Gary Fitleberg, December 28, 2003

The United Nations "watchdog" International Atomic Energy Agency is again proving itself unable to prevent a rogue regime from acquiring a nuclear arsenal despite plenty of documentary evidence and facts to the contrary.

Announcing the latest findings of the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Director General Mohammed ElBaradei recently stated that there is "no evidence" that Iran’s covert nuclear weapons program is related to efforts to develop atomic weapons.

This conclusion was drawn despite the IAEA’s own report, which contained incontrovertible proof that Iran has been secretly developing nuclear weapons for nearly two decades.

The IAEA report details Iranian activities to surreptitiously develop elements of a nuclear fuel-cycle required to construct nuclear weapons in clear violation of Iran’s commitments under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), a 1968 international accord that aimed to prevent the proliferation of nuclear arms by granting the IAEA oversight of nuclear facilities. According to the IAEA, Iran has assembled all of the building blocks to extract, refine, purify and produce bomb-grade uranium and plutonium, the core elements in making nuclear weapons.

During the past 20 years, Iran has frequently failed to meet its obligations under agreements with the IAEA to declare nuclear facilities and to report the reprocessing and use of nuclear material.

Iran has used its centrifuge and laser enrichment programs to produce small amounts of low enriched uranium, and has conducted unreported experiments including the separation of plutonium, whose only known use is for producing active nuclear weapons, according to the IAEA report.

Arms control experts blast the IAEA’s conclusion

An array of America’s top nuclear non-proliferation experts have questioned how the IAEA could have reached the conclusion that Iran is not working to develop a nuclear arsenal.

"It’s dumbfounding that the IAEA, after saying that Iran for 18 years had a secret effort to enrich uranium and separate plutonium, would turn around and say there was no evidence of a nuclear weapons program," said Thomas B. Cochran of the Natural Resources Defense Council. "If that’s not evidence, I don’t know what is."

Gary Milhollin of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control said that the Iran has "duped IAEA inspectors for 18 years," and called Iran’s recent acknowledgment of its secret nuclear designs "a study in how far a country can get in making bomb material while pretending to comply with inspections."

Iran’s path to the bomb

Iran’s aspirations to become a nuclear state are not new, but its attempt to do so has been more circuitous than that taken by other aspiring nuclear powers in the Third World. While Iran’s membership in the NPT allowed the Shah’s regime to import nuclear energy technology, there may have been plans to covertly obtain the bomb at the time the imperial government was ousted in 1979. The new Islamic regime of Ayatollah Khomeini dismantled the monarchy’s nuclear program, but half a decade later revived it in the midst of the Iran-Iraq War.

Clandestine foreign assistance was critical to getting the weapons effort off the ground. There is strong evidence to suggest that in the early 1990s, Pakistan made significant contributions to boosting Iranian nuclear activities, particularly with regard to expertise and designs for enrichment technology. In recent years, North Korea has supplanted the Pakistani connection in key areas.

One of Iran’s earliest known transgressions was its surreptitious import of some 1.8 tons of uranium hexifloride gas from China in 1991. The transaction was subsequently revealed, but the regime has not been able to account for all of the material and apparently refined a portion into uranium metal for military use.

In 1995, Iran concluded an $800 million agreement with Russia for construction of a light water reactor at the Bushehr nuclear facility. The United States has been highly skeptical of Iran’s claims that it requires nuclear energy, pointing out that Iranian oil and gas reserves and exports are among the biggest in the world. Iranian-Russian work at Bushehr, ostensibly for peaceful purposes, is not itself a violation of the NPT, but the IAEA has no authority to inspect the facility (due for completion in 2005) until radioactive fuel has been delivered. Russia has pledged not to supply this material until Iran commits to its return, thus preventing Iran from extracting plutonium--the alternate substance suitable for a bomb’s core--from the spent fuel rods. Were it ever to reprocess this plutonium, Iran could produce almost 100 nuclear devices.

Most immediate on this long list of concerns is Iran’s efforts to enrich uranium indigenously, without relying on foreign assistance. In late 2002, the Iranian opposition group National Council of Resistance of Iran disclosed the existence of several large nuclear facilities that had never been reported to the IAEA by Iran. The largest of these was the underground gas centrifuge uranium enrichment plant near Natanz. The hidden complex contained 160 completed centrifuges (perhaps made in Iran) and kits to assemble another 1,000 according to inspectors who were first allowed entry in February this year. Ultimately, Natanz has a capacity to house some 50,000 centrifuges in a "cascade" capable of enriching enough uranium to produce several nuclear bombs per year, not even counting the likelihood of other, as yet undiscovered, nuclear sites scattered across Iran.

The IAEA’s record on inspections

Tehran’s steady advancement in the nuclear realm raises serious questions about the IAEA’s ability to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. The IAEA is currently facing its third major crisis situation since 1990, after failing to detect Iraq’s nuclear program and to prevent North Korea from achieving nuclear capability. All three rogue states are or were signatories to the NPT and therefore subject to oversight by the IAEA.

The shortcomings of existing nuclear safeguards, as established by the IAEA, became clear following the 1991 Gulf war. The IAEA then undertook a program to enhance its verification and accountability regulations since under the original safeguards standards, the IAEA could only conduct inspections--planned months in advance--at specific sites declared by non-nuclear weapons states. The loophole exploited by Iraq had been that nuclear inspectors had no authority to search suspected unauthorized locations.

In 1997, the "Additional Protocol" to the NPT was designed to allow IAEA inspectors short-notice visits to suspected sites.

Iran and the Additional Protocol

Should Iran fulfill its promise to sign the Additional Protocol, this would ideally make future cheating more difficult. Specifically, Iran would be required to give the IAEA more information about its mining of natural uranium, its nuclear research and development and trade of nuclear-related technologies. All Iranian facilities including covert sites would be open to U.N. inspectors with little warning. Visiting monitors would be able to use environmental tests to detect proscribed activity. Contamination from highly enriched uranium has already been detected with such testing at newly disclosed sites in the last month.

However, Iran’s signing of the Additional Protocol would not prevent Tehran from embarking on a path to enriching uranium. The regime indicated in a joint communiqué with EU ministers on October 21 a willingness to suspend--not discontinue--enrichment activities. But Iranian officials immediately qualified the pledge leaving Iran’s ultimate intentions uncertain. Thus, the threat remains that Iran could refine and stockpile large quantities of low-enriched uranium in the near future, purportedly for use as reactor fuel. Once a large enough inventory had been built up, Tehran could follow Pyongyang’s lead and withdraw from the NPT with only 90 days notice. No longer fettered by the international treaty, the Islamic regime would then be able to further purify the fissile material into bomb-grade enriched uranium, and begin producing atomic bombs.

Is Iran developing a nuclear program for peaceful purposes or for weapons of mass destruction? You be the judge!!!

Gary Fitleberg is a Political Analyst specializing in International Relations with emphasis on Middle East affairs.

Copyright © 2003 Gary Fitleberg