Question:
Will Iran go nuclear during
the next American President?
Answer:
The current crises with Iran really began in the summer
of 2004 when a German agent in Iran stole a laptop computer
from a secret military unit code-named Project 111,
and smuggled it out through Turkey. On its hard drive
were thousands of pages of documents, drawings, and
multimedia slides including reports on 18 attempts to
alter the size, weight, and diameter of the nose cone
to fit “a new payload” on Iran’s intermediate-range
missile, the Shahab 3. The CIA conducted highly-sophisticated
tests on the chronologically ordered data and, finding
no signs of tampering, fabrication, or an intelligence
hoax, concluded it was genuine.
. The “new payload” could only be a nuclear
one since it was triggered to detonate at an altitude
of 600 meters, an altitude far too high for either conventional
explosive or chemical or biological weapons to be effective.
In addition, it called for testing in a 6 mile long
and quarter mile deep tunnel, which would hardly be
necessary for conventional explosives. The design further
used high-tension electric bridge wire to simultaneously
detonate small multiple explosions, which so closely
matched the implosion nuclear bomb designed by A.Q.
Khan for Pakistan that the CIA suspected that Iran had
received a digital copy of the Pakistani plans (which
subsequently was found on computers seized from the
Khan network in Switzerland).
The laptop data indicated Iran’s intention to
obtain nuclear weapons. But for a country to go nuclear,
it needs two capabilities. First, it has to have enough
highly-enriched Uranium or Plutonium to fuel a nuclear
explosion. Seconds, it has to have a device to set off
the chain reaction in that fuel. Iran, in 2003, was
the verge of obtaining both with some assistance from
the A.Q. Khan network. It had installed by 2003 a cascade
of 1100 centrifuges in a subterranean facility at Natanz
capable of gradually enriching Uranium. According to
the Iranian government, that enriched Uranium would
be used only for electricity generation at its Bushehr
reactor. But there was room in the massive caves at
Natanz to house up to 50,000 more centrifuges, and if
the operation was expanded it could enrich weapon-grade
Uranium for the Project 111 warhead. Iran had also been
experimenting with Polonium 210, as the International
Atomic Energy Agency IAEA) discovered in 2004, which
was the key ingredient in the device used in the Pakistani
bomb. Iran claimed that it had experimented with Polonium
210 for possible use in radioactive batteries, which
can be used on spacecraft. The problem here was that
Iran had no known space program.
Considering
how these pieces fit together in the context of the
laptop revelations, American intelligence had little
doubt that they were both part of an Iranian nuclear
weapons program. Its 2005 NIE thus expressed“high
confidence” that Iran, despite its categorical
denials, had embarked on a nuclear weapons program.
Less than two years later, the CIA stunningly reversal
itself, and decided that Iran had abandoned its nuclear
weapons ambition. At the heart of this reassessment
was a vanishing act: Many of the signs of a weapons
program literally vanished before the CIA’s eyes,
or at least its satellites, after the stolen laptop
exposed Project 111. For example, buildings at the Lavisan-Shian
military-industrial complex on the outskirts of Tehran,
which had been identified as having undeclared radiation
equipment, were, as satellite photographs confirmed,
bulldozed into rubble, which was carted away in trucks.
(Iranian officials explained that the demolition was
necessary because the Tehran municipality needed the
Ministry of Defense site for a public park.) The participants
in Project 111, who had been prohibited from using their
surnames in their emails and correspondence on the laptop,
also vanished from the CIA’s radar, as did the
front companies used to camouflage its activities. So
American intelligence could not find any evidence that
Project 111 was being continued. This was hardly surprising
since when a secret operation is compromised, it is
shut down. But the disappearance from scrutiny of Iran’s
nuclear program and its end are not necessarily the
same thing.
The
CIA, however, focused on intent. Iranian leaders put
their own interpretation on the vanishing acts, telling
Western diplomats in private that Iran had closed its
weapons program by 2004 because of sanction threats.
If so, the Bush administration, which orchestrated those
international pressures, could claim success for ending
the threat of Iranian nukes. Even though such pressure
could also have led Iran merely to hide the exposed
parts of its program, the NIE stated that Iran halted
its nuclear weapon program “primarily in response
to international pressure.” Indeed, it so bought
the idea that American-led pressure had succeeded that
it reported, “We judge with high confidence that
in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program”
and “with “moderate confidence” that
“Tehran had not restarted its nuclear weapons
program.”
The
CIA’s optimistic view did not, however, stand
the test of time. Natanz, not Project 111, was the main
focus of the international pressure since 2003. Yet,
between 2003 and 2008, Iran added there over 4,500 new
centrifuges, many of them of advanced design that produced
enriched uranium twice as fast. This multi-billion dollar
expansion under the under the authority of the Islamic
Revolutionary Guards Corps and the Iranian Defense Ministry,
more than quadrupled its capabilities for producing
weapon-grade fuel. Iran hardly needed this additional
capacity for the civilian electric generation at Bushehr
since Russia had already agreed to provide fuel for
that reactor for its entire life time (and, if Russia
broke that commitment, European countries stood ready
to provide a stop-gap supply). Even the threats of crippling
UN sanctions in 2008, including cutting off Iran’s
critical gasoline imports, did not deter Iran from speeding
up its production. The 2007 NIE had relegated this nuclear
elephant in the room to a footnote saying that its reassessment
excludes “Iran’s declared civil work related
to uranium conversion and enrichment,” which circumvented
all the enrichment activity at Natanz. Once Natanz is
put back into the equation, the picture becomes much
bleaker.
Here
is the situation: within a few years, possibly as early
as 2009, the underground complex at Natanz will be able
to provide Iran with enough highly enriched uranium
to fuel a nuclear bomb. Iran will also have the means
of triggering it thanks to its Polonium210 experiments
and its acquisition from the A. Q. Khan of the digital
plans for an implosion bomb that uses a Polonium 210-based
initiator. It is of little consolation that the CIA
has not spotted on going engineering work for mounting
a nuclear payload, since it did not find out about Project
111 for years before the laptop fell its hands. What
is successfully hidden is by definition, never found.
So if one weighs Iranian actions rather than Iranian
words, no one should be surprised, except possibly the
CIA, if Iran goes nuclear during the next Presidency. |