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Iraq: WMD Capabilities Remain Strong, Analysts Say By Greg Seigle While cautioning that it is difficult to gauge the full extent of Iraqi programs for weapons of mass destruction, a former U.N. Special Commission inspector and a former Senate aide testified that Iraq’s biological weapons programs constitute a serious threat, and its nuclear programs are well developed, lacking only materials that could be delivered by agents well-honed in smuggling. “Iraq has significant WMD capabilities in all areas except nuclear,” said Charles Duelfer, a resident visiting scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies who spent much of the 1990s scouring Iraq for WMD evidence as an UNSCOM inspector. “However, the intellectual capital remains, as does the will of the leadership, to achieve a nuclear capability.” “The issue is not whether Iraq has yet achieved nuclear weapons or extremely lethal biological weapons,” said Anthony Cordesman, a former aide to Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) now a Center for Strategic and International Studies analyst. “It is that this regime will eventually acquire nuclear weapons and biological weapons with equal or greater lethality if it is given the time and opportunity to do so,” said Cordesman, who has written extensively about WMD programs in Iraq, Iran, North Korea and other countries. “It will not change character or somehow enter the mythical ‘family of nations.’” Breaking down Iraq’s missile and chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) weapons programs, the pair said details are scarce about what advancements President Saddam Hussein’s regime has made since it expelled UNSCOM inspectors in 1998. However, based on limited information obtained by UNSCOM and Iraqi defectors since, it is clear the country maintains large chemical stockpiles and is aggressively developing a far-flung biological arsenal overseen by its Special Security Organization, or Amn al-Khass, the Iraqi intelligence agency. Missile Programs Remain Active The 1991 Persian Gulf War and subsequent UNSCOM inspections seriously degraded Iraq’s missile and chemical weapon programs. Work on both programs is believed to continue at a brisk pace, but at a diminished state from Iraq’s wide-scale production of missiles and chemicals during the 1980s. While Iraq may only have “a relatively small number” of Scud missiles left from Soviet purchases made before the Gulf War, it maintains the capability to build them indigenously, Duelfer testified. “In my view it is likely Iraq retains a small long-range missile force, perhaps 12 to 14 missiles, that would serve the purpose of a strategic reserve,” Duelfer said. Because U.N. resolutions allow Iraq to continue building missiles effective up to a 150-kilometer range, the country maintains a missile development and production infrastructure, Duelfer said. The country has at least 1,400 al-Samoud short-range missiles, many of which can be armed with chemical or biological weapons, he said. Even when UNSCOM inspectors were in the country the Iraqis continued work on improving warhead fusing and staging to increase effectiveness and range, he added. “Iraq will continue to try to develop long-range missiles but has long had other delivery options and will almost certainly try to improve them,” Cordesman said. Chemical Stockpiles Militarized Iraq built up massive chemical weapons stockpiles prior to the Gulf War, and although sizeable amounts were found and destroyed by UNSCOM until 1998, it is believed there are large caches left, the experts testified. Iraq claims most of its chemical weapons, mostly nerve gases and blistering agents, were spent during the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-88, a contention most Western analysts doubt. In 1998 UNSCOM discovered an Iraqi Air Force document that contradicted prior Iraqi claims that its chemical arsenal had been depleted, a document that was promptly seized back by Iraqi officials, Duelfer said. “The one document that UNSCOM did receive,” Duelfer said, provided guidance on how to manufacture the most dangerous types of chemical weapons in large quantities. “There remains considerable uncertainty about the extent of this program and its disposition. There was a pattern to Iraqi revelations that they gave up the oldest and least advanced projects and materials most readily. “UNSCOM accounted for and destroyed huge amounts of chemical agents, munitions, production equipment and precursors,” he continued. “Yet there certainly remained unaccounted materials for the production of both precursors and final agent. Iraq can make munitions indigenously and can probably make chemical production equipment indigenously. The expertise for such work remains.” Iraq seems particularly interested in VX nerve gas, a highly lethal agent, Duelfer said. Iraqi scientists are likely pursuing the ability to make cluster munitions, which would make it easier to spread a chemical agent, and aerial spray devices, including unmanned airplanes a remote pilot could use to spray chemical or even biological weapons, he added. Biological Weapons of Great Concern Iraqi scientists under Special Security Organization control are undoubtedly pursuing the development of biological weapons, including genetically modified agents that could resist vaccines or antidotes and other pathogens that would be hard to trace back to Baghdad, the experts testified (see GSN, Nov. 30, 2001). In addition to focusing on anthrax, botulinum toxin and aflatoxin, the scientists are also known to have conducted work on wheat smut, which could used to kill crops or create a epidemic similar the foot and mouth disease that plagued Britain in recent years, they said. Perhaps most disturbing, Iraqi officials seem keenly aware that biological weapons could enable them to strike without leaving a clear indicator that the attacks came from Iraq, they added. “It was clear that Iraq understood that depending on the method of dispersal, the origin of the agent could be concealed,” Duelfer said. “In other words, they understood the potential for conducting an attack that would be near impossible to connect to Baghdad as the responsible actor.” Iraq is not known to have a history of contracting other countries’ terrorist groups but is believed to harbor, supply and even train members of a couple of terrorist groups (See GSN, Nov. 26, 2001). “A covert and/or unattributable attack is possible, particularly under false-flag conditions or ones where Iraq might be able to piggyback on an attack by a known terrorist group,” Cordesman said. “Other nations, such as Iran, might in turn conduct false flag attacks designed to implicate Iraq.” Nuclear Weapons Need Fissile Materials The Iraqi nuclear programs that started in the 1970s remain well developed, and lack only key ingredients to actually make a nuclear or radiological bomb, the analysts told the Senate committee. “The key hurdle for Iraq to surmount to obtain a nuclear weapon is the acquisition of fissile material,” Duelfer testified. “Iraq had a viable weapon design and the capacity to produce all the elements of a weapon. Predictions on when Iraq will achieve a weapon depend on whether Iraq can obtain fissile material by smuggling or they have to produce it themselves which will take much longer.” The nuclear program was active even when UNSCOM inspectors were scouring the country and conducting surprise inspections, Duelfer said. Nuclear experts were secretly concentrated at various locations, including the Ibn Sina, al-Raya, al-Tahaddi and the Sa’ad Center, which is across the street from the Rasheed Hotel in Baghdad often used by foreign visitors, Duelfer said. Even if a new, more aggressive U.N. inspection regime is eventually allowed back inside Iraq, inspectors “cannot hope to detect a covert biological program with nuclear lethalities, and they cannot hope to prevent Iraq from assembling a nuclear device if it can obtain fissile or ‘dirty’ fissile material from outside Iraq,” Cordesman said. “In fact, efforts directed at large, observable Iraqi CBRN and missile activities may simply push Iraq into concentrating on biological weapons and asymmetrical means of delivery.” Hussein’s regime appears determined to build up its WMD arsenal at almost any cost, even the suffering of Iraq’s population under the U.N. economic sanctions, the experts said. “Ever since the end of the Gulf War, Iraq has made its missile and CBRN programs its single highest national priority,” said Cordesman. “In fact, there are strong indications Iraq not only did everything possible to retain its pre-Gulf War capabilities in spite of UNSCOM inspections, but created new, highly compartmented black programs in case UNSCOM could succeed in tracking down all the programs it had in place in 1991.”
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