Opinion | Columnists
A security framework for a nuclear Iran
Despite the unanswered questions, we have some pretty frightening knowledge about Tehran's nuclear capabilities. Less clear are its intentions.
- By David Kay, Los Angeles Times-Washington Post
- Published: 22:59 September 12, 2008
It would be impossible and foolish to predict what lies immediately ahead for Iran. Inflation runs rampant and domestic unrest is growing, but the leadership is banding together in support of the country's nuclear programme. Threat assessment and war planning are about best-guessing capabilities and intentions. When it comes to Iran, these calculations are difficult, but there are things we can - and must - figure out. Given what we know and what we can best-guess, it looks as if Iran is 80 per cent of the way to a functioning nuclear weapon.
Every nuclear programme needs raw materials, a way to refine them and, in the final stage, weaponisation. Getting and enriching the materials is the hardest part; without this, a nuclear reaction is impossible. How does Iran's nuclear programme measure up?
The situation is a bit murky, but we know, basically, that Tehran has a handle on the fissionable material. Iran imported significant amounts of raw uranium from China in 1991. It has also attempted to produce weapons-grade material, conducting secret enrichment efforts and acquiring designs, materials and samples of gas centrifuges for uranium enrichment from the A.Q. Khan network. Plus, over the past 18 years, the Iranians have developed and tested state-of-the-art centrifuges and enrichment techniques. If Iran's 6,000 forthcoming new-design centrifuges were working for a year, the programme could produce about five weapons. My best guess is that they are about two to four years away from accomplishing this.
Next comes weaponization. The fissionable material must be converted into metal and packaged. Here again, Iran has made substantial progress. What remains is to produce these elements in adequate numbers and amounts; combine them in an engineering design that ensures that they work and that fits on a missile; and gain confidence that the resulting weapons will get the job done.
Faster and closer
If all of these activities are real, it would mean that Iran is moving faster and is closer to obtaining a nuclear-weapons capability than the hard facts suggest. Obtaining that last 20 per cent of the elements needed to make a nuclear weapon would take perhaps one to two years, instead of the four to seven years needed if they were not.
We still lack answers to the most important questions, including:
- If Iran has decided or decides to acquire nuclear weapons, how long will it take to do so and how many could it produce per year?
- How much foreign assistance has Iran received, and from whom did it receive it?
- Does Iran have unknown clandestine nuclear facilities and, if so, how many? Doing what?
- What are the real capabilities of Iran's various weapons-delivery options, particularly its missiles?
- What are the command-and-control arrangements for Iran's nuclear programme? Where is President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in this mix?
This dirty-laundry list is one reason efforts to provide net assessments about where the programme is have proved so contentious. The last US attempt to produce a National Intelligence Estimate on Iran, in December, led to a comedy remarkable even by Washington standards. Yet we are talking about a country with known nuclear ambitions and a track record of violating international obligations in pursuit of that goal.
Despite the unanswered questions, we have some pretty frightening knowledge about Iran's nuclear capabilities. Less clear are its intentions.
Tehran often claims to want only to pursue a civilian nuclear programme. But it also says it wants to wipe Israel off the map.
What truly raises tensions, though, is Iran's worldview. Iranians have learned to fear the power of others and to believe that they must ultimately organise their world in a way that lessens the power of the states that pose the greatest threat to them. And Iran's essential national security threat has never been Israel. It is the United States.
My humble best guess is that Iran is pushing towards a nuclear-weapons capability as rapidly as it can. But if Tehran were to believe that American - not Israeli - military action is imminent, it might slow work on the elements of its programme that it thinks the world can observe. Yet such temporising would only be tactical. Its strategic goal is to acquire nuclear weapons to counter what it views as a real US threat. Iran appears to believe that the United States is not willing to accept the validity and survival of the Iranian revolutionary state.
Iran does not exist in a vacuum. How Israel and the United States perceive the threat, based on their own historical memories and strategic priorities, figures significantly in just how messy this may get.
The United States, along with all of the states in the Middle East, has to create security policies that guarantee that acts of aggression will not be allowed to threaten any state's survival while also beginning to build the economic institutions and policies that can create a future where war seems impossible. While Iran's economy suffers, engagement is more feasible.
David Kay led the UN inspections after the Gulf War that uncovered the Iraqi nuclear programme. He later led the CIA's Iraq Survey Group, which determined there were no Iraqi weapons of mass destruction at the time of the 2003 invasion.
More from Columnists
More from Opinions
Opinion Editor's choice
-
Threat of German amnesia
By Joschka Fischer, Special to Gulf News
Rarely has the country been as isolated as it is now. Hardly anyone understands its dogmatic austerity policy, which goes against all experience
-
Moral implication of America's security mindset
By Gordon Robison, Special to Gulf News
After a decade in which torture became official government policy, America’s moral standing when it comes to looking at other governments’ human rights failings is much-diminished
-
Europe's salvation lies in euro's demise
By Bruce Anderson
A return to national currencies is the only hope, but it won’t be easy or cost-free
Your turn
