George W. Bush's good buddies in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia have decided that they have to keep up with the Iranians on the nuclear front. The Saudis and their allies claim they are pursuing only peaceful uses of nuclear energy.
Two years ago, the leaders of Saudi Arabia told international atomic regulators that they could foresee no need for the kingdom to develop nuclear power. Today, they are scrambling to hire atomic contractors, buy nuclear hardware and build support for a regional system of reactors.
So, too, Turkey is preparing for its first atomic plant. And Egypt has announced plans to build one on its Mediterranean coast. In all, roughly a dozen states in the region have recently turned to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna for help in starting their own nuclear programs. While interest in nuclear energy is rising globally, it is unusually strong in the Middle East.
Well, look at it on the bright side: The nuclear electric generation plants will reduce oil consumption by Middle Eastern populations. So the oil will last longer for transportation uses around the world. On the other hand, look at it on the very bright side: some future event might some day powerfully warn the world on the dangers of nuclear proliferation.
While some Middle Eastern governments are thinking down the road to the point where their oil production starts to fall they are also afraid of Shia Iran's nuclear program.
But with Shiite Iran increasingly ascendant in the region, Sunni countries have alluded to other motives. Officials from 21 governments in and around the Middle East warned at a meeting of Arab leaders in March that Iran’s drive for atomic technology could result in the beginning of “a grave and destructive nuclear arms race in the region.”
In Washington, officials are seizing on such developments to build their case for stepping up pressure on Iran. President Bush has talked privately to experts on the Middle East about his fears of a “Sunni bomb,” and his concerns that countries in the Middle East may turn to the only nuclear-armed Sunni state, Pakistan, for help.
There's something funny and telling about this: The Arab press and clerics spends a lot of time proclaiming the thorough evilness of Israel. But Israel's nuclear weapons have not been enough to push the Arabs to develop their own nuclear weapons in defense. Nor have the Arabs really sought nukes in order to wipe out Israel. Saddam Hussein pursued nukes in a serious way up to the point of the first Gulf war. I suspect he did so more to pursue his territorial ambitions and to protect himself from Iran than to strike at Israel.
But look at the very different Arab reaction to Shia and non-Arab Iran getting near to making nukes. In response only now's the time for Arab Muslim countries to make nuclear power plants and get closer to making nuclear weapons.
I think nuclear proliferation is inevitable.
The Saudis aren't go-it-alone unilateralists. Oh no. They are into diplomacy, consensus, and multi-lateral alliances of friends. A coalition of the willing, if you will. They've organised a group of countries that have almost half the world's oil and that group is pursuing the benefits of nuclear power.
Diplomats and analysts say Saudi Arabia leads the drive for nuclear power within the Gulf Cooperation Council, based in Riyadh. In addition to the Saudis, the council includes Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates — Washington’s closest Arab allies. Its member states hug the western shores of the Persian Gulf and control about 45 percent of the world’s oil reserves.
Late last year, the council announced that it would embark on a nuclear energy program. Its officials have said they want to get it under way by 2009.
Read the whole article. The 21st century promises to be very interesting.
TOKYO – In a new thread to the North Korean bomb saga, arguments over Japan's nuclear ambitions are becoming the focus as prominent politicians from the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) continue to raise the issue.
LDP Policy Research Council chairman Shoichi Nakagawa has repeatedly called for such a debate. His latest comments Sunday, urging a broad discussion of the option, followed statements last week that Japan's pacifist constitution doesn't preclude nuclear arms. Foreign Minister Taro Aso has also sparked anxiety in the opposition and LDP by pushing for debate on the topic.
Japan wants some way to deter a nuclear North Korea.
I bet a poll today would find much more widespread support for the development of nuclear weapons.
Recent comments echo the opinions of former Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone and current opposition leader Ichiro Ozawa. A poll in 2003 showed that almost 1 in 5 lawmakers thought Japan should consider nuclear weapons capability if warranted by the regional political climate.
Japan has the material and the scientific know-how to make an atomic bomb. Its civilian nuclear industry has a growing surplus of reactor-grade plutonium, which can be converted to weapons-grade material with techniques that are likely to be well within Japanese capabilities. The time lag between a decision to go nuclear and the actual creation of a bomb would probably be measured in months, not years.
My take on nuclear weapons in the hands of Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan: China has nukes. The United States is going to decline in power versus China and China's economy is going to grow larger than the US economy. Nukes in the hands of more neighbors of China will help restrain the Chinese as the US position declines. Taiwan's own continued independence probably hinges on whether it develops a nuclear capability.
Nuclear proliferation begets more nuclear proliferation. The South Koreans want nuclear weapons of their own to deter Kim Jong-il's regime in Pyongyang.
SEOUL -- In less than a week since North Korea claimed to have tested a nuclear weapon, public opinion in the South has turned sharply against a South Korean policy of engaging the enemy in the belief it will eventually bring peace on the divided peninsula.
A JoongAng newspaper poll, several days after the reported nuclear test Monday, found 78 percent of respondents thought South Korea should revise its policy, and 65 percent said South Korea should develop nuclear weapons to protect itself.
I see a potential silver lining for Taiwan: The Taiwanese could develop their own nukes when Japan and South Korean develop nukes. How could the Taiwanese get singled out for trade sanctions under those circumstances? Then the Taiwanese would have a way to stay independent of the mainland.
The South Korean reaction ought to be a lesson for the Chinese leaders. They can either have two nuclear powers on the Korean peninsula or cut off the North Koreans so that the regime falls. Though such a regime collapse would bring with a very real risk of a massive artillery barrage by North Korean forces against Seoul South Korea. The South Koreans need a way to take out artillery fired from within hillsides.
The Korean Central News Agency said the test was successful and there had been no radioactive leakage from the site.
The underground test was reportedly conducted on Monday morning in Hwaderi near Kilju city.
South Korea's intelligence agency detected a 3.58-magnitude seismic tremor, the country's foreign ministry said.
TV analysts are quoting Bush Administration officials who believe the test claim.
Will China block UN sanctions against North Korea? Will China vote for sanctions but then continue to send fuel and other supplies to North Korea?
One TV reporter says US and South Korean military officers think the North Koreans have 3 to 5 tunnels under the border which the South Koreans have been unable to find. So the North Koreans might be able to deliver a nuclear weapon into Seoul without a missile to carry it.
Will the South Koreans change their own policies toward North Korea? Will they cut back on trade and aid?
I think attempts to stop nuclear proliferation are doomed to failure. Until nuclear weapons are used again to kill people I do not expect sufficient will to exist in the world to stop nuclear weapons proliferation. Since I think the odds are low that I'll get killed whenever nuclear weapons get used again I've decided to be fairly relaxed about the prospect of nuclear proliferation. If Chinese and European people don't want to strongly oppose nuclear proliferation then we just have to protect ourselves and wait for changes in world attitudes.
The US Geological Survey now reports they measured a 4.2 magnitude tremor in North Korea.
Stanley Kurtz worries Iran's getting nuclear weapons will set off a nuclear arms race in the Middle East that will lead to nuclear terrorism with untraceable bombs. Is this a realistic fear?
I found Time's latest cover story on "What War With Iran Would Look Like (and how to avoid it)," much less slanted against the military option, than I'd expected. True, the story was weak on explaining the actual dangers of a nuclear Iran. Time warned of a nuclear arms race between Iran, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, but didn't explain how this would greatly increase the prospects of Muslim terrorists getting a bomb to plant on U.S. soil. Once many Muslim states have the bomb, the state source can no longer be traced, and it becomes a relatively simple matter to hand a nuke off to terrorists. Nor was there much here on the huge damage Iran could do by blackmailing itself into de facto control of the world's oil resources.
Yet Time acknowledged that a raid would have "a decent chance of succeeding," if at a "staggering" cost. Time also noted that the real "red line" (the ability to enrich enough uranium for a bomb) could be crossed in just a year. The biggest surprise of all was that Time rightly put little stock in the likelihood of a negotiated settlement. Time called the diplomatic approach "as much like a prayer as a strategy," and quoted an ex-CIA director saying "I don't think I've ever met an Iranian moderate." (Read that Michael Rubin piece and you'll see what he means.)
Sure, Time also covers those "staggering" costs: a huge and economically damaging oil price spike, the prospect of escalation from air raids to a major land war (at a moment when our military is already stretched to the limit) and the danger that after all the trouble and world condemnation, the raid won't even succeed. But all this is quite right.
One the one hand, we are faced with a nuclear arms race in the Middle East, nuclear blackmail and terrorist chaos at the heart of the world's Persian Gulf oil supply, and terrorist-planted nuclear weapons in America's cities. On the other hand, we can choose an economically disruptive war with Iran that will alienate us from the world, push us to and beyond our military limits, and that even then may not even succeed. The by now stock phrase, "there are no good options" doesn't quite do justice to the awful choice we face.
My guess is that Muslim states can't be trusted with nukes. I'm afraid people who have more loyalty to something other than a ruling government will turn nukes over to other groups. Is that reasonable fear? I'm very curious to hear sharp and well-informed arguments on why Arab or Iranian governments will control their nukes. Will the possession of nukes by a large number of Muslim states lead to untracable nuclear terrorist bombings? Or theft of nukes?
Without the fear of nukes getting out of the hands of sovereign governments I think the use of nukes by Muslim governments has very low odds. The elites have shown a willingness to avoid confrontations that might knock them out of power - let alone get them killed. Assad of Syria and Mubarak of Egypt do not want to launch attacks on Israel since they like being at the top of their national status and power pyramids.
Hosni Mubarak's son Gamal wants Egypt to develop nuclear energy.
CAIRO, Egypt -- The son of Egypt's president urged the nation to consider developing nuclear energy, a proposal that could help establish his own credentials as a serious politician and publicly distance him from the United States.
...
"We will continue using our natural energy resources, but we should conserve these resources for our future generations. The whole world is looking at alternative energy - so should Egypt - including nuclear," Mubarak told the gathering in Cairo.
The Mubarak dynasty wants to propagate itself, not get destroyed in mushroom clouds.
Gamal Mubarak appears to be in line to succeed his father and become the next King of Egypt (though as a sop to international and perhaps domestic opinion Kings in Egypt pretend they are really Western-style Presidents).
CAIRO -- It was back in May that many feel Gamal Mubarak was anointed the next president of Egypt.
...
In May, Gamal flew to Washington on what was supposed to be a secret visit, until details were leaked to the media. While in the U.S. capital, the 43-year-old got startling access for a private citizen who holds no official government position: a meeting with Vice-President Dick Cheney and another attended by Ms. Rice and National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley.
I'm sure some eager beaver blogger somewhere can explain how it is part of the brilliant Bush Administration democratization program for the Middle East to support the dynastic succession.
The carefully crafted political speech raised the prospect of two potentially embarrassing developments for the White House at a time when the region is awash in crisis: a nuclear program in Egypt, recipient of about $2 billion a year in military and development aid from the United States, and Mr. Mubarak succeeding his father, Hosni Mubarak, as president without substantial political challenge.
Simply raising the topic of Egypt’s nuclear ambitions at a time of heightened tensions over Iran’s nuclear activity was received as a calculated effort to raise the younger Mr. Mubarak’s profile and to build public support through a show of defiance toward Washington, political analysts and foreign affairs experts said.
The United States is seen as the world's market dominant minority. This breeds resentment and the need of some to defy the US to demonstrate their masculine independent leader bona fides. We'd be better off if we were less visible in the Middle East since then Middle Easterners would spend less time reacting to us. We should protect ourselves by preventing them from coming here and by doing less stuff over there.
Update: There'd be a chain of causation that would lead to a Western city getting nuked by Muslim terrorists. Do each of the links in the chain work? I just wrote this up in an email trying to explain the specific components of my fear of Muslim state nuclear proliferation might lead to terrorists getting nukes:
My fear of transfer of Muslim nuclear weapons into the hands of non-state actors (i.e. terrorists) stems from my view that Arab countries are full of people who have less loyalty to the state. They have tribal and family loyalties and loyalties to Islam.
Was A.Q. Khan operating on his own in doing deals about nuclear technology or with the blessings of his superiors?
We certainly have examples of disloyalty to a state in order to help another state with nuclear technology. Americans have done it. Is it really that big of a jump from that to disloyalty in order to help a private group? The disloyalty hurdle for a single person doesn't seem so big.
But the next hurdle seems quite a bit bigger. Nukes are under guard. They are in (presumably) facilities that are hard to get access to. The number of people who have to either be disloyal or fooled would hopefully have to be very large. But I have no idea, for example, what security Pakistan has around their nukes or what security Iran will have around their's.
How big are these hurdles?
Former Australian intelligence analyst and weapons inspector Rod Barton says even once the lies about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction were proven false on the ground the US and allied governments in Britain and Australia kept up the drumbeat of lies.
A year after Bush administration claims about Iraqi "bioweapons trailers" were discredited by American experts, U.S. officials were still suppressing the findings, says a senior member of the CIA-led Iraq inspection team.
At one point, former U.N. arms inspector Rod Barton says, a CIA officer told him it was "politically not possible" to report that the White House claims were untrue. In the end, Barton says, he felt "complicit in deceit."
Last month Joby Warrick of the Washington Post revealed that for almost a year after the famous trailers were found not to be bioweapons labs the Bush Administration continued to lie about them. (and would you expect anything better from the Bushies?)
On May 29, 2003, 50 days after the fall of Baghdad, President Bush proclaimed a fresh victory for his administration in Iraq: Two small trailers captured by U.S. and Kurdish troops had turned out to be long-sought mobile "biological laboratories." He declared, "We have found the weapons of mass destruction."
The claim, repeated by top administration officials for months afterward, was hailed at the time as a vindication of the decision to go to war. But even as Bush spoke, U.S. intelligence officials possessed powerful evidence that it was not true.
A secret fact-finding mission to Iraq -- not made public until now -- had already concluded that the trailers had nothing to do with biological weapons. Leaders of the Pentagon-sponsored mission transmitted their unanimous findings to Washington in a field report on May 27, 2003, two days before the president's statement.
The three-page field report and a 122-page final report three weeks later were stamped "secret" and shelved. Meanwhile, for nearly a year, administration and intelligence officials continued to publicly assert that the trailers were weapons factories.
KERRY O'BRIEN: You say of John Howard's role - quote - this is from the book -, "I was reliably told that when Howard saw the intelligence assessment in late 2002 he exclaimed along the lines of 'Is that all there is.' Subsequently he applied almost as much spin," you say, "to the intelligence given him as Shane Warne to a wrong'un." Is that really an objective assessment from you of what John Howard did and said?
ROD BARTON: I saw one of the assessments that was produced by the Australian intelligence community shortly before the war. I looked through that and I agreed with the assessment. More or less I quibbled about some of the language, but I agreed more or less with that assessment which again had all the caveats in. It said there were possibilities of these things but there was no firm evidence, for example. So, what John Howard had actually seen from the Australian intelligence community was a very fair and reasonable assessment. You couldn't say that there were no weapons of mass destruction or that there were, but there was a possibility. Iraq certainly had the capability but there was no firm evidence that they'd restarted their programs. That's what was said by the intelligence community, but that's not what John Howard told Parliament. John Howard told Parliament in certain terms that Iraq - he said, "The Government knows that Iraq has chemical and biological weapons." The intelligence community never said that to him.
I hear Peggy Lee singing:
Is that all there is?
Is that all there is?
If that's all there is, my friends, then let's keep dancing
Let's break out the booze and have a ball
If that's all there is
Based on really shoddy thinking our leaders inflict all sorts of damage on the nation.
America has reached a point where the lies are causing too much damage. Liberal lies about race and human nature. Neoconseratives lies about Iraq, WMD, and democracy. The costs of these lies are getting bigger and bigger and are going to cause the decline of the United States as a world power. Worse, we'll have to live with lots of domestic deterioriation with greater corruption in politics, a dumber citizenry, massive debts, and other afflictions.
In February last year, Barton went public on ABC television. Now he has written a devastating book about it, The Weapons Detective (Black Inc. Agenda, $29.95). His security clearances withdrawn, Barton knows he will not be getting any more contracts from his old employer, the Defence Intelligence Organisation, which he had joined as a young microbiologist in 1972.
Old colleagues at the intelligence organisation have been warned not to have contact with him, not even social meetings. In one act of spectacular pettiness, at the insistence of the Prime Minister's staff, Barton and Gee were dropped from the guest list for last year's 20th anniversary meeting in Sydney of the Australia Group, a forum of intelligence specialists from 38 countries on chemical and biological weapons, which the two had helped set up in 1985.
...
The liars and spin doctors have prospered, the whistleblowers have been shafted. Barton's former UN colleague and friend, the British defence scientist David Kelly, killed himself in July 2003 after being outed for telling a BBC journalist how Scarlett had "sexed up" the Iraq intelligence. Scarlett was still "sexing up" the post-invasion intelligence, Barton shows, but has been made chief of Britain's famous spy service, MI6. Barton shakes his head: "John Scarlett should not head any intelligence organisation." In the CIA, the medals, cash bonuses and promotions go to agents who tell their chiefs about new weapons threats, not the ones who caution the evidence is weak.
In Australia, Barton sees a general culture of compliance in the public service spreading to the intelligence agencies. "You know you're not going to get promoted if you tell the Government something that's unpopular," he says.
Thanks to Greg Cochran for the tip.
Steve Sailer points to a recent Tom Wolfe lecture on human nature that seems very apropo.
Even before I left graduate school I had come to the conclusion that virtually all people live by what I think of as a "fiction-absolute." Each individual adopts a set of values which, if truly absolute in the world--so ordained by some almighty force--would make not that individual but his group . . . the best of all possible groups, the best of all inner circles. Politicians, the rich, the celebrated, become mere types. Does this apply to "the intellectuals" also? Oh, yes. . . perfectly, all too perfectly.
The fictions our elites live by have become too damaging to America and other Western nations.
Two Army analysts whose work has been cited as part of a key intelligence failure on Iraq -- the claim that aluminum tubes sought by the Baghdad government were most likely meant for a nuclear weapons program rather than for rockets -- have received job performance awards in each of the past three years, officials said.
The civilian analysts, former military men considered experts on foreign and U.S. weaponry, work at the Army's National Ground Intelligence Center (NGIC), one of three U.S. agencies singled out for particular criticism by President Bush's commission that investigated U.S. intelligence.
The government has failed to punish anyone who carried out the will of George W. Bush.
Despite sharp critiques from the president's commission and the Senate intelligence committee, no major reprimand or penalty has been announced publicly in connection with the intelligence failures, though investigations are still underway at the CIA. George J. Tenet resigned as CIA director but was later awarded the Medal of Freedom by Bush.
Part of the problem here is the normal propensity of government bureaucracies to resist rewarding and punishing based on the quality of work performed. But the Bush Administration places such a high value on loyalty that punishment is unlikely for those who did work which advanced the President's agenda.
My guess: They will find some internal Bush critics and punish them for supposed errors in their analyses. No one loyally serving the President, no matter how incompetently or dishonestly, will be punished.
As for intelligence agencies: We should not expect great performance from them because few of the best minds want to work for the government in general and for intelligence agencies in particular. Plus, their political masters all too often do not want to know the truth.
Update: Back in August 2003 Paul Sperry of World Net Daily reported that the Energy Department official who was put in a powerful position for deciding on Iraq WMD intelligence had no intelligence experience.
The official who represented the Energy Department at a key prewar intelligence meeting on Iraq's alleged new nuclear-weapons program was a human resources manager with no intelligence experience, and was easily swayed by Bush administration hawks, say department insiders.
Though Energy disputed a critical piece of evidence – that Baghdad sought aluminum tubing to make nuclear materials – it nonetheless agreed with the White House's conclusion that Baghdad was reconstituting a nuclear-weapons program. The State Department, in contrast, dissented on both counts.
The conclusion formed the cornerstone of last fall's 90-page Top Secret intelligence report used to justify preemptive war on Iraq.
A former Energy Department intelligence chief who agreed with the White House claim that Iraq had reconstituted its defunct nuclear-arms program was awarded a total of $20,500 in bonuses during the build-up to the war, WorldNetDaily has learned.
Thomas Ryder, as acting director of Energy's intelligence office, overruled senior intelligence officers on his staff in voting for the position at a National Foreign Intelligence Board meeting at CIA headquarters last September.
His officers argued at a pre-briefing at Energy headquarters that there was no hard evidence to support the alarming Iraq nuclear charge, and asked to join State Department's dissenting opinion, Energy officials say.
Ryder ordered them to "shut up and sit down," according to sources familiar with the meeting.
Was he just an incompetent who was accidentally put in charge of something he wasn't qualified to handle? Or did the Bush Administration, having already decided to invade Iraq, fix it so that the Energy Department would give the answer Dubya wanted to hear?
Update: Here's a link to the full text of the Downing Street Memo which shows the Bush Administration decided to overthrow Saddam and then went looking for justiification for their decision. "C" of course is the head of MI6.
C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action.
The decision on the Iraq invasion was not based on real evidence.
Although Iranian leaders agree on the strategic value of a strong nuclear program, they are divided over just how strong it should be. Conservative ideologues press for a nuclear breakout in defiance of international opinion, whereas conservative realists argue that restraint best serves Iran's interests. The ideologues, who view a conflict with the United States as inevitable, believe that the only way to ensure the survival of the Islamic Republic—and its ideals—is to equip it with an independent nuclear capability. Ali Akbar Nateq-Nuri, a conservative presidential candidate in 1997 and now an influential adviser to Khamenei, dismissed Tehran's recent negotiations with the Europeans, noting, "Fortunately, the opinion polls show that 75 to 80 percent of Iranians want to resist and [to] continue our program and reject humiliation." In the cosmology of such hard-liners, nuclear arms have not only strategic value, but also currency in domestic politics. Iranian conservatives see their defiance of the Great Satan as a means of mobilizing nationalistic opinion behind a revolution that has gradually lost popular legitimacy.
In contrast, the clerical realists warn that, with Iran under intense international scrutiny, any act of provocation by Tehran would lead other states to embrace Washington's punitive approach and further isolate the theocratic regime. In an interview in 2002, the pragmatic minister of defense, Ali Shamkhani, warned that the "existence of nuclear weapons will turn us into a threat to others that could be exploited in a dangerous way to harm our relations with the countries of the region." The economic dimension of nuclear diplomacy is also pushing the pragmatists toward restraint, as Iran's feeble economy can ill afford the imposition of multilateral sanctions. "If there [are] domestic and foreign conflicts, foreign capital will not flow into the country," Rafsanjani has warned. "In fact, such conflicts will lead to the flight of capital from this country."
While Pollack places great importance on the power of economic sanctions to bring Iran to shelve its nuclear weapons development program trends in trade are well along the way toward making that threat very hollow. The United States and the EU are going to become less important in world trade as China, India and other south and east Asian countries develop.
The Iranians are moving to reduce their reliance on customer countries that are allied with the United States. Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh says Iran is going to replace Japan with China as Iran's biggest oil customer.
"Japan is our number one energy importer for historical reasons . . . but we would like to give preference to exports to China," Zanganeh was quoted as saying in China Business Weekly magazine.
China is protecting Iran from sanctions in the UN Security Council.
Earlier this month, Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing, who has just crowned a year of negotiations between the two countries, paid a rare visit to Tehran. In a meeting with Iranian President Mohammad Khatami, Li said Beijing would oppose US efforts to refer Iran to the UN Security Council over its nuclear program.
China would probably be joined by Russia and perhaps even France in voting in the UN Security Council against trade sanctions on Iran.
China will increasing be able to supply Iran with any goods that the EU and America refuse to sell.
In turn, China has become a major exporter of manufactured goods to Iran, including computer systems, household appliances and cars. "They have industry and we have energy resources," said Ali Akbar Salehi, Iran's former representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency.
China's trade with Iran also is weakening the impact on Iranian policy of various U.S. economic embargoes, analysts here say. "Sanctions are not effective nowadays because we have many options in secondary markets, like China," said Hossein Shariatmadari, a leading conservative theorist and editor.
China's demand for energy is rising very rapidly.
In 2003, China raced past Japan to become the world's second biggest consumer of petroleum products after the US.
In 2004, its thirst grew by 15%, while its output only rose 2%.
China is helping Iran develop a stronger weapons manufacturing capability.
The US Central Intelligence Agency has submitted a report to US Congress stating that Chinese companies have "helped Iran move toward its goal of becoming self-sufficient in the production of ballistic missiles". In the ongoing controversy over Iran's uranium enrichment program, China has also opposed bringing the issue before the UN Security Council, and has even threatened to veto any resolution that is brought against Iran.
China and Iran are signing massive oil and natural gas development deals.
TEHRAN -- Speaking of business as unusual. A mere two months ago, the news of a China-Kazakhstan pipeline agreement, worth US$3.5 billion, raised some eyebrows in the world press, some hinting that China's economic foreign policy may be on the verge of a new leap forward. A clue to the fact that such anticipation may have totally understated the case was last week's signing of a mega-gas deal between Beijing and Tehran worth $100 billion. Billed as the "deal of the century" by various commentators, this agreement is likely to increase by another $50 to $100 billion, bringing the total close to $200 billion, when a similar oil agreement, currently being negotiated, is inked not too far from now.
US influence on the world has peaked. Rumoured plans for a US air strike against Iran's nuclear weapons development facilities are probably the only practical option available for delaying Iran's nuclear program. But even air strikes will not prevent Iran from eventually developing nuclear weapons. Also those air strikes will cost the United States diplomatically. My guess is that the Bush Administration will probably carry out those air strikes. Though I'm unsure on this point.
The Bush Administration is unlikely to strike hard at Iranian oil and natural gas production facilities because to do so would cause skyrocketing energy prices. The US economy would suffer along with the rest of the world and the United States would be widely (and correctly) seen as responsible for bringing on a world economic recession. My guess is that even Bush will shrink from making such a move.
Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post reports that the Bush Administration says North Korea exported weapons-grade plutonium to Libya.
North Korea has reprocessed 8,000 spent fuel rods into weapons-grade plutonium and appears to have exported nuclear material to Libya, U.S. officials informed Asian allies this week.
The New York Times also passes along the claims of a high level of confidence in this conclusion. Though some in the US government see problems with the analysis.
It is unclear if there are any dissenting views in the government, though some outside experts have accused the administration of overstating intelligence on North Korea. Officials cautioned that the analysis of the uranium had been hampered by the fact that the United States has no sample of known North Korean uranium for comparison with the Libya material. The study was done by eliminating other possible sources of uranium, a result that is less certain than the nuclear equivalent of matching DNA samples.
A day later Glenn Kessler and Dafna Linzer report on dissenters from the official Bush Administration position. A number of experts in the US government and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) do not see the evidence as conclusive by any means.
The Bush administration's claim this week that North Korea appears to have been the supplier of converted uranium to Libya is based on evidence that could just as easily point to Pakistan, a key U.S. ally, as the source, according to analysts and officials familiar with the data.
The Bush Administration does not have a good track record examining evidence about nuclear proliferation. Look at their wildly unrealistic analyses of various pieces of bogus evidence from Iraq's supposed nuclear weapons development efforts before the US invasion of Iraq.
Read the full articles. My interpretation: Pakistan as the source of the uranium is not politically acceptable in the Bush White House. Pervez Musharraf is our friend. He is a friend of democracy. Never mind that he is a dictatorship. He's a good guy who went to Harvard just like Bush did. He's letting us fly over his country to get to Afghanistan. We have agents operating in his country hunting down Al Qaeda. So Pakistan is not and has not done much bad.
By contrast, Kim Jong Il, being pretty blatantly a very bad guy in reality and running an odious regime where lots of people unnecessarily die from hunger, makes a far better choice to blame as a source of enriched uranium. Also, it fits with a larger Bush Administration agenda:
But Albright did not discount the possibility that North Korea may have been the source. "That has been a theory since last spring," he said. "What amazes me is why this is coming out again now, and the timing has to make one suspicious that the information is being used to pressure allies to take a tougher line with North Korea."
We don't know what the level of expertise was of the Department of Energy technicians who examined the samples from Libya. We do not know how politically pressured anyone was to serve up a desired conclusion. But certainly the Bush Administration track record is that the higher ups are willing to lean on the CIA and other agencies to produce desired conclusions. So I do not know what to make of this story.
Seymour Hersh has a new article out in The New Yorker about aggressive Bush Administration second term plans against terrorist networks and Iran. (worth reading in full!)
The President has signed a series of findings and executive orders authorizing secret commando groups and other Special Forces units to conduct covert operations against suspected terrorist targets in as many as ten nations in the Middle East and South Asia.
The President’s decision enables Rumsfeld to run the operations off the books—free from legal restrictions imposed on the C.I.A. Under current law, all C.I.A. covert activities overseas must be authorized by a Presidential finding and reported to the Senate and House intelligence committees.
What Hersh says explains something that has been puzzling to me: Former CIA agent Howard Hart sees covert operations undertaken by the US military as riskier and harder to deny for the United States than the same sorts of operations undertaken by the CIA. So Hart argued against moving paramilitary capabilities from the CIA to the US military. Yet here we see at least one reason why it was done: the movement of those operations (relabelled "black reconnaissance" to avoid the loaded term "covert ops") to the DOD removes the need to tell Congress or ask Congress for permission.
Hersh says Iran is the next target.
In my interviews, I was repeatedly told that the next strategic target was Iran. “Everyone is saying, ‘You can’t be serious about targeting Iran. Look at Iraq,’” the former intelligence official told me. “But they say, ‘We’ve got some lessons learned—not militarily, but how we did it politically. We’re not going to rely on agency pissants.’ No loose ends, and that’s why the C.I.A. is out of there.”
But what does that mean? Covert ops? An attempt to overthrow the regime? Or preparations for an invasion? How much do Bush's people think they can accomplish in Iran without invading the place?
I do not think the Iranians can be induced to enter into a negotiated deal to stop their development of nuclear weapons. Also, in spite of the aggressive attitude within the Bush Administration that Hersh reports I continue to be skeptical that there is a viable covert or overt military option that can stop Iran's nuclear program. Possibly the reconnaissance operations that Hersh claims US special forces (Hersh refers to them as commandos) are carrying out in Iran will allow precise targetting of all Iranian nuclear facilities for a massive set of airstrikes. But I'm not confident that the top management running this show will be able to recognize whether their intelligence is sufficiently complete and accurate to guide an air strike campaign.
Hersh says neoconservative Douglas Feith, number 3 man in the Defense Department, is coordinating cooperation with Israel in conducting operations in Iran. That is not exactly confidence-inspiring.
So are the neocons still foolish? Might they actually know what they are doing now having had Iraq as a huge mistake to learn from? Here comes the worse part: Nope, not a chance. They think they can bomb Iran to loosen the control of the mullahs and bring about a secular revolution.
The government consultant told me that the hawks in the Pentagon, in private discussions, have been urging a limited attack on Iran because they believe it could lead to a toppling of the religious leadership.
I have a bridge to sell to anyone who believes that one.
I agree with the expert that Hersh quotes who argues the nuclear weapons program in Iran is widely popular and that the country is not in any way pre-revolutionary. See my previous posts "Iranian People Not In Pre-Revolutionary Frame Of Mind" and "Iranian Nuclear Weapons Program Seen As Broadly Popular".
Bush's latest pronouncement on Iraq shows that he's still supremely confident that he knows what he's doing, that his basic strategy is sound, and that he believes the populace of the United States support him in his plan to democratically and culturally transform the Middle East. Bush thinks his reelection signals that he has made no major mistakes.
President Bush said the public's decision to reelect him was a ratification of his approach toward Iraq and that there was no reason to hold any administration officials accountable for mistakes or misjudgments in prewar planning or managing the violent aftermath.
"We had an accountability moment, and that's called the 2004 elections," Bush said in an interview with The Washington Post. "The American people listened to different assessments made about what was taking place in Iraq, and they looked at the two candidates, and chose me."
I'm reminded of my favorite line from a friend: "There's no stopping the invincibly ignorant."
Writing for the New York Times William J. Broad reports on the growing problem of states that are developing nuclear power industries which can use those industries as a starting point for nuclear weapons development.
Experts now talk frankly about a subject that was once taboo: "virtual" weapon states - Japan, Germany, Belgium, Canada, Brazil, Kazakhstan, Taiwan and a dozen other countries that have mastered the basics of nuclear power and could, if they wanted, quickly cross the line to make nuclear arms, probably in a matter or months. Experts call it breakout.
...
"If you look at every nation that's recently gone nuclear," said Mr. Leventhal of the Nuclear Control Institute, "they've done it through the civilian nuclear fuel cycle: Iraq, North Korea, India, Pakistan, South Africa. And now we're worried about Iran."
The moral, he added, is that atoms for peace can be "a shortcut to atoms for war."
Canada and Belgium are of course unlikely to build nuclear weapons. But at least one "virtual" weapons state has a strong and growing incentive to develop nuclear weapons: Taiwan. Faced with a Beijing government and nationalistic sentiment on the mainland determined to force Taiwan to submit to mainland control and with China's continued economic growth translating into steadily increasing military capabiities Taiwan's only realistic possibility for continued independence may be the nuclear option.
Broad mentions work on efforts to develop more proliferation-resistant nuclear fuel cycles. But it seems unlikely that Iran will accept getting its nuclear fuel from abroad or sending its waste to another country. Even if it did it could cheat on such an agreement.
Mitchell Reiss, the State Department’s director of policy planning, says the problem is that many non-nuclear states could embark on a project to build nuclear weapons and succeed before inspections programs could detect the effort.
Drawing an analogy to manufacturing and distribution techniques that were pioneered commercially by Japanese manufacturers and are now used worldwide, Reiss said he is concerned that nuclear proliferators could soon follow suit. Such “just-in-time” proliferation he said, would mean that materials for nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons materials would no longer be stockpiled but only brought together when they need to be used.
“The concept works beautifully in the private sector, and there’s no reason why it can’t work for the bad guys,” Reiss said. “But this will create enormous challenges for the [International Atomic Energy Agency], for the Nuclear Suppliers Group [an export control clearinghouse for most of the major countries with civilian nuclear industries], for all the countries of the world, in order to prevent continued nuclear proliferation.”
In particular, Reiss said this strategy might pose particular problems for on-site inspections—a key tool of international nonproliferation regimes.
“I think on-site inspections certainly are important—essential in some cases,” Reiss said. ”Still, there is a concern that you can inspect a place one day and there will be nothing there, and you come back the next week and everything will be there.”
If you are interested in more policy proposals for controlling nuclear proliferation see a recent presentation by Henry Sokolski of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center in which he makes seven proposals to make nuclear proliferation more difficult (PDF format). Keep in mind when reading it that these are seven proposals on top of many other he and others have made in the past. Also see my previous post Henry Sokolski: Taking Proliferation Seriously.
I am still betting on Iran successfully building nuclear weapons within a few years. Iran would need to be offered much bigger carrots and sticks before it would halt and reverse its drive to build nuclear weapons.
Evidence gathered by the UN atomic agency suggests North Korea was the source of nearly two tons of uranium to Libya as part of attempts by Colonel Gaddafi to build nuclear warheads, diplomats said today.
The diplomats, who spoke on condition of anonymity, cautioned that the investigation was not yet complete and other sources still could not be ruled out.
The uranium in question was not enriched. Libya had centrifuges it had bought from A. Q. Khan's nuclear black market ring for purifying the uranium into weapons grade.
Abdul Qadeer Khan is billed as the father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb. But he's not a physics genius in the league of Oppenheimer, Feynman, and other great physicists who worked on the US nuclear weapons program during World War II. Khan's achievement was really as a coordinator of manufacturing and services outsourcing and s stealer and purchaser of needed technologies. Khan's abilities are far more common than those of the best physicsts and best engineers. Various pieces of the needed expertise and component manufacturing capabilities can be found in many countries.
The classified evidence — many details of which are still sketchy — has touched off a race among the world's intelligence services to explore whether North Korea has made similar clandestine sales to other nations or perhaps even to terror groups seeking atomic weapons.
If North Korea really did supply uranium to Libya then this, on top of other North Korean weapons and weapons technologies increases the likelihood that North Korea would sell complete bombs.
Mohamed ElBaradei of the IAEA is most worried about North Korea.
Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said North Korea's pursuit of nuclear weapons "sends the worst signal to the would-be proliferators" that if they accelerate their weapons programs, powerful countries will negotiate with them.
"We need to make sure that that is not the lesson that people would learn from North Korea," he said. "I think it's the No. 1 international security concern. The way we deal with it, the way the international community responds to North Korea, is very important for the future precedent-setting."
The problem with North Korea is that if the United States threatens North Korea the regime will see that as a reason to develop nukes. But if the US does not threaten then the regime will pursue nuclear development anyhow. Nuclear weapons are seen by the regie as a way to become more powerful to fend off potential future threats and also probably as a tool to use as leverage to extort badly needed foreign aid to prop up a terrible economy.
David Sanger of the New York Times reports that Pakistani nuclear weapons developer A. Q. Khan was shown nuclear weapons while on a visit to North Korea in 1999. (same article here)
Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani scientist who sold nuclear technology around the world, has told his interrogators that during a trip to North Korea five years ago he was taken to a secret underground nuclear plant and shown what he described as three nuclear devices, according to Asian and U.S. officials who have been briefed by the Pakistanis.
Of course we have no way of knowing whether the devices that Khan saw are real functional nuclear weapons. But what Khan has revealed supports the idea that North Korea has managed to purchase a lot of the pieces it needs to make nuclear weapons. Khan says he began shipping equipment and designs to North Korea in the late 1980s.
Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said Tuesday that Pakistan had shared information arising from its investigations of Khan to other countries, but he did not elaborate.
"We have investigated scientists. We are in touch with the world," he told a press conference in Islamabad.
The Pakistanis are suspected of holding back many crucial details that are being revealed by the interrogations. The US is not allowed direct access to Khan. Khan may have been dealing with more countries than just North Korea, Iran, and Libya. If North Korea had 5 nukes in 1999 then how did they get enough uranium or plutonium? Is there a large enough international black market for nuclear material that North Korea was able to purchase enough to make bombs?
A number of other countries might have purchased nuclear technology from Khan's group.
Paris-based expert Bruno Tretrais says: "I would not be surprised if at least one other country was involved, like Syria, Egypt or Algeria."
If Egypt is involved then that might be hushed up. It is likely that the Bush Administration is not eager to see evidence of Egypt's purchase of nuclear technology made public.
This latest report serves as a useful reminder that nuclear proliferation control is not receiving the amount of attention it deserves. Current US policy toward North Korea is unlikely to stop North Korea's continued efforts to develop nuclear weapons. However, to the extent that these revelations make it harder for the governments of China, South Korea, and Japan to ignore the problem it is more likely that the US will get cooperation for tougher sanctions and pressure on North Korea. Still, even these revelations are unlikely to push China to make life tougher for Kim Jong-il and the Pyongyang regime.
Another aspect of this story that so far as gone unappreciated in the press is that A. Q. Khan is only a metallurgist and his real claim to fame is as a technology broker and manufacturing outsourcer. Khan is not of the intellectual caliber of, say, Enrico Fermi, Robert Oppenheimer, Richard Feynman, and the other geniuses who originally solved the manufacturing and design problems for the first American nuclear weapons during World War II. What is the significance of this fact? It is possible for non-geniuses to steal and buy technology to put together nuclear weapons programs. This is demonstrated by Khan's theft of centrifuge design information from European Urenco consortium, his purchase of parts from Europe, his purchase of parts elsewhere, and also Pakistan's acquisition from China of a nuclear weapon design and Khan's sale of that design to one or more other nations.
Investigators have discovered that the nuclear weapons designs obtained by Libya through a Pakistani smuggling network originated in China, exposing yet another link in a chain of proliferation that stretched across the Middle East and Asia, according to government officials and arms experts.
Khan operated like any American enterprise that outsources various functions all around the world. Khan used a British citizen to coordinate outsourcing training of Libyans to a site in Spain.
One operative named as working for Khan is Peter Griffin, a Briton whom Tahir alleged designed the Libyan workshop and sent eight Libyan technicians to Spain to learn how to use lathes for centrifuge parts.
According to the report, two others were Freidrich Tinner, a Swiss engineer whom Khan met in the 1980s, and his son, Urs Tinner, 39, who allegedly worked with Tahir in getting Malaysian company Scomi Precision Engineering, or SCOPE, to produce centrifuge parts.
Malaysia confirmed that it has no plans to arrest or take any other action against a man who has confessed to a key role in a conspiracy to sell nuclear weapons technology to rogue states.
Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi told a news conference that Buhary Syed Abu Tahir, a Sri Lankan who holds permanent residence in Malaysia, had "not violated any regulations" according to the police.
Note the ease with which technology can spread and how easy it is to outsource manufacturing and training. With enough money even people with limited scientific skills can organize and stock nuclear weapons manufacturing facilities and train nuclear weapons manufacturing workers.
Khan is billed as father of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program. He was more like chief purchasing agent for nuclear weapons technology. He helped spread nuclear weapons technology even further through his broker role selling technology, parts, and training to other countries.
For more on this see my previous post on Libya, Pakistan, and nuclear weapons technology sales. Also see the Wikipedia entry on Khan.
Henry Sokolski, director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, reports on attempts by the US, Japan, and France to sell nuclear reactors to China even as China is going to sell another reactor to Pakistan.
Westinghouse in the U.S., Japan's Mitsubishi, and the French firm Areva are so eager to sell China nuclear-power plants that they and their governments are turning a blind eye to an even more troubling nuclear export — a Chinese deal to sell Islamabad a large reactor. This sale, revealed in the press last week, defies the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) guidelines — rules China says it wants to adhere to and that President Bush is anxious to bolster.
Is this a case of the Bush Administration being more interested in helping to generate sales for Westinghouse? Or does it represent an admisison that if the US doesn't sell reactors to China that our non-ally France will instead? If the US government is going to stop the spread of nuclear weapons it is going to have a play a harder game of diplomatic and economic hardball than it so far has been willing to play. The invasion of Iraq looks to me increasingly like a distraction from the goal of stopping nuclear proliferation while the Bush Administration fails to pursue that important goal with policies sufficient to achieving it.
Here are some details on the China-Pakistan nuclear reactor deal.
The reported conclusion of Pakistan's 'technical negotiations' with China for the proposed sale of a new nuclear reactor, has brought the two countries close to finalising a deal.
The proposed reactor to be known as 'Chashma-2' marks only the second time that Pakistan has bought a nuclear reactor from China following the purchase of the 'Chashma -1' reactor.
Here is a Federation of American Scientists report on Pakistan's nuclear weapons program and the role that China played in it.
In the 1990s, China designed and supplied the heavy water Khusab reactor, which plays a key role in Pakistan's production of plutonium. A subsidiary of the China National Nuclear Corporation also contributed to Pakistan's efforts to expand its uranium enrichment capabilities by providing 5,000 custom made ring magnets, which are a key component of the bearings that facilitate the high-speed rotation of centrifuges.
According to Anthony Cordesman [ParaPundit note: PDF file] of CSIS, China is also reported to have provided Pakistan with the design of one of its warheads, which is relatively sophisticated in design and lighter than U.S. and Soviet designed first generation warheads.
China also provided technical and material support in the completion of the Chasma nuclear power reactor and plutonium reprocessing facility, which was built in the mid 1990s. The project had been initiated as a cooperative program with France, but Pakistan's failure to sign the NPT and unwillingness to accept IAEA safeguards on its entire nuclear program caused France to terminate assistance.
The warhead designs were the first hard evidence that the secret network provided its customers with far more than just the technology to turn uranium into bomb fuel. Libyan officials have told investigators that they bought the blueprints from dealers who are part of that network, apparently for more than $50 million. Those blueprints, along with the capability to make enriched uranium, could have given the Libyans all the elements they needed to make a nuclear bomb. What the Libyans purchased, in the words of an American weapons expert who has reviewed the program in detail, was both the kitchen equipment "and the recipes."
Experts familiar with the contents of the box say the designs closely resemble the warheads that China tested in the late 1960's and passed on to Pakistan decades ago.
Pakistan sold nuclear tech designs to Libya even after 9/11.
The timing of the transfer of the centrifuge design from Pakistan calls into question General Musharraf's ability to make good on his vow to President Bush that he would rein in Pakistani scientists selling their nuclear expertise around the globe. The general made that pledge shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks in the United States. Yet the main aid to Libya appears to have come since those attacks, suggesting that Pakistani scientists may have continued their trade even after the explicit warning.
While the Pakistanis deny this it is likely that Abdul Qadeer Khan, considered to be the father of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program, probably sold designs and parts with the knowledge of rulers of Pakistan. Also note that Khan's great achievements appear to be the stealing and buying of weapons technology from elsewhere. His biggest accomplishments are not from his own scientific work but rather the acquiring of nuclear technology elsewhere.
The US nuclear reactor that Sokolski mentions as being offered to China is the new Westinghouse AP1000 reactor design which was designed with the help of a half billion dollars of US taxpayer money. (same story here)
Economic concerns may outweigh worries about China's role in the spread of nuclear weapons.
Westinghouse developed the AP1000, which can generate 1,100 megawatts, with half a billion dollars of support from the federal government, and the government would collect tens of millions of dollars in royalties from any such plant in China, a senior United States energy official said. Credit support from the Import-Export Bank may also be used to finance the plants, he said, and Chinese officials had sought assurances that China would receive an export license for the plant.
The passive safety approach to the design of the AP1000 makes it much safer.
As in AP600, the AP1000 design uses passive safety systems to enhance the safety of the plant and to satisfy the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC) safety criteria. These systems use only natural forces, such as gravity, natural circulation, and compressed gas. No pumps, fans, diesels, chillers, or other rotating machinery are used in the passive safety sub-systems.
The passive safety systems include passive safety injection, passive residual heat removal, and passive containment cooling. All these passive systems have been designed to meet the NRC single-failure criteria and its recent criteria, including TMI (Three Mile Island) lessons-learned and unresolved/generic safety issues. Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA) tools have also been used to quantify the safety of the design.
So the AP1000 is a wonder of American engineering which may be sold to China saving them the expense of developing the same technology. This may happen even as China continues to assist Pakistan's building of a larger nuclear program and even as Pakistan provides little cooperation to allow the US to discover what Pakistan sold to Iran and perhaps to other countries as well. Is this a sign of just how weak the United States is and just how little influence the United States has in the world?
Meanwhile, highly purified weapons-grade uranium traces have been discovered by IAEA inspectors in Iran.
United Nations nuclear inspectors have found traces of extremely highly enriched uranium in Iran, of a purity reserved for use in a nuclear bomb, European and American diplomats said Wednesday.
Among traces that inspectors detected last year are some refined to 90 percent of the rare 235 isotope, the diplomats said. While the International Atomic Energy Agency has previously reported finding "weapons grade" traces, it has not revealed that some reached such a high degree of enrichment.
``The Khan network's finances were deliberately complex, and we do not have a complete picture,'' said Jim Wilkinson, a spokesman for the Bush administration's National Security Council. ``The developing picture, however, indicates that the Khan network received at least $100 million for supplying technology, equipment and know-how.''
Iraq was the least WMD-capable of the dangerous governments. Libya was second least capable. At this point the worst threats are still working on nuclear weapons. Iran and North Korea have not yet been stopped. Pakistan has many nuclear weapons and only military rule is barely preventing Islamists from seizing power. Even in Pakistan the Islamists are found in the government.
Update: China's role as a nuclear proliferation is very long standing.
Declassified papers reviewed by the National Security Archive, an institute at George Washington University, show U.S. unease over secret China-Pakistan security and military cooperation dating to the late 1960s, and examples of Chinese assistance to Pakistan's nuclear weapons-related projects in the late 1970s, the researchers said.
An exile who has previously released key nuclear information about Iran said on Tuesday Iranian leaders decided at a recent meeting to seek an atom bomb "at all costs" and begin enriching uranium at secret plants,
Alireza Jafarzadeh, who disclosed in August 2002 that Iran had a hidden uranium enrichment facility at Natanz and a heavy-water plant at Arak, told Reuters his new information came from the same "well-informed sources inside Iran."
Iran's foreign minister has made it clear that Iran is going to resume uranium enrichment.
"It's our legitimate right to enrich uranium," Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi told reporters after a Cabinet meeting in Tehran. "We suspended uranium enrichment voluntarily and temporarily. Later, when our relations with the IAEA returns to normal, we will definitely resume (uranium) enrichment," Kharrazi said.
If reports that Iran has the ability to make its own uranium enrichment centrifuges are correct then Iran doesn't have to try to purchase parts on the international black market to the most important step in nuclear weapons development.
So far the Bush Administration has been unwilling to carry out attacks on Iran in order to stop Iran's nuclear program. But it increasingly seems that nothing short of a military attack is enough to stop Iran from becoming a nuclear power.
According to Iran, after June 2003 "all of the [P-2] centrifuge equipment was moved to the Pars Trash Company in Tehran," says the IAEA's recent Iran report.
Centrifuges in the trash? Right.
The IAEA - not to mention the Bush administration - isn't buying this part of the story. They want the Iranians to talk more about what they really have in terms of P-2 equipment.
But Iran continues to insist that its nuclear program is meant only to produce electricity. Squeezing them too hard at this point might be counterproductive, say some experts. They're like someone hauled in by law enforcement for an interview who can leave at any moment, since they haven't officially been charged with a crime.
"We want them to continue cooperating with the police," says Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Agency.
The Bush Administration is not willing or able to escalate the confrontation with Iran over nuclear proliferation. The mullahs in power in Iran may be betting they can give themselves enough wiggle room to continue to develop nuclear weapons by pretending to reveal all.
As we watch the slow diplomatic dance and the continuing series of revelations about black market nuclear weapons technology it is worth reviewing how the Bush Administration is doing in dealing with the problems of Islamic terrorism, the spread of the more radical strains of Islam, and with the problem of nuclear proliferation. Here are some measures I think are worth keeping in mind when watching the Bush Administration execute its foreign policy:
As you can see from the above list I do not think the United States is doing enough to deal with the Islamic threat or with the related nuclear weapons proliferation threat.
So far the Bush Administration has managed to knock out or stop the weakest nuclear proliferator wanna-bes with the invasion of Iraq and the deal with Muammar Qaddafi/Kadaffy/Khadafy/Ghadafi (can't we just rename him Gandolf or Rudolph or something?) of Libya for him to cry uncle and tell all about his nuclear efforts in exchange for being allowed back into polite society. The Libya deal was probably facilitated by the invasion of Iraq (though there are some who argue otherwise I do not find their arguments persuasive) and that deal helped to bring to light many elements of a black market in nuclear weapons technology. That is a big plus. But is the resulting intelligence bonanza going to enable the United States and its allies to create enough obstacles to stop the Iranian nuclear weapons program? It is hard to tell but maybe not. Perhaps the Iranians have already acquired everything they need from the nuclear technology black market and the information from Libya is coming too late to make a difference.
More generally, the Bush Administration's general response just isn't attacking the general threat on enough different levels and layers. There should be a strategy for defunding the Wahhabis because Saudi Arabia isn't going to get better left to its own devices. The borders of the US should be actively defended to prevent hostile outsiders from getting in. While it is not politically correct to admit it not all religious ideologies are compatible with a free society. If we can't clearly identify the nature of the conflict we are not going to fight it effectively. In this respect the Cold War was an easier battle to fight because even though many on the Left argued that communism wasn't a threat most people clearly saw it as a dangerous ideology. Today that clarity of understanding is missing among most leaders in the government and among most of the talking heads.
The Iranian undertaking, given three months ago, was hailed at the time as marking a new approach to the disarmament of rogue states through diplomacy rather than war but western officials said Teheran was still buying and assembling machines to enrich uranium. "The Iranians are definitely still out procuring equipment," said one senior western source.
Iran is interpreting the meaning of its agreement with European governments very narrowly.
Now, diplomats told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity, even key European nations who negotiated the deal with Tehran have started to question Iran's commitment because it appears to be using semantics -- the meaning of the word suspend -- to keep some of its nuclear enrichment program operational.
One of the diplomats suggested an oversight on the part of France, Germany and Britain when they made their deal with Iran.
"Right from the beginning, everybody asked, 'what is suspension,' but the Europeans and Iranians never defined it," he said.
To get a sense of the word games and negotiating strategies used by the Iranian government see Amir Taheri's recent article on an Egyptian-Iranian diplomatic row.
The centrifuges are being built by Iranian companies.
Although Iran has shut down its nuclear facility in Natanz and has stopped installing new centrifuges to enrich uranium, the officials said Wednesday, Iran has indicated it will continue to honor existing contracts with local companies who produce the equipment.
But International Atomic Energy Agency Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei said Thursday the U.N. agency had seen no indications Iran had reneged on its promise. He spoke on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum.
Whether a binding deal is achieved depends in large part on whether the United States is perceived as a credible threat to the continued existence of the Mullahocracy in Teheran. The Mullahs might be willing to gamble that they can get away with developing nuclear weapons. The US has most of its troops tied down in Iraq and other countries. Domestically the Bush Administration is facing sustained criticism for not finding more WMD technology and weapons in Iraq. Can the US credibly threaten Iran with a preemptive attack? If not then why should Khamenei and his associates hold back from developing nuclear weapons? Are the economic carrots being offered by Europe big enough to persuade the Iranians? Can the US and EU get a sanctions regime thru the UN Security Council? At this point the Iranians are not yet convinced that they have all that much to lose by continuing to develop nuclear weapons.
The Iranians got so far along on their nuclear weapons program with various forms of intentional help from Pakistan, Russia, and other countries. But leakage of technology from Western countries has been important as well. Iran acquired a gas centrifuge design from a willing Pakistan but Pakistan acquired that design from Europe surreptitiously. Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan probably acquired gas centrifuge designs while working for a German-Dutch-British consortium Urenco in the Netherlands in the 1970s. There is a lesson here about the dangers of letting foreigners in to work in a country's civilian nuclear power program.
Meanwhile, the Dutch government yesterday said there are indications that North Korea and Libya may also have acquired centrifuges that were developed in Europe and which both Pakistan and Iran are known to possess.
Khan said everything he did had the approval of the commander of the Pakistani army.
The official said the scientist who had led the effort to build an atomic bomb, Abdul Qadeer Khan, had told investigators that any sharing of nuclear technology with Iran had the approval of Gen. Mirza Aslam Beg, the commander of Pakistan's army from 1988 to 1991.
The availability of designs of equipment that is useful for making nuclear weapons is going to steadily rise. The ever rising density of computer data storage media and rising speeds of computer networks makes it ever easier to transfer large amounts of design data. At the same time, advances in design software make it much easier to develop complex designs with smaller engineering teams. Plus, advances in machining tools and other methods of fabrication are making it steadily easier for even less sophisticated operators of manufacturing equipment to produce complex designs. A country like Iran that intends to develop nuclear weapons will find the task of doing so to get continually easier in future decades. Given that the will of Western countries to stop countries with nuclear weapons ambitions is not going to always be strong it seems inevitable that more countries will succeed in becoming nuclear powers. Still, efforts to delay the spread of nuclear weapons are worth pursuing.
Charles Krauthammer argues the timing of the Libyan abandonment of nuclear weapons development is too much a coincidence to have been an accident.
Yeah, sure. After 18 years of American sanctions, Moammar Gaddafi randomly picks Dec. 19, 2003, as the day for his surrender. By amazing coincidence, Gaddafi's first message to Britain -- principal U.S. war ally and conduit to White House war councils -- occurs just days before the invasion of Iraq. And his final capitulation to U.S.-British terms occurs just five days after Saddam Hussein is fished out of a rathole.
As Jay Leno would say, what are the odds? The nine months of negotiations with Libya perfectly frame the war on Iraq and the fall of Saddam Hussein. How is it possible to ignore the most blindingly obvious collateral benefits?
John O'Sullivan argues that the Bush doctrine of preemption and the invasion of Iraq helped secure Muammar Khadafy's capitulation on nuclear weapons development.
First, the timing. Gadhafi approached the British to open talks on this one week before the invasion of Iraq when it was plain that Saddam was about to fall over WMDs. He hurried the announcement after Saddam was captured. At the very least, this behavior makes it look as if he was afraid of suffering the same fate.
Second, there actually was military intervention against Libya -- and Gadhafi remained silent about it. A U.S.-led coalition halted Libyan ships containing WMD contraband on the high seas under the president's Proliferation Security Initiative. That told the Libyan that the United States knew a great deal about his WMD programs and was prepared to halt them by military means if necessary.
Third, Gadhafi obligingly told Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi that after the invasion of Iraq he was afraid of the United States.
This analysis rings true to me. We are still left Iran's quite a bit less than full abandonment of the ambitions of the mullahs to construct nuclear weapons. Plus, Kim Jong-il of North Korea is still attempting to build a nuclear arsenal. But if the invasion of Iraq helped secure Libya's capitulation then that alone justifies the invasion of Iraq in my mind.
Libya has revealed North Korean and Iranian scientists and engineers were working in Libya.
Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi took the decision to renounce all weapons of mass destruction (WMD) on Friday night, but while at first it was thought this only had implications for Libya it is now clear that his decision has scuppered a secret partnership between Libya, Iran and North Korea formed with the intention of developing an independent nuclear weapon. New documents revealed yesterday show that the three were working on the nuclear weapons programme at a top-secret underground site near the Kufra Oasis of the Sahara in southeastern Libya. The team was made up of North Korean scientists, engineers and technicians, as well as some Iranian and Libyan nuclear scientists.
There have been rumors to the effect that nuclear weapons designers from North Korea, Iran, and Libya were cooperating. But the rumors came from single sources in less prestigious publications. Turns out they were right. The nuclear weapons development cooperation between Iran, North Korea, and Libya makes the capitulation of Libya even more important.
Attention is now going to become more focused on North Korea as a result of the deal with Libya. Some Bush Administration critics claim Bush's public posture toward North Korea makes it harder to come to a similar deal with North Korea. However, Balbina Hwang, a Korea analyst for the Heritage Foundation, points out that North Korea's regime sees a high profile disagreement and intentionally provocative moves as key elements of its negotiating strategy.
"I wish the (North Korea) negotiations were more quiet and under the radar," Hwang said, but claimed that Pyongyang's negotiating strategy was based on "showmanship" and portraying the crisis as a standoff between itself and Washington.
Hwang thinks the leaders of North Korea should learn a lesson from Libya's capitulation.
"I hope they (North Korea) are learning an important lesson from this," said Balbina Hwang, a Korea analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank. "North Korea should learn what Libya has ... Ghaddafi saw what the future was, that if he did not relent and co-operate with the international community, life was going to be very difficult."
Will Kim Jong-il wise up and end his nuclear ambitions? It still seems unlikely. The reason is that North Korea faces a different set of problems and opportunities than Libya. Libya has one factor going for it that the regime in Pyongyang North Korea lacks: oil. Free of sanctions the Libyans can make a lot of money and modernize without jeopardizing the regime's control. The North Korean regime sees a continuing crisis as a necessary means to try to extract aid from other countries. Absent high tensions North Korea might be ignored and a large decline in aid would pose an existential crisis for the Pyongyang regime. The path of economic reform is seen by Kim Jong-il as a process that could easily spin out of control and result in his overthrow. So North Korea still looks like a tough nut to crack.
Pakistan has secretly supplied Iran with technology crucial to developing a nuclear weapons programme, international inspectors believe.
There is also evidence it has given information to North Korea and other countries.
Experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency - the United Nations nuclear watchdog - have recently uncovered a huge procurement network developed by Iran in the past 17 years to access materials, tools and specialist knowledge.
Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan, considered to be the father of the Pakistani nuclear bomb, is among the scientists suspected of helping Iran. He is a national hero in Pakistan and is being subjected only to house arrest for his suspected involvement.
The Washington Post has a lengthy article reporting on an extensive Iranian effort that procured supplies for its nuclear weapons development program from a large list of countries.
Documents provided by Iran to U.N. nuclear inspectors since early November have exposed the outlines of a vast, secret procurement network that successfully acquired thousands of sensitive parts and tools from numerous countries over a 17-year period. While Iran has not directly identified Pakistan as a supplier, Pakistani individuals and companies are strongly implicated as sources of key blueprints, technical guidance and equipment for a pilot uranium-enrichment plant that was first exposed by Iranian dissidents 18 months ago, government officials and independent weapons experts said.
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The disclosures offer a striking illustration of the difficulties faced by U.S. officials in trying to detect and interdict shipments of contraband useful in making weapons of mass destruction. Iran appears to have obtained the equipment by exploiting a gray zone of porous borders, middlemen, front companies and weak law enforcement where the components of such weapons are bought and sold.
It is very difficult to stop a government with sufficient financial and technical resources from pursuing a nuclear weapons development program.
The government of Pakistan claims the Pakistani scientists helped Iran before Pervez Musharraf came to power and that the scientists acted to help Iran without government approval.
In an interview, Information Minister Rashid Ahmed confirmed the thrust of a report in Sunday's Washington Post that the scientists had been detained for questioning on the basis of information provided to Pakistan by U.N. nuclear inspectors probing Iran's secret procurement network.
Rashid asserted that if there was any sharing of nuclear technology, it was done without the Pakistani government's knowledge or approval. Investigators, he said, are trying to determine whether the scientists may have offered their services as individuals.
It is noteworthy that both Iran and Libya decided to reveal their activities in the aftermath of the American-led invasion of Iraq. The overthrow of Saddam's regime has had a profound impact on the thinking of governments in the Middle East. As a result of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq the US has much more leverage than would otherwise have been the case.
At the same time, the US and its allies are far from putting a total permanent stop to nuclear weapons proliferation. Iran's mullahs are still stating that their temporary halt of at least some of their efforts to develop nu