The Nuclear Challenge

The international community is concerned about Iran's nuclear programme. Iran is developing a technology—gas centrifuge uranium enrichment—that can in principle produce fuel for nuclear power plants, and weapons-grade material for nuclear weapons.

Chain Reaction

The dangerous substance at the heart of this dispute is the rare, radioactive metal called Uranium-235 or U-235. U-235 is highly `fissile': if an atom of U-235 is hit hard by a sub-atomic `neutron', it is liable to break apart into two smaller atoms, releasing a burst of heat and ejecting two or three more neutrons.

If there are a lot of U-235 atoms packed together, then these new loose neutrons are likely to smash into more U-235 atoms, breaking them apart. These splitting atoms will in turn throw out more neutrons, hitting and breaking up more atoms. Because each atom hit is likely to trigger the splitting—or `fission'—

of two or three more atoms, this process rapidly leads to a self-sustaining `chain reaction'. It is this chain reaction that creates energy to be released in quantities useful for human purposes.

`Nuclear fission' of U-235 can be used in an uncontrolled chain reaction that yields one huge

burst of heat and light—in a nuclear bomb.

If the U-235 is not 100 per cent pure, but mixed with material that absorbs some of the neutrons, then the chain reaction can be controlled, and energy released in a steady flow of heat. This heat can be used to power steam turbines and generate electricity—in a nuclear power plant.

Uranium-235 is the key ingredient for most nuclear reactor designs and for most basic nuclear weapon designs. The problem is while uranium itself is not that rare, the U-235 variety is rare.

Isotopes

Naturally-existing uranium comes in in two varieties (`isotopes'): Uranium-235 and Uranium-238. In natural uranium ore, U-235 and U-238 are mixed up together.

Atomic Weights

Imagine the atom as a planet (the `nucleus') with tiny satellites (electrons) hurtling around it. Enrichment relies on the fact that the two kinds of uranium have `planets' with different `atomic weights'.

U-235 has 235 basic particles clumped together to make up its planet. U-238 has 238 such particles.

There are two kinds of basic particle: protons (positively-charged) and neutrons (which have no electrical charge). All uranium atoms have 92 protons. The isotopes vary in how many neutrons there are in the nucleus: U-235 has 143 neutrons (92+143=235); U-238 has 146 neutrons (92+146=238).

Somehow, this tiny difference has a huge effect on the internal structures of the two isotopes. The U-235 atom is much more fragile, and can be smashed to pieces by a flying neutron, where the more stable

U-238 atom just absorbs such an assault.

The Gas Centrifuge

The difference in atomic weights between U-235 and U-238 is also the basis for enrichment technologies.

Only 0.7 per cent of the ore is U-235; 99.3 per cent is U-238.

The two isotopes have different characteristics: U-235 is easily broken apart (`fissile'), while U-238 is not. If an atom of U-238 is hit by a neutron, it is more like to absorb the blow without an explosive shattering. It doesn't release energy, or throw off more neutrons.

The overwhelming proportion of U-238 in natural uranium stops any chance of a chain reaction.

For uranium to be useable—either as a fuel or as material for a nuclear weapon—the proportion of

U-235 in any block of uranium has to be increased, and the proportion of U-238 has to be decreased, to allow a chain reaction to begin and then continue.

Enrichment

For uranium to be useful as reactor fuel, it has to be `enriched' to 3 to 5 per cent U-235. (It is still 97 to 95 per cent U-238.) This is `low-enriched uranium' (LEU).

For military purposes, the uranium generally has to be enriched to over 90 per cent U-235: `weapons-grade' uranium or `highly-enriched uranium' (HEU).

As we have just seen, U-238 has three more sub-atomic particles in its nucleus than U-235. It is therefore ever so slightly (1.3 per cent) heavier. There are different technologies that can use this tiny difference in weight to separate out the U-238, and thereby increase the proportion of U-235. Iran is using `gas centrifuges' to accomplish this task.

Iran has uranium deposits. The uranium ore is mined, crushed, ground, and chemically purified into solid `yellow cake'. Further processing and reaction with fluoride turns this into uranium hexafluoride gas (UF₆). The task is then to enrich this uranium gas.

This is achieved by whirling the gas in a centrifuge—a massive metal cylinder—at 50,000 to 70,000 revolutions per minute. The U-238 atoms, which are heavier, tend to collect on the outside edge of the cylinder. The relatively lighter U-235 atoms are more concentrated towards the centre of the cylinder.

A tube sucks out the lighter gas at the centre of the centrifuge, and feeds it into an identical centrifuge, where the process is repeated. The gas sucked out of the centre of this centrifuge is slightly lighter than the gas that was fed in, and therefore has a slightly higher proportion of U-235 in it.

By passing the increasingly lighter gas through a series or `cascade' of gas centrifuges, the proportion of

U-235 in the uranium is gradually increased.

Dual-Use Technology

After the gas has been passed through a cascade of centrifuges, it can be enriched enough for nuclear fuel (3-5 per cent U-235). If it is sent through the same cascade many, many more times, it can be enriched into weapons-grade material (90 per cent U-235).

So the same equipment can produce either peaceful (`low-enriched') or military (`highly-enriched') uranium. (`HEU' can mean 20+ per cent U-235, but weapons designers use the term to mean 90+ per cent.)

Weapons-Grade

It takes a lot of centrifuges to make weapons-grade uranium. Richard L. Garwin, the architect of the world's first hydrogen bomb, and an eminent US nuclear scientist, points out that the basic `gun-type' design for a nuclear weapon requires 60 kilograms of HEU, while the more sophisticated `implosion' design requires only 20 kg. [Source: Richard L. Garwin, `HEU Did It', Foreign Affairs, March/April 2005 <http://tinyurl.com/lbba6>]

`Implosion' involves simultaneously firing precisely-shaped conventional explosives all around a ball of

U-235 to compress it into tiny sphere, a major technical challenge compared to the `gun-type' design, which just blasts one block of U-235 into another.

Nuclear expert Frank Barnaby suggests that using its current centrifuge design in a 3,000-centrifuge cascade, Iran might be able to produce 40 kilograms of highly-enriched uranium per year.

If Iran overcame the complexities of the `implosion' design, this could generate enough HEU for six nuclear weapons in just over five years of operation, according to Barnaby. This is regarded as the minimum number of weapons needed for a credible nuclear arsenal. [Source: Frank Barnaby, Iran's Nuclear Activities, Oxford Research Group, February 2006 <http://tinyurl.com/oldr6>]

On the more conservative assumption that the objective is a `gun-type' device, it would take 3,000 centrifuges over a year and a half to produce enough HEU for one nuclear weapon. In five years there might be enough for three nuclear bombs, if all the other technical challenges had been overcome.

50,000 Centrifuges

Iran has told the IAEA it intends to build a nuclear fuel production plant containing more than 50,000 centrifuges. This is clearly more than enough to produce the weapons-grade uranium for a substantial nuclear force. In a single year, the cascade could produce the HEU for more than ten `gun-type' weapons, or over thirty `implosion-type' bombs.

At the moment (1 September 2006), Iran has only 164 known centrifuges. [Source: David Albright and Jacqueline Shire, `Iran's Centrifuge Program: Defiant but Delayed', 31 August 2006 <http://tinyurl.com/j8bqr>] It would take Iran well over ten years to construct a 50,000 centrifuge cascade.

Why 50,000 centrifuges? According to Richard Garwin, a large reactor (capable of producing 1 million kilowatts of electricity) uses up 22.7 tons of low-enriched uranium (LEU) every year. To produce this much LEU, you need to run a cascade of 50,000 standard-capacity centrifuges for a whole year. [Source: Richard L. Garwin, `HEU Did It', Foreign Affairs, March/April 2005 <http://tinyurl.com/lbba6>] The cascade would produce this year the fuel you needed to run the reactor next year.

So, to run an independent nuclear power system, you need a big enough uranium mine, the ability to process it into uranium gas, and a 50,000 centrifuge cascade able to produce 22.7 tons of nuclear fuel in a year (uranium enriched to 3-5 per cent U-235), to run a large nuclear power reactor for a year.

3,000 Centrifuges

It takes a lot of energy to run a large cascade of centrifuges. That electricity must be supplied without a break and without fluctuation, in order to protect the centrifuges from damage. According to Frank Barnaby, even operating a cascade of 3,000 centrifuges would use as much electricity as a sizeable city. He points out that `It would, therefore, be impossible to operate such a facility clandestinely.' [Source: Frank Barnaby, Iran's Nuclear Activities, Oxford Research Group, February 2006 <http://tinyurl.com/oldr6>]

Breakout

International concern has so far centred not so much on the possibility that Iran may develop a hidden enrichment programme, but on the weapons development capability that a large, declared centrifuge programme would give the country when it is mature.

If inspectors from the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) are allowed to monitor Iran's nuclear facilities rigorously, the international community can have confidence that they are not being used to produce weapons-grade uranium.

However, if Iran does build a 50,000 centrifuge array, the fear is that it could at any time withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, expel the IAEA, and rapidly produce weapons-grade uranium.

However, Frank Barnaby points out that Iranian uranium ore is contaminated with the heavy metals including molybdenum. These metals would condense and block pipes and valves in the centrifuge system, rendering Iran unable to enrich above 20 per cent U-235—unable to produce weapons grade uranium—without foreign technology to deal with the metals. The `breakout' fear seems to be unfounded.

Barnaby suggests that the surest route available to Iran —if it is intent on a nuclear weapons capability—is to produce plutonium at the planned Arak heavy water reactor, not likely to be possible until 2014. [Source: Frank Barnaby, Would Airstrikes Work?, Oxford Research Group, March 2007, p. 7 <http://tinyurl.com/2vj2a8>.]

Nuclear Equality

The Non-Proliferation Treaty

The desire to bring an end to Iran's uranium enrichment programme is a perfectly legitimate diplomatic objective. What is not legitimate, however, is to present this as a legal requirement on Iran, to be enforced by military action.

International law does not ban uranium enrichment.

Countries which have signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) have the right to develop nuclear power programmes (for peaceful purposes), and to exchange nuclear technology with others:

ARTICLE IV

1. Nothing in this Treaty shall be interpreted as affecting the inalienable right of all the Parties to the Treaty to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination and in conformity with Articles I and II of this Treaty.

2. All the Parties to the Treaty undertake to facilitate, and have the right to participate in, the fullest possible

exchange of equipment, materials and scientific and technological information for the peaceful uses of nuclear energy. Parties to the Treaty in a position to do so shall also co-operate in contributing alone or together with other States or international organizations to the further development of the applications of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, especially in the territories of non-nuclear-weapon States Party to the Treaty, with due consideration for the needs of the developing areas of the world. [Source: Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, <http://tinyurl.com/87t7x>]

The bargain made in 1968 was that the nuclear weapon states would get rid of their nuclear weapons (Article VI) and share nuclear technology with everyone who signed the NPT (Article IV), while the non-nuclear weapon states would gain access to that technology and be allowed to develop it freely, so long as they did not develop nuclear weapons.

The NPT has two core problems.

(1) There is no mechanism or timetable in the Treaty for forcing the nuclear weapon states to disarm as they promise under Article VI; and

(2) Article IV allows non-nuclear weapons states that sign the NPT to develop their civilian nuclear power capabilities right up to the threshold of

Nuclear Equality

The Western position is that Iran cannot be trusted with enrichment technology. The Iranian position is that it has a legal right to this technology, and that it is no less trustworthy than any other country.

North Korea was a member of the NPT. Pyongyang announced that it was withdrawing from the NPT on 10 January 2003, and then communicated to the US that it actually possessed nuclear weapons on 10 February 2005. The response was not an international crisis and military threats, but negotiation (though these negotiations have yet to result in real progress either in terms of nuclear disarmament or greater security on the Korean peninsula).

Why should the international community be more concerned about Iran (which is a member of the NPT, inspected by the IAEA, and many years away from being able to build a nuclear weapon) than North Korea (which is no longer a member of the NPT, no longer inspected by the IAEA, and which is thought to actually possess nuclear weapons)?

India never signed the NPT, but it did participate in the `Atoms for Peace' programme in the 1950s,

nuclear weapons production. They also have the right to withdraw from the treaty, and to develop nuclear weapons, free from monitoring by the International Atomic Energy Authority (IAEA).

This is the legal framework of the NPT.

Iran's ambitious nuclear power programme may be deeply worrying for the region, but it is entirely legal within the framework of the NPT. The US and UK are pressing Iran to give up its legal rights under the NPT to enrich uranium, and to withdraw from the NPT.

That is a perfectly legitimate diplomatic objective. However, in diplomacy, when you want to persuade someone to give up a right that they possess, you have to offer them something of equal value to them, to compensate them for their loss.

If they have a right to a legitimate activity, then it is not legally or morally justifiable to threaten them with military attack or massive economic loss to intimidate them into giving up their rights.

whereby it gained nuclear technologies by promising not to use them for military purposes. The US supplied reactors, `heavy water', and access to training in US nuclear laboratories. In 1974, India carried out what it described as a `peaceful nuclear explosion'. The US responded with sanctions, and helped form the `Nuclear Suppliers Group' (NSG) in 1975. The NSG countries coordinate their exports to prevent nuclear technologies being diverted to military programmes.

India declared its nuclear weapons capability in May 1998 with five massive nuclear test explosions. The US responded with more sanctions.

On 2 March 2006, President George W. Bush finalized a deal with India which would effectively reverse all US nuclear sanctions, and make an exception for India in the NSG regime, despite the fact that India remained outside the NPT and refused to allowed international inspections of all its nuclear programmes. President Bush said: `Congress has got to understand that it's in our economic interests that India have a civilian nuclear power industry to help take the pressure off the global demand for energy.' [Source: `US and India seal nuclear accord', BBC News Online, 2 March 2006 <http://tinyurl.com/nmejd>]

Why should the international community be discussing sanctions against Iran, which is still a member of the NPT, which still allows international inspections, and which is years away from having a nuclear weapon, when the US is undermining the Non-Proliferation Treaty by removing sanctions against India, which is not a member of the NPT, does not allow international inspections, and which has had nuclear weapons since 1998?

Pakistan never signed the NPT. It initiated a weapons programme instead, culminating in the nuclear tests of 1998 which established it as a nuclear weapons state.

On 4 February 2004, Doctor Abdul Qadeer Khan, father of the Pakistani bomb, confessed on television that he had sold nuclear weapons-related technology to other countries—believed to be Libya, North Korea and Iran. [Source: Paul Reynolds, `On the trail of the black market bombs', BBC News Online, 12 February 2004 <http://tinyurl.com/bzq3p>]

US expert Gary Samore, then Director of Studies at the International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS), gave his opinion to the British Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee: `I think it is much more likely that what we are witnessing is proliferation as a matter of

state policy'. [Source: House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee Report, 29 July 2004 <http://tinyurl.com/ebxld>] This was the general view of informed observers, including US intelligence officials. [Source: S. Hersh, `The deal: Why is Washington going easy on Pakistan's nuclear black marketers?', New Yorker, 8 March 2004 <http://tinyurl.com/3fhkb>]

The day after his confession, Khan was officially pardoned and placed under house arrest in his mansion. [Source: Ash-har Quraishi, `U.S. supports nuclear pardon', CNN, 5 February 2004 <http://tinyurl.com/47qt3>] No outside investigation was permitted.

In earlier years, the US had applied sanctions on Pakistan because of its nuclear weapons programme and its suspected proliferation activities. In the aftermath of the 11 September 2001 attacks, these measures were dropped.

President Bush said that maintaining sanctions which barred military aid to Pakistan `would not be in the national security interests of the United States'. [Source: Luke Harding and Rory McCarthy, `Sanctions lifted as US rewards Pakistan', Guardian, 24 September 2001 <http://tinyurl.com/zzdll>]

No US or UK sanctions were (re-)imposed after the A.Q. Khan revelations in 2004. Before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Prime Minister Tony Blair promised Parliament that after the war there would be a concerted effort against nuclear proliferation: `We have to confront those companies and individuals trading in weapons of mass destruction.' [Source: Hansard, 29 January 2003, col 880 <http://tinyurl.com/klfw3>] No action was taken against Khan or Pakistan.

In May 2006, Leonard Weiss, author of previous US nonproliferation legislation, told a congressional committee that: `at least some parts of the [Khan] network are definitely still functioning'. Weiss observed that `an educated guess based on the unclassified literature is that a good part of the network is still intact, and that additions to it are being actively sought.' [Source: Leonard Weiss, House Sub-committee on International Terrorism and Non-proliferation, 25 May 2006 <http://tinyurl.com/ehu6o>]

Why should the international community consider sanctions against Iran, which is merely engaging in uranium enrichment, when it failed to take decisive action against the Khan/Pakistan nuclear proliferation network for many years, did not punish those

activities when exposed (the IAEA was not allowed even to question Khan), and is even now failing to take action against illegal nuclear trading by Pakistan? The United States has, as in the case of India, rolled back its nuclear-related sanctions regime against Pakistan.

Once again: Iran is a member of the NPT, and allows international inspections; Pakistan is not and does not. Iran is not a nuclear weapons state; Pakistan is. Iran is not known to have exported nuclear technology; Pakistan is known to have exported such technology to at least three countries, and may well be still running an illegal nuclear technology trading system. Why the sole focus on Iran?

Israel, like India, like Pakistan, has never signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Like those countries, Israel has developed nuclear weapons. With initial technical assistance from France and political support from the United States, Israel has built up a substantial nuclear force, believed to include air-, ground- and possibly sea-launched nuclear bombs and missiles with a suspected maximum range of 7000 miles. Estimates of the size of the Israeli nuclear arsenal range from 75-200 weapons. [Source: Robert S. Norris, William Arkin, Hans M. Kristensen, and Joshua Handler, `Israeli nuclear forces, 2002', Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, September/October 2002, pp. 73-

75 (vol. 58, no. 05) <http://tinyurl.com/anxso>]

Like Pakistan, Israel has engaged in nuclear proliferation activities. An explosion high in the atmosphere on September 22, 1979, off the eastern coast of South Africa is widely believed to have been a clandestine Israeli test in co-operation with the apartheid state. [Source: Norris, Arkin, Kristensen, and Handler, `Israeli nuclear forces, 2002', Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, <http://tinyurl.com/anxso>]

Israel has a policy of `nuclear ambiguity', of never confirming that it possesses nuclear weapons. Apart from anything else, if Israel did publicly declare itself to be a nuclear weapon state, it would trigger US nonproliferation legislation that would cut off around $3 billion worth of aid every year. [Source: David R. Francis, `Economist tallies swelling cost of Israel to US', Christian Science Monitor, 9 December 2002 <http://tinyurl.com/3agey>]

Israel's nuclear doctrine includes the `Samson Option'. In the Biblical story, Samson, when trapped, brought the Temple down upon himself and his enemies.

One version of the nuclear `Samson Option' was described by Israeli nuclear insider Oded Brosh in April 1992 as the `last-minute option' to deny Arab

leaders a victory by the threat of `the destruction of Arab civilization.' Brosh acknowledged that this would mean Israeli `national suicide'. [Source: Israel Shahak, Open Secrets: Israeli Nuclear and Foreign Policies (Pluto, 1997), p.38]

More useful on a day-to-day basis is the Samson Option as a threat to use nuclear weapons against Israel's enemies—and its allies. So the Israelis threatened to use their nuclear arsenal during the 1973 Arab-Israeli war in order to accelerate the supply of US arms. [Source: Seymour Hersh, The Samson Option: Israel, America and the Bomb (Faber & Faber, 1991), pp.137, 227-238]

The first director of the Israeli Institute for the Development of Weapons, Munya Mardoch, said: `the moral and political meaning of nuclear weapons is that states which renounce their use are acquiescing to the status of vassal states. All those states which feel satisfied with possessing conventional weapons alone are fated to become vassal states.' [Source: Shahak, Open Secrets: Israeli Nuclear and Foreign Policies, p.153]

Oded Brosh, speaking semi-officially, referred to long-term security issues for Israel: `the Saudi royal family is

not going to reign forever', and `the Egyptian regime [currently friendly to Israel] may change'. Israel must be ready to use its nuclear weapons in such contingencies, Brosh argued. [Source: Shahak, Open Secrets: Israeli Nuclear and Foreign Policies, p.40]

The Nuclear Fatwa

In contrast, Iran has no known nuclear weapons doctrine, and its highest authorities have condemned the use of nuclear weapons. On 14 January 2006, the much-feared Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said: `A nation which has culture, logic and civilization does not need nuclear weapons. The countries which seek nuclear weapons are those which want to solve all problems by the use of force. Our nation does not need such weapons.' [Source: `Excerpts: Ahmadinejad conference', BBC News Online, 14 January 2006, <http://tinyurl.com/p9dwn>]

In Iran, the President does not direct foreign policy.

`It is the Supreme Leader, not the president, who controls the armed forces and makes decisions on security, defence and major foreign policy issues.' [Source: `Iran: Who holds the power?', BBC News Online, undated <http://tinyurl.com/mklrc>]

uranium, `heavy water', plutonium, tritium and beryllium. [Source: Meirion Jones, `Secret sale of UK plutonium to Israel', BBC Newsnight, March 2006 <http://tinyurl.com/fmvu6>]

Nuclear Hypocrisy

In the 1970s, the US government urged Iran to purchase $6bn worth of (US) nuclear technology—because Iran's energy supplies were dwindling.

President Ford signed a 1976 directive offering Tehran a US-built reprocessing facility producing plutonium and enriched uranium, key nuclear ingredients for nuclear weapons. Policy was made by a national security policy team including Dick Cheney (chief of staff), Donald Rumsfeld (chief of staff), and Paul Wolfowitz (nonproliferation officer at the US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency).

`It is absolutely incredible that the very same players who made those statements then are making completely the opposite ones now,' says Joseph Cirincione, a nonproliferation expert at the US Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. (Source: Dafna Linzer, `Past Arguments Don't Square With Current Iran Policy', Washington Post, 27 March 2005 <tinyurl.com/yd9d2q>)

The current `Supreme Leader', Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is said by the Iranian government to have issued a `fatwa' or legal ruling that: `the production, stockpiling and use of nuclear weapons are forbidden under Islam and that the Islamic Republic of Iran shall never acquire these weapons'. [Source: `Iran's Statement at IAEA Emergency Meeting', Mehr News Agency, 10 August 2005 <http://tinyurl.com/jlyhy>]

It is not possible to accept the declared policy of any state at face value. However, the difference between the policy statements quoted above is stark, and raises forcefully the question of why the international community is being pushed to focus its nuclear nonproliferation concerns against Iran, and Iran alone.