by Peter Jenkins
An article in the latest issue of the International Security journal goes to the heart of US and European nuclear non-proliferation policy. The author, Scott Kemp, an Assistant Professor of Nuclear Science and Engineering at MIT, raises a fundamental question: is proliferation best prevented by supply-side measures [...]]]>
by Peter Jenkins
An article in the latest issue of the International Security journal goes to the heart of US and European nuclear non-proliferation policy. The author, Scott Kemp, an Assistant Professor of Nuclear Science and Engineering at MIT, raises a fundamental question: is proliferation best prevented by supply-side measures (attempts to restrict the availability of certain technologies) or by influencing the demand side (the national interest calculations that underpin decision-making on nuclear weapon acquisition)?
The question has divided the US nuclear community since 1945 and is unlikely to be resolved by this one article, well-researched and highly intelligent as it is. Nonetheless, Kemp’s conclusion merits substantial debate, not least in the wider foreign policy community. It is that a rebalancing of nuclear non-proliferation policy is advisable, away from over-dependence on supply side restrictions and towards greater reliance on influencing states’ motives and calculations.
Kemp justifies his conclusion by surveying the extent to which controlling one type of nuclear technology — the use of centrifuges to enrich uranium — can be relied on to limit the spread of nuclear weapons, and by demonstrating that controls have been and will be porous and permeable.
Technological and industrial developments since 1945 have moved the proliferation-potential boundary outwards to where the building of a uranium enrichment plant lies within the reach of many states. The required information has long been in the public domain. The tools and equipment needed to build rudimentary centrifuge machines are unsophisticated. The risk of remote detection of a small clandestine plant is small. Thirteen of the twenty states that have built enrichment facilities have done so without recourse to outside help — and several others could have gone it alone.
Kemp is careful to distinguish between over-reliance on technology controls and denying that controls have any merit. He is not advocating the elimination of controls. On the contrary, he recognises that controls can make the task of building and operating centrifuges more arduous by forcing states to develop the technology indigenously and to spend time troubleshooting the challenges that will inevitably arise. Controls can also limit the ability of states to build high-performance centrifuges.
But where centrifuge technology is concerned, Kemp’s sympathies clearly lie with Niels Bohr, Robert Oppenheimer, and other Manhattan Project scientists who warned that controls could only provide a temporary hurdle, not an insurmountable barrier. Like them, he also believes that enduring protection “can only come from the political organization of the world”.
Mercifully, much of that political organization now exists, thanks to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which entered into force in 1970. Early doubts about how effective a barrier the NPT would be have been confounded. All but the four nuclear-armed states (Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea) and South Sudan, which has had more pressing priorities, are parties to it. Only nine states are known or suspected of having engaged in clandestine nuclear activities after becoming parties; and all but two of those (Iraq and Syria) have chosen or been persuaded to abandon their clandestine activities well short of nuclear weapons acquisition.
Why has the NPT been so effective? Kemp leaves that question to be answered by others. My sense is that NPT parties see mutual security benefits in maintaining this regime for as long as possible, certain grievances notwithstanding, and have no appetite for engaging in a nuclear arms race with their neighbors. An element of deterrence may also enter into the equation: latecomers to the nuclear-armed clubhouse cannot be sure of getting in unscathed.
But I hope someone more qualified than I will undertake the thorough assessment Kemp calls for at the end of his article:
While the specific causes of proliferation abstinence lie beyond the scope of this article, the subject clearly merits deeper analysis by both policymakers and academics as such factors are probably the most viable basis for the future of the non proliferation regime.
More immediately, Kemp’s conclusion begs important questions in relation to the current negotiations between Iran and the P5+1: if technology restrictions can never be more than a hurdle to centrifuge-based nuclear weapon acquisition, is it essential that the US and EU insist on a dramatic cut in the number of operating centrifuges at Iran’s disposal during the interim phase of a comprehensive solution?
Would the US and EU be wise to walk away from the negotiation if, for domestic political reasons, Iran were to refuse to dismantle any of its 19,000 centrifuges and to operate any fewer than 9,000 at any one time?
Should the US and EU be ready to close the deal if Iran can demonstrate convincingly that it has no interest in acquiring nuclear weapons — with no motive for incurring the near-universal condemnation that a nuclear “break-out” would trigger — and backs up the demonstration by accepting that verification of its nuclear program can remain at current levels indefinitely?
I know what I think. But what, I wonder, do the US administration’s “counter-proliferation” experts think, and what advice are they giving to the US secretary of state and president? I fear they may be on the other side of the post-1945 divide.
This article was first published by LobeLog.
Photo: The first meeting of the Preparatory Committee for the Review Conference of the Parties to the NPT, United Nations, Geneva, Switzerland on April 1, 1974. Credit: UN
]]>by Peter Jenkins
The parties to the current negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program are being discreet about the details, as is sensible. Nonetheless, from the occasional statement or remark to journalists it is possible to form some impression of the issues that are causing the greatest difficulty.
These include restrictions [...]]]>
by Peter Jenkins
The parties to the current negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program are being discreet about the details, as is sensible. Nonetheless, from the occasional statement or remark to journalists it is possible to form some impression of the issues that are causing the greatest difficulty.
These include restrictions on Iran’s capacity to enrich uranium during an interim period, the duration of that period, the phasing of sanctions relief, and, a late-comer to the agenda, restrictions on Iran’s ballistic missile program.
If, as the remarks imply, the gap between positions on such issues is still wide, it does not follow necessarily that the negotiating deadline of July 20 will be missed. It is all too common for negotiators to keep the most painful concessions in reserve until the 11th hour, in the hope that they will not be needed.
It will, however, be interesting to review some of the problems that have come to light and to imagine ways of handling them.
Duration of the interim period
Al Monitor’s Laura Rozen reported May 15 that an Iranian source said it is the Iranian team’s expectation that “after the signing of a comprehensive deal, there will be an interim period,” where there will be restrictions on Iran’s program “and the [possible military dimensions issue] will be resolved.”
But there has to be a “basis” for the duration of that interim period, according to the Iranian source. If the restrictions should last for 10, 15 or 20 years, the parties have to “examine” the basis. “Why 20 years?” he asked.
A solution to this problem would be to agree that the duration of the interim period will be determined by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), in the sense that it will be co-extensive with the time required by the Agency to affirm that there are no undeclared nuclear facilities or material in Iran and, in effect, that Iran’s nuclear program is as peaceful as that of any other Non-Nuclear-Weapon State (NNWS) party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
The “basis” or rationale would be that requiring Iran to accept constraints on certain nuclear activities is logical for as long as it can reasonably be questioned whether Iran’s nuclear program is exclusively peaceful. Once the IAEA has found the same grounds for confidence in the peaceful nature of Iran’s program as exist in other NNWS, this rationale would no longer be logical.
A similar solution was proposed in January 2004, in relation to the duration of the suspension of uranium enrichment that had been agreed in Tehran on October 21, 2003. On that occasion it was rejected by Iran because Tehran hoped to be able to resume enrichment well before the Agency would be able to provide grounds for confidence — and rejected by the UK, France and Germany because they wanted the suspension to last indefinitely, if not forever.
Ten rather grim years later, can the parties bring themselves to accept this logic and bend it to the cause of an agreement?
The phasing of sanctions relief
Arash Karami reported May 21 that a spokesman for the Iranian Parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee told Iran’s Tasnim News that the P5+1 said after an agreement “we have to prove our goodwill. They will then remove sanctions one by one,” over a period of ten years.
It is not hard to imagine how unappealing such an offer must seem to an Iranian government that is banking on sanctions relief to improve the living standards of ordinary Iranians.
Iran will have understood long ago that the US administration will require many years to persuade Congress to repeal the nuclear-related sanctions that Congress has imposed. But Iran must surely be hoping that non-US and particularly EU firms will be free to trade and invest in Iran within months of agreement on a comprehensive solution.
“Iran would not mind front-loading the final deal,” another Iranian source told Rozen. “Iran would take all the measures [agreed] at the beginning of the deal, and expect its counterpart to do the same.”
It tends to be forgotten that when, on January 23, 2012, EU Ministers agreed to what Foreign Secretary William Hague described as an “unprecedented set of sanctions against Iran,” their aim was to coerce Iran into a nuclear negotiation.
“This is a major increase in the peaceful, legitimate pressure on Iran to negotiate over its nuclear program,” Hague told the House of Commons the next day.
If EU Ministers such as Hague are concerned about legitimacy, there is a chance that it would trouble their consciences to maintain such “unprecedented” (an euphemism for draconian) sanctions not just after Iran’s appearance at the negotiating table, but even after the conclusion of a comprehensive negotiation. And if legitimacy is not a concern, perhaps they can at least be persuaded to lift EU sanctions by all the EU firms that are hoping to resume normal business with Iran.
Iran’s ballistic missile program
“Iran also rejects that its ballistic missile program should be a subject for discussion with the P5+1, Iran’s negotiators have repeatedly said,” wrote Rozen May 21.
For their part, US negotiators have justified the inclusion of this issue on the agenda, despite the absence of any reference to it in the November 24 Joint Plan of Action (JPOA), by recalling the JPOA reference to “addressing the UN Security Resolutions” (the last of which, 1929 (2010), contains a brief missile-related provision).
As a justification this leaves a bit to be desired. The reference to UN resolutions is in the preamble of the JPOA, not in the final operative section, which itemizes the agenda for the current negotiation. It is uncommon to consider preambular wording as binding on the parties to an agreement.
Moreover, the relevant bit of operative paragraph 9 of resolution 1929 (2010) scarcely lends itself to the sort of restrictions that Israeli leaders and their Congressional supporters have been demanding that the administration obtain. It reads “[The Security Council] decides that Iran shall not undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons, including launches…”
These words are clearly no basis for requiring Iran to surrender or destroy any of the ballistic missiles in its possession. At most they provide an opening for requesting that Iran refrain from testing some of its existing stock (those “capable of delivering nuclear weapons”), and from developing new models with that capability.
But even that request is contestable. Iran could deny that it possesses a nuclear weapons delivery capability. Since an internationally agreed definition of what constitutes that capability is lacking, and since that capability is contingent on being able to produce warheads of an appropriate diameter, US negotiators might end up wishing they had suggested, instead, a debate on how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
Such objections might sound semantic; but the US, which has long relied on semantics to deny that Iran has a right to enrich uranium, would be ill-placed to jib at a dose of its own medicine.
It’s the Politics!
Speaking to the press on May 16, a senior US administration official said: “We’re focused on how all of the elements fit together to ensure Iran cannot obtain a nuclear weapon.”
It must be hoped that the senior official meant to say “will not”, and not, “cannot.” Indeed, if these negotiations are about denying Iran the capability to produce nuclear weapons, they are doomed to fail.
It is in the nature of nuclear weapon technology that once a state has passed a certain threshold, as Iran has, it can produce nuclear weapons, sooner or later, if it makes that decision. It is not axiomatic, however, that states will choose to do so.
On the contrary, since 1970 the evidence is that very few weapon-capable states want nuclear weapons; most recognize that their security is better served by backing the global nuclear non-proliferation regime.
This perception has been well articulated by Scott Kemp, a former adviser on nuclear non-proliferation at the State Department. In an interview with the MIT News office Kemp said, “We need to get past the idea that we can control the destiny of nations by regulating access to technology. International security must ultimately resort to the difficult business of politics.”
The current negotiation can succeed if the West’s goal is political: denying Iran a rational basis for wanting nuclear weapons. Since President Hassan Rouhani’s words and deeds suggest that he recognizes Iran will be more secure, and more prosperous, as a fully compliant NPT-state without nuclear weapons, this is a realistic goal.
Photo Credit: FARS News/Majid Asgaripour/
]]>The suspect graph of a nuclear explosion reportedly provided to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as evidence of Iranian computer modeling of nuclear weapons yields appears to have been adapted from a very similar graph in a scholarly journal article published in January 2009 and available on the internet.
[...]]]>The suspect graph of a nuclear explosion reportedly provided to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as evidence of Iranian computer modeling of nuclear weapons yields appears to have been adapted from a very similar graph in a scholarly journal article published in January 2009 and available on the internet.
Graph published by the scholarly journal Nuclear Engineering and Design, Volume 239, Issue 1, January 2009, Pages 80–86.
The graph, published in a Nov. 27 Associated Press story but immediately found to have a mathematical error of four orders of magnitude, closely resembles a graph accompanying a scholarly article modeling a nuclear explosion. It provides a plausible explanation for the origins of the graph leaked to AP, according to two nuclear physicists following the issue closely.
The graph in the scholarly journal article was well known to the IAEA at the time of its publication, according to a knowledgeable source.
That means that the IAEA should have been able to make the connection between the set of graphs alleged to have been used by Iran to calculate yields from nuclear explosions that the agency obtained in 2011 and the very similar graph available on the internet.
The IAEA did not identify the member countries that provided the intelligence about the alleged Iran studies. However, Israel provided most of the intelligence cited by the IAEA in its 2011 report, and Israeli intelligence has been the source of a number of leaks to the AP reporter in Vienna, George Jahn.
Graph published by the Associated Press on Nov. 27, 2012, reportedly as evidence of Iranian computer modeling of nuclear weapons yields.
The graph accompanying an article in the January 2009 issue of the journal Nuclear Engineering and Design by retired Swiss nuclear engineer Walter Seifritz displayed a curve representing power in a nuclear explosion over fractions of a second that is very close to the one shown in the graph published by AP and attributed by the officials leaking it to an Iranian scientist.
Both graphs depict a nuclear explosion as an asymmetrical bell curve in which the right side of the curve is more elongated than the left side. Although both graphs are too crudely drawn to allow precise measurement, it appears that the difference between the two sides of the curve on the two graphs is very close to the same in both graphs.
The AP graph appears to show a total energy production of 50 kilotonnes taking place over about 0.3 microseconds, whereas the Seifritz graph shows a total of roughly 18 kilotonnes produced over about 0.1 microseconds.
The resemblance is so dramatic that two nuclear specialists who compared the graphs at the request of IPS consider it very plausible that the graph leaked to AP as part of an Iranian secret nuclear weapons research programme may well have been derived from the one in the journal article.
Scott Kemp, an assistant professor of nuclear science and engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), told IPS he suspects the graph leaked to AP was “adapted from the open literature”. He said he believes the authors of that graph “were told they ought to look into the literature and found that paper, copied (the graph) and made their own plot from it.”
Yousaf Butt, a nuclear scientist at the Monterey Institute, who had spotted the enormous error in the graph published by AP, along with his colleague Ferenc Dalnoki-Veress, said in an interview with IPS that a relationship between the two graphs is quite plausible, particularly given the fact they both have similar asymmetries in the power curve.
“Someone may just have taken the Seifritz graph and crudely adapted it to a 50-kilotonne yield instead of the 18 kilotonnes in the paper,” Butt said.
He added that “it’s not even necessary that an actual computer model was even run in the production of the AP graph.”
Apparently anticipating that the Seifriz graph would soon be discovered, the source of the graph given to AP is quoted in a Dec. 1 story as acknowledging that “similar graphs can be found in textbooks, the internet and other public sources.”
Butt said that he doesn’t know whether the AP graph is genuine or not, but that it could well be a forgery.
“If one wanted to plant a forgery,” he wrote, “it would make sense to manufacture something that looked like the output from the many unclassified ‘toy-models’ available on-line or in academic journals, rather than leak something from an actual high-fidelity classified study.”
The Seifritz graph came to the attention of the IAEA secretariat soon after it was published and was referred to the staff specialist on nuclear weapons research, according to a source familiar with the IAEA’s handling of such issues.
The source, who refused to be identified, told IPS the reaction of the official was that the graph represented fairly crude work on basic theory and was therefore not of concern to the agency.
The agency was given the alleged Iranian graph in 2011, and a “senior diplomat” from a different country from the source of the graph said IAEA investigators realised the diagramme was flawed shortly after they received it, according to the Dec. 1 AP story.
The IAEA’s familiarity with the Seifritz graph, two years before it was given graphs that bore a close resemblance to it and which the agency knew contained a huge mathematical error, raise new questions about how the IAEA could have regarded the Israeli intelligence as credible evidence of Iranian work on nuclear weapons.
Yukiya Amano, the director-general of the IAEA, refused to confirm or deny in an appearance at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington Dec. 6 that the graph published by AP was part of the evidence of Iranian “activities” related to nuclear weapons cited by the agency in its November 2011 report. .
Amano responded to a question on the graph, “I can’t discuss this specific information.”
In its November 2011 report, the IAEA said it had “information” from two member states that Iran had conducted “modeling studies” aimed at determining the “nuclear explosive yield” associated with components of nuclear weapon. It said the “information” had identified “models said to have been used in those studies and the results of these calculations, which the Agency has seen”.
The “senior diplomat” quoted by AP said the IAEA also had a spreadsheet containing the data needed to produce the same yield as shown on the graph – 50 kilotonnes – suggesting that the spreadsheet is closely related to the graph.
Butt observed, however, that the existence of the spreadsheet with data showing the yield related to a 50 kilotonne explosion does not make the graph any more credible, because the spreadsheet could have been created by simply plugging the data used to produce the graph.
Kemp of MIT agreed with Butt’s assessment. “If it’s simply data points plotted in the graph, it means nothing,” he told IPS.
After Butt and Dalnoki-Veress identified the fundamental error in the graph AP had published as evidence of Iranian work on a 50-kilotonne bomb, the Israeli source of the graph and an unidentified “senior diplomat” argued that the error must have been intentionally made by the Iranian scientist who they alleged had produced the graph.
A “senior diplomat” told AP the IAEA believed the scientist had changed the units of energy used by orders of magnitude, because “Nobody would have understood the original….”
That explanation was embraced by David Albright, who has served as unofficial IAEA spokesman in Washington on several occasions. But neither Albright nor the unidentified officials quoted by Jahn offered any explanation as to why an accurate graph would have been more difficult for Iranian officials to understand than one with such a huge mathematical error.
Further undermining the credibility of the explanation, Jahn’s sources suggested that the Iranian scientist whom they suspected of having devised the graph was Dr. Majid Shahriari, the nuclear scientist assassinated by the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad in 2010.
No evidence has been produced to indicate that Shahriari, who had a long record of publications relating to nuclear power plants and basic nuclear physics, had anything to do with nuclear weapons research.
*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.
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