic Republic’s alleged nuclear weapons program. Speaking in Tel Aviv last week, Michèle Flournoy, formerly the Obama administration’s undersecretary of defense for policy, emphasized that while the U.S. has a real and viable set of military options against Iran, an Israeli unilateral strike would be unproductive and any military action “would put time on the clock, but it wouldn’t solve the problem in any meaningful way.”
Flournoy’s comments were delivered at Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) on May 29 and 30 and appeared to attempt to both alleviate Israeli concerns that the U.S. was insufficiently committed to preventing a nuclear armed Iran and dissuade Israel from launching its own unilateral strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
“Having sat in the Pentagon, I can assure you of the quality of the work that has been done. [...] The military option for the president is real,” said Flournoy. “Barack Obama is a president that says what he means and does what he says. [...] I can assure you we do not have a policy of containment.”
Flournoy, who left the Pentagon in February and advises the Obama re-election campaign, warned that Israeli military action would ultimately prove counterproductive to Israeli and U.S. interests, telling the audience:
If Israel would launch an attack prematurely, it would undermine the ability of the international community to come together in the critical long-term campaign. It would ultimately hurt our goal of preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.
That warning was amplified by former Deputy National Security Adviser Robert Blackwill who told the INSS audience, “If there were attacks on the American homeland [in response to an Israeli attack on Iran], how many Americans might think that Israel dragged us into a war and now shopping malls were being blown up?”
A potential Iranian nuclear weapon is widely considered a threat to both the security of U.S. and its allies in the region, as well as the nuclear non-proliferation regime. However, intelligence estimates give the West time to pursue a dual-track approach of pressure and diplomacy to resolve the crisis. Questions about the efficacy and consequences of a strike have led U.S. officials to declare that diplomacy is the “best and most permanent way” to resolve the crisis.
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