New Hints Emerge of Iranian Nuke Drive: Experts

Experts in Europe and the United States said several recent developments suggest Iran is pursuing the capability to build nuclear weapons, Reuters reported on Wednesday (see GSN, July 6).

Washington and other Western governments have long said certain Iranian atomic activities appear aimed at weapons development, but Tehran has maintained its nuclear program has no military component.

"Although developments elsewhere in the Middle East have dominated media attention, Iran has been working hard in several ways to advance a nuclear weapons capability," said Mark Fitzpatrick, a nonproliferation specialist with the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. "It needs fissile material, weaponization expertise and a delivery vehicle. On each of these, it has been making progress."

Meetings in December and January between Iran and the five permanent U.N. Security Council member nations and Germany failed to make progress toward resolving the nuclear impasse.

"While difficult, Western capitals need to redouble their diplomatic effort to dissuade Iran from taking the nuclear weapons path," said Daryl Kimball, who heads the Arms Control Association in Washington.

Although the Persian Gulf state has moved toward acquiring the means to build a nuclear bomb, it "apparently has not yet made a strategic decision to do so and is still years, not months, away from building a deliverable nuclear arsenal," Kimball said.

Tehran appears intent on obtaining a "nuclear-capable weapons delivery system and then to be able to use that in its diplomatic and political posturing," military expert Paul Beaver said (see GSN, June 29)."How close are they? They are within years, rather than within months, I believe."

Iran last month said it would move its manufacturing of 20 percent-enriched uranium to a hardened facility and announced a threefold increase in its production of the material (see GSN, June 8). The Middle Eastern state last year began further refining low-enriched uranium from its stockpile, ostensibly to fuel a medical isotope production reactor in Tehran. The United States and other Western powers have feared the process could help Iran produce nuclear-weapon material, which requires an enrichment level of roughly 90 percent.

The nation has also conducted a number of missile test launches during military exercises that began last week (see related GSN story, today). The missiles are claimed able to reach Israel and U.S. military installations in the region, but Tehran has dismissed assertions that they are intended to carry nuclear payloads (see GSN, June 29).

The Middle Eastern nation seems to be "moving in the direction" of wielding the option of establishing a nuclear arsenal, former International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards chief Olli Heinonen said.

"In spite of economical, technological and political difficulties faced, it appears that Iran is determined to, at the very least, achieve a 'virtual nuclear weapon state' capability," Heinonen said in testimony before a U.S. legislative panel.

"Iran has developed an ambitious nuclear program that is diffused in the nature of its distribution of sites and coordinated in its approach to achieve the capacity to field a nuclear arsenal," he added. "Its actions bear witness to a regime that intends to stay on this path."

Iranian Atomic Energy Organization head Fereidoun Abbasi, who assumed his position earlier this year, possesses expertise "more suited to researching nuclear weapons" than constructing atomic energy systems, says a June analysis by the the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington.

Former IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei, though, said "hype" has played a role in discussions of Iran's nuclear program.

"During my time at the agency we haven't seen a shred of evidence that Iran has been weaponizing, in terms of building nuclear weapons facilities and using enriched materials," ElBaradei said in remarks published in June by the New Yorker (Fredrik Dahl, Reuters, July 6).

Meanwhile, a one-time U.S. intelligence insider credited China and Russia with supporting key elements of Iran's atomic initiative, the Washington Times reported on Tuesday.

“Russian and Chinese cooperation in the 1990s with Iran created the foundation of the Iranian nuclear program today,” said Susan Voss, who has served as a nuclear engineering analyst at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and supported U.S. intelligence efforts.

China provided atomic assistance to Iran over roughly one decade, starting in 1987, Voss said. The Middle Eastern nation received from Chinese experts a uranium ore excavation capacity, and Tehran also acquired from Beijing schematics for a uranium hexafluoride facility, she said.

Russian atomic research sites educated a significant number of Iranian specialists, the U.S. expert added.

A 2009 ISIS analysis noted strong similarities between a component at Iran's Arak heavy-water reactor site and heavy-water reactor fuel rod equipment developed by the Soviet Union, indicating "the Arak facility must have been built with Russian support," Voss said. The support must have been clandestine in nature, as Moscow has rejected allegations that it assisted Tehran in such a manner, she said.

ISIS head David Albright referred to an additional possible instance of Russian atomic support for Iran.

“We know of at least one former nuclear weapons expert in Russia who helped Iran develop a triggering mechanism to set off high explosives in a nuclear weapon,” Albright said.

The United States provided atomic assistance to the government of Iranian monarch Mohammad Reza Pahlavi before its collapse in 1979, Voss added.

"We would like to say we are innocent, but we are not that innocent,” the former Los Alamos analyst said. “Many of the Iranian nuclear engineers were trained in the United States prior to the Shah’s ouster. Then the training went to China and Russia.”

Nonproliferation Education Policy Center head Henry Sokolski accused the United States of granting China and Russia "a hall pass" to provide nonmilitary nuclear support to Iran.

“We thought we stemmed the transfers that mattered and the Chinese transfers would not result in a major risk. We were wrong and we looked the other way. In this context, the [Abdul Qadeer] Khan transfers were icing on this proliferation cake,” Sokolski said, referring to Iran's acquisition of sensitive nuclear materials through a smuggling network once run by a top Pakistani nuclear scientist (see GSN, May 17; Eli Lake, Washington Times, July 5).

Meanwhile, Austria on Tuesday said it expects to receive Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi for talks on July 12, the Xinhua News Agency reported. Salehi and Austrian Foreign Minister Michael Spindelegger could address Iran's atomic efforts during the discussion, the Austrian Foreign Ministry stated (Xinhua News Agency/China Daily, July 5).

Source: NTI Global Security Newswire