World at Risk Recommendations: Iran

An excerpt from World At Risk, page 61

RECOMMENDATION 5: As a top priority, the next administration must stop the Iranian and North Korean nuclear weapons programs. In the case of Iran, this requires the permanent cessation of all of Iran’s nuclear weapons–related efforts. In the case of North Korea, this requires the complete abandonment and dismantlement of all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs. If, as appears likely, the next administration seeks to stop these programs through direct diplomatic engagement with the Iranian and North Korean governments, it must do so from a position of strength, emphasizing both the benefits to them of abandoning their nuclear weapons programs and the enormous costs of failing to do so. Such engagement must be backed by the credible threat of direct action in the event that diplomacy fails.

Country-Specific Challenges: Iran and North Korea

The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty is facing the prospect of an unraveling that could be its permanent undoing. Iran and North Korea have pursued nuclear weapons–related programs that the world cannot permit to succeed.

Iran’s apparent efforts to acquire a nuclear weapons capability in defiance of its NPT obligations and UN Security Council resolutions and the uncertainty over whether North Korea will ultimately eliminate its nuclear weapons program constitute threats to international peace and security. Failure to resolve these crises could lead some countries to revisit their earlier decisions to renounce nuclear weapons, potentially leading to a cascade of new nuclear-weapon states. Such a wave of nuclear proliferation would seriously jeopardize the current world order, creating profound new risks and increasing instability.

Iran maintains that it does not want to acquire nuclear weapons and is merely pursuing “peaceful” nuclear activities as allowed under the NPT. Although the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran issued in November 2007 came to the controversial conclusion that Iran had ended its nuclear weapons design and weaponization work in the fall of 2003, it made clear that Iran had engaged in such weaponization work until then and continues to develop a range of technical capabilities, including a civilian uranium enrichment program, that could be used to produce nuclear weapons. If Iran should test a nuclear device or declare it possesses a nuclear weapon, or if additional evidence should come to light that conclusively revealed that Iran was making a nuclear weapon, it would be the third time since 1991 that an NPT member evaded international nuclear inspectors, using the cover of peaceful nuclear activities to either obtain, or come close to obtaining, a nuclear weapon. If Iran should acquire a nuclear weapon in violation of its pledges without suffering severe penalties, other countries might view it as a model to follow—leading to a “cascade of proliferation,” as a UN panel has warned. Several other countries, including Egypt, Algeria, Turkey, Brazil, Argentina, Saudi Arabia, Libya, South Korea, and Taiwan, have, to varying degrees and at different times, expressed interest in acquiring nuclear weapons and are now planning on expanding their peaceful nuclear energy programs.

The Commission decided that because of the dynamic international environment, it would not address the precise tactics that should be employed by the next administration to achieve the strategic objective of stopping the nuclear weapons programs of Iran and North Korea. Developing those tactical initiatives will clearly be one of its urgent priorities.

But on the central finding, the Commission was unanimous in concluding that the nuclear aspirations of Iran and North Korea pose immediate and urgent threats to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Successful nuclear programs in both countries could trigger a cascade of proliferation and lead to the unraveling of the NPT.

Iran

For almost a decade, the United States has been concerned that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapons program through clandestine activities as well as under the guise of peaceful enrichment for civilian nuclear power. In 2002, a London-based Iranian opposition group—the National Council of Resistance of Iran—added to such concerns by disclosing details about a secret heavy-water production plant at Arak and an underground enrichment facility at Natanz. Later that year, the United States denounced Iranian violations of the NPT and IAEA Safeguards agreement, accusing Iran of across-the-board pursuit of weapons of mass destruction.

Three years later, the IAEA Board of Governors expressed an “absence of confidence that Iran’s nuclear program is exclusively for peaceful purposes.” In early 2006, the board voted to refer Iran as a possible NPT violator to the UN Security Council; in December 2006, the UN Security Council ordered Iran to suspend its enrichment effort and adopted the first of three resolutions imposing sanctions to punish Iran for continued defiance of the Security Council order. Tehran insists that its enrichment program is intended only to provide fuel for nuclear power reactors essential for meeting the nation’s peaceful energy needs. As the United States was leading the effort in the UN Security Council to end Iran’s enrichment efforts, the European Union (EU) established a dual-track approach, supporting UN sanctions against Iran while also offering Iran economic incentives to end its enrichment activities. The United States has not engaged in direct negotiation with Tehran, but has worked closely with the EU regarding its incentives effort. Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia, and the United States have held out the possibility of a package of political and economic benefits if Tehran suspends its enrichment of uranium. To date, these efforts to find a diplomatic solution have failed.

Most recently, on September 29, 2008, IAEA Director General ElBaradei told his agency’s board of governors that Iran’s continued enrichment activities are “still a cause for concern for the international community in the absence of full clarity about Iran’s past and present nuclear program.”

Just how much time does the world have to seek this “full clarity” and decide what to do? Experts such as David Albright, of the Institute for Science and International Security, have underscored that the timeline for Iran’s acquisition of sufficient HEU to build a nuclear bomb is ominously short—it ranges from only six months to two years.