Open Journal Montreal

a window into nuclear diplomacy
by Foggy Bottom

[Update: Foggy B. sent me an updated draft of "Trouble in Tehran" with lots new links and even a few pictures.]

In an act that stunned diplomats, a few days ago Iran announced that it would not attend negotiations with the so-called EU-3 (France, Germany, and the UK). The next week, Iran announced that it would resume research work on uranium conversion. Britain, France, Germany, and the US harshly condemned the move and vowed to have Iran sanctioned in the UN Security Council. Iran then retaliated that if it were referred to the Security Council it would cease to cooperate with international inspections of its facilities. What is going on here?

Diplomacy can at times be a subtle and occult art—and nuclear diplomacy is more so, with more potentially dramatic consequences. Nuclear diplomacy with the political maze that is Persian politics is nearly impossible. Despite the attention catching headlines in the media, the West’s nuclear diplomacy with Iran has been going on for quite some time now. It began in 2002, when a Marxist rebel group called the National Council for Resistance in Iran (NCRI) revealed the existence of previously undisclosed heavy water plants and gas centrifuge experiments that could be used for plutonium production and uranium enrichment respectively. This was the first significant and confirmed evidence of a secret nuclear program. Since then, the International Atomic Energy Agency has uncovered a number of facts that provide strong circumstantial evidence that Iran may be seeking to use its nuclear program for non-civilian purposes. While the US continued its hard-line stance towards Iran following these revelations, European powers (EU-3) attempted to mollify the Iranian regime through a package of economic and technological incentives. In essence the US and Europe were playing good cop/bad cop with Iran. Negotiations have been dragging on ever since.

Up to date, negotiations with Iran have failed. The main issue of contention remains civilian nuclear research. Europe will not accept that Iran be allowed to develop indigenous civilian nuclear capabilities and Iran has refused any deal that does not allow it to develop such capabilities. The EU refuses to allow Iran to develop these capabilities because it knows that they could provide a cover to develop virtually all the technology necessary for the development of nuclear weapons. Iran, for its part refuses to give up such research programs for several reasons. First, it argues that it is its inalienable right to access nuclear technology under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Second, Iran sees the development of nuclear technology as a symbol of its modernity (the medieval stoning of criminals, repression of women, and suppression of democracy notwithstanding). Successive political regimes have convinced common Iranians that nuclear technology is the sine qua non of progress. True to the teachings of Nobel game theorist Thomas Schelling, they understand that the best bargaining strategy can at times be to burn your own bridges in such a way that it would be impossible to compromise or retreat on certain positions.

Technically, Iran is entitled under international law to develop nuclear technology for peaceful civilian purposes. This right is enshrined under Article IV of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. It also does not help that most of the states chastising Iran for its nuclear research are themselves nuclear weapons states that are dragging their feet on implementing Article VI of the NPT (Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty), which calls for the eventual disarmament by all countries.

That being said, the universal right to nuclear technology in the NPT is a hotly debated topic. The recent cases of Iraq and North Korea have shown that states can and will use their civil nuclear programs as smokescreens for developing nuclear weapons. Under the NPT these states can legally develop all the prerequisite technologies for nuclear weapons and then give the international community notice that it wishes to withdraw from the NPT. States have the right to do so, so long as they give the international community “6 months notice.” Seriously. Think of it as treaty satisfaction guaranteed, or your money back. Only in this case, you get to keep all the nuclear infrastructure. For this reason, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)—the UN watchdog mandated to both promote nuclear technology and prevent its diversion to military purposes—and the Bush Administration have been keen on restricting the right to develop nuclear technology.

So, with all the recent hoopla, is Iran destined to become the world’s ninth nuclear weapons state? Not necessarily. Iran has basically three choices.

First, It can bow to international pressure and dismantle its indigenous nuclear program. This would cause some backlash from the hardliners, certain nationalist groups, and the military. On the other hand, it could avoid international sanction, receive aid from the EU, and become slightly less alienated from the US. This is not a small consideration when the Great Satan is cramping its style to the East in Afghanistan, and to the West in Iraq. Foreign aid would be welcome in a country with a demographic youth bulge and a sluggish economy (unemployed male youth are one of the strongest predictors of social unrest and war).

Second, Iran could pull out of the NPT and pursue a crash nuclear program. This would inevitably cause it to be referred to the UN Security Council, face economic sanctions, damage its relations with Russia, the West, and its neighbors. It would push Saudi Arabia and Egypt to pursue programs of their own to fend off Persian hegemony in the Middle East. On the flip side, Iran already seems destined for referral to the UN Security Council and tops the West’s shit list. The Iranian regime would receive a massive, albeit temporary, boost in domestic popularity. It could also meddle in the domestic affairs of Iraq and the Gulf States with greater impunity, knowing full well that any retaliation on a nuclear Iran would necessarily be muted. The case of India showed that conducting a nuclear test doesn’t always permanently destroy bilateral relations (so long as one has demographic, military, and/or economic clout).

A third, but rarely mentioned, option would be for Iran to develop nuclear technology up to the so-called nuclear “threshold” within the NPT and no further. That is, it would develop all the technology and material it needs to build a nuclear weapon in a short time frame, but remain in the NPT and avoid any talk of developing nuclear weapons, or any preparations of nuclear explosions. This is what policy wonks call a “virtual arsenal.” A virtual arsenal would allow Iran to avoid the most severe international sanctions but retain a virtual bomb in the basement in case things get ugly. But, you may ask, what is the point of having a nuclear weapon if no one knows that you have one? Well this is where a handy little concept called “existential deterrence” comes into play. The potentially vast destructive power of nuclear weapons means that even a relatively small doubt in the mind of your adversary would be sufficient to deter them from doing something they would otherwise do. The evidence marshaled by Israel, the US, and Europe in favor of referring Iran to the UN will also plant the seeds of doubt that Iran may very well have nuclear weapons of their own. Meanwhile, by developing its civil space launch program, Iran will also develop the technologies needed to lob its future nuclear weapons to intercontinental range. Indeed, the IRSL space launch vehicle and the Shahab 5-class ballistic missile are virtually identical devices.

What can be done? In Berlin, Paris, London, Moscow, Tel Aviv, and Washington, this is the question of the hour. Generally speaking, options are becoming more limited.

First, the current course. Europe has tried to extend some economic carrots to Tehran, but they failed to resolve the question of civilian nuclear programs. Even if Washington came on board and proposed to normalize diplomatic relations with Iran, it is unlikely that Iran would compromise its nuclear program based on such sweet promises. The prospect of improved bilateral relations does not hold much currency for a regime whose legitimacy is derived in large part from confrontation with the US.

Second, as a result of a lack of imagination and/or bureaucratic lethargy, the world could do nothing. Indeed, the natural state of most governments is rest… incompetent rest. Iran could become a nuclear weapons state. As noted above, this would have a deleterious effect on regional dynamics. Poor command and control structures in shoddy and run down Iranian forces coupled with non-existent early warning networks could mean an accidental launch of Iranian nuclear weapons or their theft by non-state actors. A Persian bomb would also deliver a devastating blow to the fabric of international law by undermining the credibility of the NPT.

Third, a concerned state or coalitions of states could pursue military action to coerce Iran into abandoning its nuclear program. The major advantages of this line of action are that it does not require the consent of Iran, and it would potentially deter future nuclear proliferators. UK, the US, and Israeli officials have all hinted that such an option was “on the table.” UK, the US, and Israeli officials have all hinted that such an option was “on the table”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk

http://news.bbc.co.uk

http://www.arts.telegraph.co.uk/news/

There are several options that may be pursued within this strategy. There can be a full-scale invasion accompanied by regime change à la Iraq to help permanently solve the problem. Such a course of action would not only be terribly costly but also unfeasible.

Iran is larger, more militarily powerful, and more nationalistic than Iraq. Its terrain is more amenable to resistance and insurgency. The dominant militaries of the US and Europe, and Russia, are already strained in current military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and Chechnya respectively.

If a full-scale military operation is unworkable, then a set of limited precision strikes on key nuclear facilities would be an alternative. Israel conducted such strikes on the Osiraq reactor in Iraq in 1981, and set back Iraq nuclear weapons program by a few years (interesting trivia: one of the Israeli pilots involved in the Osiraq strikes later became an astronaut and was killed in the 2003 Columbia Shuttle accident. You can imagine the comments regarding divine retribution that then came out of Iraq) Currently, Iran has deployed a set of anti-aircraft batteries around the Bushehr reactor as well as the Natanz uranium enrichment facility. While these defenses will have little effect on a well-planned attack, they do highlight the political importance associated with these facilities. A targeted strike on Iranian nuclear facilities would likely lead to reprisals in other theatres of operation through a number of proxies. Iran could worsen the already dismal state of affairs in Iraq through its influence on the large Shia population. It could beef up support for Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad in Lebanon, Palestine, and Israel. It could provide arms and other logistical support to insurgents in Afghanistan. At the moment, Iran avoids these needless provocations in order to keep a low profile, but the potential does exist.

A last option available to is a covert attack on Iranian facilities, one that would not be traced back to any one state, and provide a measure of plausible deniability to the state(s) involved. A little known fact is that Israel also used this method of operation in the past using the cover of an anti-nuclear environmental group to sabotage parts of the Osiraq reactor while it was in storage in France en route for Iraq. The environmental group was never heard of before and never heard of again. More recently, a group of Israeli national security experts submitted a report to PM Sharon entitled “Project David” recommending a similar course of action in Iran. Interested states could use either agents or proxies to carry out the operations. Relatively little would be needed to destroy infiltrated facilities such as a centrifuge plants since they have a large number of sensitive parts moving at the speed of sound. It would not be hard to find any number of organizations that hold a grudge with the current Iranian regime.

A few years ago, I attended a public meeting of the National Council for Resistance in Iran (NCRI) in a café in Vienna’s Ringstrasse regarding Iran’s nuclear program. The group that presented there did not seem capable of carrying out the intelligence operations it was taking credit for. Since then, it has been discussed that they received their information from Israeli and/or American intelligence sources. Such a group would be an obvious candidate for undertaking such a sabotage operation if and when circumstances would demand.

Whatever happens over the next couple of months, it should be interesting. Stay tuned.
F.B.

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[ originally posted on Saturday, January 14th, 2006 at 2:11 pm and is filed under Communication, Everything, Foggy. ]