Unthinkable (9 page)

Nevertheless, we need to recognize that there are a number of important differences from the Iraq case. First, in 2002 Iran was caught red-handed enriching uranium and separating plutonium at clandestine facilities that it had concealed from the IAEA in violation of its NPT obligations. In Iraq after 1991, the IAEA could never find a covert program that would have allowed Saddam to manufacture the fissile material for nuclear weapons. Since 2002, Iran has tried to build at least one additional covert enrichment facility (the Fordow plant at Qom), only to have
it discovered in 2009. So we can be certain that Iran has an industrial-scale program that would allow them to manufacture the fissile material for nuclear weapons, that it does not need this capability for civilian uses, and that it keeps trying to hide these efforts. None of that was true for Iraq.

In the case of Iraq after 1991, the international community kept sending UN and IAEA inspectors to sites where Iraq was purportedly working on WMD. When they eventually got into those sites, they found nothing. The Iranians have blocked inspectors from seeing the sites where they have allegedly conducted weaponization work. In one case, the Iranians allowed the inspectors in—but only after they had bulldozed the entire facility, replaced much of the topsoil, and turned it into a park. Not even Saddam had thought of that.
³⁷

It is also worth comparing the current Iranian and post-1991 Iraqi situations within the wider context of the history of nuclear proliferation. Specifically, there has never been a country that attempted to conceal a peaceful nuclear program. Lots of countries have
overt
peaceful nuclear programs. North Korea, Libya, and Iraq before 1991 all had covert enrichment programs (at least they were covert at first) like Iran's, but these
were
weapons programs, not civilian programs. Similarly, Israel and Pakistan pursued what they claimed to be civilian nuclear programs but are widely alleged to have been covers for secret weapons programs (and were recognized as such early on).
³⁸
Moreover, it is worth noting that after 1991, Iraq had neither a covert enrichment program nor a covert weaponization program—at least not by 2003. When Iraq had a covert enrichment effort it was because it was pursuing a nuclear weapon. When it decided to forgo that prospect (to put it off to a later point, according to the definitive postwar study), it did not retain a covert enrichment program.
³⁹
Iran's efforts to conceal an enrichment program are historically only consistent with other efforts to conceal a
weapons
program.

Last, it is important to remember that what Saddam did that confused the intelligence communities of the world was so bizarre and foolish
that it bordered on irrational. Saddam got rid of his nuclear program at some point in the 1990s, retaining only some plans, the knowledge in the heads of his scientists, and a few buried parts to aid a reconstitution effort at some point in the future after he had succeeded in having the last of the faltering UN sanctions lifted or nullified. He hoped that if the IAEA and UN inspectors could not find any pieces of a nuclear (or wider WMD) program, the UN would have to lift the sanctions. However, he also wanted his own people and, secondarily, the Iranians, to believe that he had retained an extensive, secret program so that neither would feel confident attacking him. Of course, foreign intelligence agencies picked up on his efforts to propagate the latter and assumed that it was proof that he was lying about the former.
⁴⁰
Before the invasion of Iraq, only a tiny number of people either inside or outside Iraq believed that Saddam had eliminated all of his WMD assets.
⁴¹
Even those Americans who argued against an invasion did so overwhelmingly in the belief that Saddam had reconstituted his WMD programs, but that he could be deterred and contained even with these capabilities.

Saddam's behavior was close to madness. This is not how nation-states behave, which is why no one imagined that this was what Saddam was doing—not even the handful of people who believed before the invasion of Iraq that Saddam did
not
have a WMD program. Although we have seen Iran behave in ways that make little sense to outsiders (because they were driven by domestic political considerations that went unrecognized by outsiders), we have never seen them do something as incredible as Saddam's WMD gambit. And why would Iran
want
to follow Saddam's approach given that it resulted in the invasion of Iraq, Saddam's fall from power, and his execution at the hands of his own people?

These specific differences with the case of Iraq after 1991, the similarities with Iraq pre-1991 (as well as Libya and North Korea), and the evidence of Iran's efforts at weaponization all point in the direction that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapons capability and that we are not making the same mistake we made with Iraq in 2003. But confidence, even high confidence, is not the same as certainty. The post-1991 Iraq example should
be another important cause for humility and caution as we feel our way toward a new Iran policy.

Right now, and for some time to come, Iran's nuclear program appears to be focused on giving Iran the ability to build nuclear weapons. Whether the regime has made the decision to go ahead and field one or more weapons, however, is a matter of debate. Iran's approach has been a clever, but obvious, one. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty states that nations may acquire peaceful nuclear technologies, but not nuclear weapons. Iran has been trying to use this ambiguity to cover its nuclear weapons–making project—as Iraq, North Korea, Libya, Syria, and others have before it. Prior to the 2002 revelation of its fissile material fabrication plants at Natanz (uranium enrichment) and Arak (plutonium extraction), Iran appears to have had an active nuclear weapons research program. In 2003, with the entire nuclear program under international scrutiny and facing the threat of sanctions or even invasion, Iran ratcheted back (or possibly discontinued) its covert weaponization program while declaring its enrichment activities. Since the enrichment activities were sanctioned by the terms of the NPT, Iran may have decided to continue to pursue that track (even in defiance of the legally binding UN Security Council resolutions) until it got far enough along with both its stockpile of enriched uranium and operational centrifuges to be in a position to withdraw from or just ignore the NPT. If this is what Iran has been doing, it makes a great deal of sense. Since Iran needs time to build its sort-of-justifiable enrichment capacity anyway, there is no reason not to focus on that while leaving the impossible-to-justify weaponization program to catch up later.

Because Iran did come clean about its enrichment activities, to the best of our knowledge, this is one important area of Iranian behavior about which we know a good deal. We know about two sites where Iran is enriching uranium. First is the large, well-defended underground facility
at Natanz. It houses more than 14,000 operational centrifuges as of mid-2013 and enriches uranium to both 3.5 percent purity (low-enriched uranium, or LEU) and 19.75 percent purity (sometimes referred to as medium-enriched uranium, or MEU).
⁴²
Natanz can accommodate as many as 50,000 centrifuges. Then there is the smaller, but even better protected, facility outside Qom, called Fordow. Fordow has roughly 2,800 operational centrifuges, and while it has enriched uranium to 3.5 percent purity, it appears to be concentrating mostly on MEU production. In addition, the IAEA reported in early 2013 that Iran is now making progress on its plutonium separation plant at Arak. Tehran has notified the IAEA that it plans to start operating Arak in early 2014, which will create an entirely new supply of fissile material.
⁴³

By August 2012, Iran had enriched 6,876 kilograms of U-235 to 3.5 percent purity. Theoretically, it would take about 1,300 kilograms of LEU to make the fuel for a nuclear weapon, although it requires considerable additional enrichment to boost low-enriched uranium to the 90 percent purity (highly enriched uranium, or HEU) needed for a bomb.
⁴⁴
In theory, Iran had enough LEU for five nuclear weapons. By that same point in time, Iran had enriched 189.4 kilograms of uranium to 19.75 percent purity. It typically requires anywhere from 125 to 210 kilograms of MEU for a bomb, and while it requires some additional enrichment to get to 90 percent, it takes much less than that required for LEU. Iran probably still does not have enough MEU to manufacture a bomb—although if it wanted to do so, it could supplement its MEU by further enriching LEU.
⁴⁵
The generalizations about how much of each purity of uranium is required for a bomb are variable based on a wide range of factors, and the time required to further enrich the uranium to the HEU needed for a weapon varies even more based on the numbers of centrifuges, the quality of those centrifuges, the starting purity of the uranium feedstock, and several other factors.

Given how much uranium Iran has enriched and the levels of purity it has attained, experts on the Iranian nuclear program are increasingly concerned about Iran's efforts to develop a new generation of more advanced
centrifuges based on the more sophisticated Pakistani P-2. Iran has installed some of its advanced IR-2s and IR-4s at both Natanz and Fordow and notified the IAEA in January 2013 that it would begin to operate some of the IR-2s.
⁴⁶
This decision will accelerate Iran's ability to enrich uranium, something that will increase just as significantly when they get their IR-3 and IR-4 models working.

It is possible that Iran has constructed—or is in the process of building—additional enrichment sites or additional weaponization research and testing facilities. Certainly, between Natanz, Arak, and Fordow, Iran has demonstrated both an interest in and an ability to build large, sophisticated nuclear facilities and to keep them secret for at least some period of time. Experts from various Western governments and the IAEA believe it is unlikely that they have missed large, covert Iranian enrichment facilities. However, it is worth remembering that in 1991, the United States intelligence community was certain that Iraq had only two nuclear facilities and that neither of these was far along in developing the capability to enrich uranium, only to find out after the Persian Gulf War that Iraq had nineteen
other
nuclear facilities—fourteen of them large and important—that the United States did not even know existed. Baghdad was much closer to being able to build a workable bomb than anyone realized.
⁴⁷

Western intelligence communities and the IAEA are much better equipped today than they were then, and they have learned many lessons from the Iraq experience, but we should not rule out the possibility that we have missed one or more secret Iranian nuclear facilities. We ought to keep in mind the statements of Ahmadinejad and others from 2009 that Iran would build multiple, alternative enrichment sites in other mountains elsewhere in Iran. It might be bluster, or it might be a clue. In August 2010, Iran notified the IAEA of its intent to start construction at one new site that it identified as one of the ten that Ahmadinejad mentioned, suggesting that his statement was not merely bluster.
⁴⁸
And if Iran does have other enrichment facilities, not only would that change how quickly Iran could produce enough HEU for a bomb, but it would also change how soon we might realize it.

THE WEAPONIZATION DEBATE.
In November 2007, the U.S. National Intelligence Council—the senior analytic body of the U.S. intelligence community—issued a National Intelligence Estimate on Iran's nuclear program. Most NIEs are boring, and I say that as someone who has both helped draft them when I worked at CIA, and read them when I worked for the National Security Council. This one was a bombshell. The opening sentence of the NIE's key judgments stated: “We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program; we also assess with moderate-to-high confidence that Tehran at a minimum is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons.” It went on to say, “We assess with high confidence that until fall 2003, Iranian military entities were working under government direction to develop nuclear weapons.” And then, “We assess with moderate confidence Tehran had not restarted its nuclear weapons program as of mid-2007, but we do not know whether it currently intends to develop nuclear weapons.”
⁴⁹

In other words, in the early fall of 2007, U.S. intelligence had acquired information that convinced the entire U.S. intelligence community that Iran had had a program to build a nuclear weapon (and that the uranium enrichment and plutonium separation programs were intended to produce the fissile material for that weapon). But that same information also indicated that the Iranians had shut down that piece (the weaponization part) of the nuclear program in 2003, although the uranium enrichment and plutonium separation projects continued to move forward as they were more easily justified under the terms of the NPT. Moreover, the American intelligence community also concluded, with somewhat less confidence, that the Iranians had not restarted the weaponization program by late 2007. At that time and since, the intelligence agencies of various other countries (including Israel, Britain, France, and Germany) have said that they agree that Iran had a weaponization program—and that the uranium and plutonium programs were married to it—but disagreed with the United States about just what, if anything, had been stopped in 2003. In the words of Britain's MI6 chief, “The Iranians are determinedly
going down a path to master all aspects of nuclear weapons; all the technologies they need.”
⁵⁰

The first thing to take from this incident is that it constitutes another piece of evidence that Iran's nuclear program is about weapons, not energy. At least some portion of the evidence that the United States (and our allies) used to reach these conclusions has been turned over to the IAEA and is part of the reason that the agency's reports on Iran have been ever more willing to assert that Iran is either not fully disclosing or simply lying about its weaponization program. It is why the IAEA keeps demanding that Iran prove that it does not have a weapons program and admit to what it had been doing in the past. No one outside the U.S. government (and the IAEA and other foreign governments) has seen that evidence, so we have no way of judging its credibility. And it is important to remember that when Colin Powell reviewed the intelligence on Iraq's WMD arsenal in 2003, just before his famous session at the UN, he found that the intelligence was a lot less compelling than the analysts and intelligence community leadership had been claiming it was.
⁵¹
Consequently, we should not take the intelligence community's word for it—and as someone who, like Secretary Powell, was assured by the intelligence community that Saddam had reconstituted his WMD but had not tried as hard as Powell to verify their judgments, I am wary of doing so again. Nevertheless, it is an important data point that there does seem to be much agreement on this matter even after the traumatic Iraq experience.
⁵²