By Greg Webb
Global Security Newswire
VIENNA — The U.N. Security Council in New York will be the next stop for the Iranian nuclear crisis, a step the United States has sought almost from the moment Iran conceded three years ago that it had concealed a large nuclear research program for nearly two decades (see GSN, March 7).
The International Atomic Energy Agency’s Board of Governors officially received a report today from agency head Mohamed ElBaradei, who had circulated the document informally last week. After this week’s board meeting ended this afternoon, ElBaradei told reporters he would send his most recent assessment of Iran’s nuclear program to the Security Council either today or tomorrow.
That transmission will trigger the Security Council’s new role, which comes on a path carefully orchestrated by the United States and the three major European Union powers, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. Involving the Security Council is “the right thing to do right now,” Joseph Cirincione, nonproliferation director at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told Global Security Newswire today. “The U.S. and its allies have been planning to slowly escalate pressure to the Security Council in order to keep as many nations as united as possible.” In September, the agency board found Iran to be in noncompliance with its nuclear safeguards agreement, a determination that required the board at an unspecified time to report the matter to the council (see GSN, Sept. 26, 2005). After Iran protested the board actions by reducing the access it allowed international nuclear inspectors, the board pushed ahead and reported Iran to the council in early February with an understanding that diplomats in New York would take no action until receiving ElBaradei’s report this month (see GSN, Feb. 6). U.S. officials have said they agreed to the delays since September to enable Russia and China to try their hands at working with Iran to clear up international suspicions that Tehran is seeking to acquire nuclear weapons. Bilateral Chinese-Iranian talks made little progress earlier this year, and Moscow’s effort to craft a compromise appeared to reach a dead end yesterday when Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov practically denied that Russia had even tried to find a solution. There was “no compromise [or a] new Russian proposal,” he told reporters yesterday after meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in Washington, the Washington Post reported. Diplomats here in Vienna, however, have confirmed that Russia did indeed seek to find middle ground between the United States and Iran with an offer to provide Iran with nuclear fuel for its budding nuclear power program. In exchange, Russia asked Iran to suspend all uranium enrichment activity for seven to nine years before restarting low-level research and development activity, according to news reports. Both sides shot down that plan this week, as Iranian officials refused to curtail research for that period of time and U.S. officials rejected any level of Iranian uranium enrichment work, at least for many years. Lavrov’s retreat yesterday was either the end of a trial balloon launched by senior Russian officials or the quashing of an unauthorized compromise bid made by lower-ranking officials, Western diplomats told the New York Times. Today’s IAEA board meeting clears the way for the council to take up the matter, and U.S. officials appear anxious to act quickly. “Of course this matter may soon go before the U.N. Security Council,” said Vice President Dick Cheney in a speech yesterday to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in Washington. He added stern words of warning. “The Iranian regime needs to know that if it stays on its present course the international community is prepared to impose meaningful consequences. For our part, the United States is keeping all options on the table in addressing the irresponsible conduct of the regime. And we join other nations in sending that regime a clear message,” he said. “We will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon.” The move to the Security Council could have been avoided, but Iran misread the resolve of the international community, said the top U.S. official in Vienna. “The leadership in Tehran has thus far chosen a course of flagrant threats and phony negotiation,” Gregory Schulte, U.S. ambassador to the U.N. nuclear watchdog, told reporters today. “They hope that this course would keep the international community divided and [Iran’s] nuclear ambitions unchecked. Instead the course they have chosen has left them increasingly isolated and increasingly at risk of meaningful consequences.” Using ambiguously aggressive language, Iran today warned of the consequences of moving the issue to the Security Council. “The United States may have the power to cause harm and pain,” Iranian delegation leader Javad Vaidi said at a press briefing this afternoon, “but the United States is also susceptible to harm and pain. So if the United States wishes to choose that path, let the ball roll.” The threat could be allusion to Iran’s ability to withhold its oil from the world supply, thus driving up prices and creating market instability. However, such a move would force Iran to incur considerable cost, a Western diplomat said yesterday, not just because of lost revenue from crude oil sales but also from the increased prices Iran would have to pay for the refined petroleum products it imports. Another senior Iranian diplomat declined to elaborate on Vaidi’s threat, saying that Iran would respond to U.S. policies. “We are not going to act in the first place, therefore it depends on any action from the United States. We will decide and we carefully adopt a policy and we will decide thereafter,” said Ali Asghar Soltanieh, Iranian ambassador to the agency. At the heart of the nuclear crisis is Iran’s desire to research and develop uranium enrichment technology, a process that can produce both fuel for nuclear power reactors or the essential material for nuclear weapons. “This research is the inalienable right of any civilized country,” Soltanieh said today. “For scientists, we cannot deprive them from research. Therefore the decision of continuation of R&D is irreversible.” Russia’s failed compromise proposal tried to allow Iran to save face through continued nuclear research and development at very low levels. The United States rejected even those levels. “This is not ‘face-saving’ research and development,” Schulte said in his statement to the board today. “This is not meaningful restraint on uranium enrichment development. Instead, under the guise of negotiations, Iran seeks to forge ahead with test centrifuge cascades that will allow Iran to perfect the technology, materials and expertise necessary to produce highly enriched uranium for nuclear weapons.” What’s NextSeveral officials here agreed that the Security Council was unlikely to take any dramatic steps soon, but rather could begin a process as early as next week that could escalate further if Iran fails to quell international worries. “The United States believes that the Security Council’s involvement should reinforce the [International Atomic Energy Agency’s] role and investigations. As a first step, we envision a call for Iran to cooperate with the agency and to take steps identified by the board to restore confidence,” Schulte said in his board statement. “The council will also be able to provide the wider authority the agency needs to investigate Iran’s deeply troubling nuclear activities. We believe the Security Council’s approach should be considered and incremental,” he added. That strategy might also reflect the reluctance of other permanent Security Council members to use more firm measures, such as economic sanctions or military action. “I don't think sanctions as a means to solve a crisis have ever achieved a goal in the recent history,” Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov told reporters today, according to a BBC report.
By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire
WASHINGTON — Until last year, critics within the Bush administration of opening nuclear energy trade with India successfully used nonproliferation, legal and policy arguments to forestall negotiation of such a deal, according to current and former U.S. officials and independent analysts (see GSN, March 2). Following President George W. Bush’s second inauguration, however, that opposition was weakened or bypassed just as the administration quietly and quickly began negotiating the deal. Officials who opposed the deal — including then-Undersecretary of State John Bolton, a reputedly skilled bureaucratic infighter — were moved to other positions as the administration transitioned to its second term. The State Department’s nonproliferation bureau was being dismantled and two of its top officials dismissed. Much of the administration and Congress remained unaware of the deal. Meanwhile, senior officials who favored the agreement were moved into key spots and began negotiations leading to a signing by Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh last week, observers said. Critics regard Bolton as an ideological opponent of arms control treaties. He negotiated the U.S. withdrawal from the Antiballistic Missile Treaty in 2002, led the U.S. abandonment of negotiations of a Biological Weapons Convention inspections protocol in 2001, and last year opposed negotiations of a verification mechanism for a fissile material cutoff treaty. However, Bolton was among the senior officials arguing against such a deal with India — a nuclear weapons state that has not joined the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty — in a debate that provoked divisions within the State and Defense departments and the National Security Council, observers said. Bolton in 2004 had successfully pressed to sanction Indian entities for allegedly aiding Iran’s nuclear program, said Henry Sokolski, a conservative nonproliferation expert who heads the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center. He also pushed the administration to oppose Israel’s transfer of a missile defense system with U.S. components to India, as the system’s missile was deemed larger than allowed by the multilateral Missile Technology Control Regime, he said. “Bolton was saying, ‘You’ve got to be kidding,’” Sokolski said. “He shared in the belief that an agreement with India needed to take account of the administration’s nonproliferation objectives.” It was “one of the rare times that he got sideways with his masters, as I recall, but that got squared away fairly swiftly,” according to Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell. A Shift in PowerThe deal signed last week, if approved by Congress and permitted by a multinational Nuclear Suppliers Group change of rules, would enable India to potentially spend billions of dollars on nuclear fuel and technology from the United States, and potentially lead to similar agreements with other nations. In exchange, India would have to place civilian nuclear facilities and programs under international safeguards by 2014, cooperate with the United States on negotiating a multilateral fissile material cutoff treaty, and take steps toward adherence to Missile Technology Control Regime and Nuclear Suppliers Group guidelines. Critics have said the deal would free up Indian fissile material production, enabling a massive expansion of its nuclear weapons production capability contrary to the intent of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which forbids the declared Nuclear Weapons States from assisting “in any way” the nuclear weapons programs of other states, and more generally requires nuclear nonproliferation compliance in exchange for trade. Opponents also say the deal could undermine international support for U.S. nuclear nonproliferation efforts with other countries on accusations of hypocrisy and provoke an expansion of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program. The State Department’s South and Central Asian Affairs Bureau was said during Bush’s first term to have supported such a deal as key to encouraging closer U.S.-Indian relations on multiple fronts, while then-Undersecretary for Arms Control and International Security Bolton and the nonproliferation bureau below him argued against it. Officials within the Pentagon were engaged in a comparable debate, as were those within the White House, the officials and former officials said. From the National Security Council, former U.S. Ambassador to India Robert Blackwill was said to have led the push for the deal, while Bolton ally Robert Joseph, then the top White House nonproliferation official, and his successor, John Rood, were said to have opposed it. Following Bush’s 2004 re-election, fresh supporters of the deal moved into key positions at State: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, her chosen department counselor Philip Zelikow, and Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns, chief negotiator for the agreement. With that, “things moved very quickly. The new leadership at State was committed to this approach,” said a U.S. official who asked to not be identified. “[Defense Secretary] Donald Rumsfeld sided with those who wanted to enhance the strategic relationship with India and eventually that is where the State Department also came out when Zelikow was given charge of this issue. … He gave more weight to the arguments of those who were in charge of U.S.-India relations,” according to a former official who also asked not to be identified. Blackwill’s move from ambassador to India back to the White House in August 2003 may also have been key in the move toward a deal, as it put him “in a more influential place from which to push the policy,” the former official said Blackwill left the National Security Council in November 2004, to become president of Barbour Griffith & Rogers, International, a lobbying firm that represents the Indian government. “Ambassador Blackwill had the president’s ear on this issue for some time, probably still does,” said CNN national security correspondent David Ensor, while introducing Blackwill at a Council on Foreign Relations event last month. Blackwill and other officials have said India made full nuclear cooperation a key requirement for significantly expanding U.S.-Indian relations on multiple fronts, including counterterrorism, arms sales, trade, agriculture and science, which Bush and Singh also agreed to do last week. He also suggested the deal was aided by greatly improving India-Pakistan relations since their near-war in 2002, helped the administration to “dehyphenate” U.S. policies regarding the two nuclear powers. While officials who backed the deal were moving in, Bolton was moving out. He was tapped to be the next U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in March 2005, and was replaced at State by Joseph on April 1. Joseph and Rood “were speed bumps in this dispute and got rolled,” Sokolski said. The administration at that time also began dismantling the State Department nonproliferation bureau. Rice in February 2005 announced plans to eliminate the bureau, reduce personnel, and eventually merge much of its staff into a new International Security and Nonproliferation Bureau that would be structured to address reprioritized threats (see GSN, March 7, 2005). In March 2005, the nonproliferation bureau’s acting assistant secretary, Susan Burk, was given a new position and its deputy assistant secretary for nonproliferation, Mark Fitzpatrick, was dismissed. Assistant Secretary of State Stephen Rademaker took charge of both arms control and nonproliferation personnel. “There used to be a very strong nonproliferation bureau, but the bureau had been abolished. … The top two ranks of the people who knew the most about this [nuclear deal] were gone in the nonproliferation bureau,” the former official said. The nonproliferation bureau’s deputy for nuclear nonproliferation, Andrew Semmel, remained and was moved into the new bureau when the merge became official in the fall. Also that March, two months after her confirmation, Rice on a visit to India announced the administration would work to accelerate ongoing negotiations toward closer U.S.-India relations, including by initiating a high-level “strategic dialogue” and organizing other working groups. Bush and Singh announced a preliminary deal four months later, on July 18, at the White House, to the surprise of Congress and much of the administration. “The policy in the end was made by a very small group and there wasn’t a lot of space for others to weigh in. Many were kept out of the loop,” the former official said. Slower Process AbandonedFollowing an Indian nuclear test in 1974, the U.S. Congress passed laws restricting nuclear trade with countries that conducted nuclear tests and did not have full-scope nuclear safeguards. India and Pakistan tested nuclear weapons in 1998, prompting U.S. trade sanctions that were removed in parts by the Clinton and Bush administrations. Neither country appears willing to give up their weapons. Blackwill was said to have advocated open nuclear trade with India from New Dehli as U.S. ambassador from 2001 to 2003. However, he and other proponents “who were advocating the change in policy had not yet mustered sufficient forces to get the change through,” said the former official quoted above. Instead the administration in January 2004 began the “Next Steps in Strategic Partnership” — a gradual, multiphase process of reciprocal steps by both countries toward closer cooperation on nuclear, space, and other trade. “There were a number of people within the administration who believed that it was possible to expand relationships with India … and indeed we did a number of things,” former Assistant Secretary of State for Nonproliferation John Wolf said in a recent interview. However, “one needed to take account of … the Atomic Energy Act among other things, as well as our obligations under the Nonproliferation Treaty.” The Next Steps in Strategic Partnership “was a compromise between regional imperatives … and global nonproliferation policy,” Wolf said. Blackwill, however, suggested last month that opposition to opening full civil nuclear trade was based on an inappropriately negative view of India. The federal bureaucracy “came to the view India was a nuclear renegade, that it had to be punished, that there had to be sanctions against it and so forth.” According to Wilkerson, Powell had not signed off out of concern for its chances with Congress. “Secretary Powell, so far as I can remember over 16 years — has been positive toward U.S.-India relations. In this instance, he wanted to make certain, however, that we had dotted all the i’s and crossed all the t’s so we had as good a chance on the Hill as possible, as well as a reasonable chance in New Delhi,” he wrote. The first of supposedly four Next Steps concluded in September 2004, with an announcement stating India had taken measures to address some U.S. proliferation concerns and that the United States would relax export controls on some nuclear and missile technology not restricted by U.S. law. When Bush and Singh announced the proposed deal in July 2005, they declared the Next Steps process completed. Others have suggested it was abandoned in favor of the nuclear deal. The Next Steps process had required India to adhere to Nuclear Suppliers Group requirements for full-scope safeguards and Missile Technology Control Regime restrictions on ballistic missile technology trade, neither of which had happened, American Enterprise Institute Vice President for Foreign and Defense Policy Studies Danielle Pletka said at an event last July following the Bush-Singh announcement. The signed deal also does not obligate India to cap its own nuclear weapon-grade fissile material production or eliminate its weapons, critics have noted. Indian entities, meanwhile, continue to be accused of proliferation, Sokolski said. He noted the State Department in December sanctioned two Indian companies under the U.S.-Iran Proliferation Act of 2000 for transferring to Iran chemicals that could be used for chemical weapons. The Indian External Affairs Ministry released a statement after the sanctions were announced, saying, “Our preliminary assessment is that the transfer of such chemicals is not in violation of our regulations or our international obligations.” The deal pursued by the administration “runs somewhat contrary to what we had done for 37 years and seven administrations,” Wolf also said in January. “It appears India wanted more and in the end the administration … sort of blew through the stops at the end of the tracks, or didn’t take account of the stops at the end of the tracks,” he said. Defending the deal at a hearing last fall, Joseph said of the administration: “We recognize that India is a special case and see a clear need to come to terms with it. India never became a party to the NPT. In fact, India was very hostile toward the treaty for many years. With its decision to take the steps announced in the joint statement, India will now take on new nonproliferation responsibilities that will strengthen global nonproliferation efforts and serve the fundamental purpose of the NPT.” Bolton last week reportedly said, as India had not signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty it was not in violation of the pact. “I give them (India and Pakistan) credit at least that what they did was consistent with the obligations they undertook,” he said, according to Reuters. “They never pretended that they had given up the pursuit of nuclear weapons. They never tried to tie what they were doing under a cloak of international legitimacy. They did it openly and they did it legitimately,” he said. Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill nevertheless have questioned the wisdom of the deal. “We either have a treaty or we do not. And if we allow India a pass, [we’ll have] a long line of other countries that will expect the same pass,” House International Relations Committee member Ted Poe (R-Texas) said at a hearing in October (see GSN, Oct. 27, 2005). Uncertainty persists about whether Congress will vote to allow the deal to go through as it stands. “It is the responsibility of this committee to thoroughly examine the specific provisions of this agreement and its potential consequences for U.S. interests and those of the international community,” House International Relations Committee Chairman Henry Hyde (R-Ill.) said in a statement last week.
By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Energy Department’s $6.4 billion nuclear weapons maintenance and research programs may be wasteful, a congressional committee chairman said at a hearing yesterday, indicating he might be considering a funding cut (see GSN, March 2). Senate Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee Chairman Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) told National Nuclear Security Administration chief Linton Brooks he has “concerns about the efficiency” of Energy Department activities. “I am unconvinced that we are getting all we can for every dollar,” Sessions said, echoing comments he made last month to Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman that suggested $1 billion in savings could be made. Along similar lines, ranking committee Democrat Bill Nelson (Fla.) questioned whether the agency might at the Defense Department’s request have taken on too many programs, citing early research for the administration’s Reliable Replacement Warhead program. “Perhaps [the Defense Department] is asking too much and money is being spent on projects that we will eventually not need,” he said. Brooks told the committee that the DOE nuclear programs, which also include nuclear nonproliferation and Navy propulsion system work, took “dramatic reductions” in size and spending following the Cold War. He said further that efforts were under way to shrink the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal by nearly half by 2012. Stockpile maintenance absorbs a majority of the program’s budget. The administration has requested $6.4 billion for the stockpile work in fiscal 2007 — the amount it received for this fiscal year — and $9.3 billion for all its nuclear activities. “We are transforming into a more efficient, more secure complex, but more work needs to be done. NNSA’s 2007 budget request will allow us to continue our efforts,” he said. Brooks and other officials have described the Reliable Replacement Warhead program as just such a way of reducing the stockpile, making it more easily maintained, and thereby reducing stockpile maintenance costs. The idea behind the program, Brooks said, is to “design replacement components that are easier to manufacture, safer and more secure, [and] eliminate environmentally dangerous materials, which also saves money.” The Reliable Replacement Warhead program appears intended to design new nuclear weapons and components to replace or swap out components of the U.S. arsenal as it ages. He said the program was undergoing a concept design competition, from which one will be selected in the fall for use by the department. Brooks said the department’s fiscal 2007 request for the nuclear weapons programs is $860 million less than was forecasted two years ago, with “about half of that for deficit reduction, the other half redirected primarily to nonproliferation.” Brooks said a congressional cut to fiscal 2006 funding for a Facilities and Infrastructure Recapitalization Program, intended to address a backlog of weapons complex physical infrastructure maintenance, should delay that program’s scheduled completion in 2011 by two years. ‘Still Isn’t Right’In apparent agreement with Sessions and Nelson, though, Brooks said the nuclear weapons complex “still isn’t right” in its current configuration because it cannot develop and build new nuclear weapons quickly. He said administration plans to develop “a modern responsive infrastructure” were intended to address that and that efforts were under way to determine what the infrastructure should look like. Brooks said there is reason to worry his agency would not be able to afford the Reliable Replacement Warhead program and pay for its other work. “Right now the Reliable Replacement Warhead is a relatively — it’s frightening to use $27 million as a small number — but it is a relatively small fraction of our budget. But if it has the promise it’s going to have, the resources for it will grow,” he said. If the warhead program is fully pursued, however, he said the agency could try to fund it by scaling back on life-extension programs for aging weapons. “The question that we and the Department of Defense are wrestling with is how certain do we have to be that the RRW concept is really going to (a) work and (b) fit in with the country’s priorities before we can start shifting resources away,” he said. “My guess is that in the next year or two you will see us walk away from some of the life extension, but that's assuming decisions that haven’t been made yet,” he said.
The U.S. Defense Department has requested $500 million to convert 24 nuclear-armed Trident missiles into conventional rockets weapons of striking any location in the world within an hour, the Washington Post reported today (see GSN, Jan. 10). Trident missiles armed with conventional warheads would offer a non-nuclear alternative in a crisis where time is of the essence, U.S. defense officials said. The Pentagon would begin deploying the missiles in 2008. The “prompt global strike” capability is needed to address terrorism, underground military facilities and other burgeoning threats for which nuclear weapons are “not appropriate,” a senior defense official said. He added that the weapon would be capable of penetrating the ground more deeply than other conventional weapons, making it a possible alternative to the controversial proposed Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator. However, other nations could misconstrue such a long-range conventional missile attack as a nuclear strike, the official acknowledged. “Will it be interpreted as having a nuclear warhead and elicit … a nuclear response?” said the official. A troubling scenario “is that they do see it, then they misinterpret it,” he said. Nuclear experts said such a scenario was likely as U.S. submarines could be armed with both conventional and nuclear Tridents. “If we did end up in a crisis where things were really tense, this decision about what is coming at you could be essential,” said Hans Kristensen, director of the nuclear information project at the Federation of American Scientists. The official said the Pentagon seeks debate on the issue, the Post reported. “We’ve done the testing” and developed one of two planned warheads, he said (Ann Scott Tyson, Washington Post, March 8).
North Korea yesterday renewed its pledge to boycott nuclear disarmament negotiations after a meeting with U.S. officials on Pyongyang’s alleged financial crimes, the Associated Press reported (see GSN, March 7). U.S. Treasury Department officials told a visiting North Korean delegation that actions against a Macau-based bank were regulatory moves “to protect the U.S. financial system from abuse, and not a sanction on North Korea,” an agency statement says. Following the briefing in New York, Ri Gun, director general of the North Korean Foreign Ministry’s American affairs bureau, said North Korea would not resume nuclear negotiations. “Our position is consistent that (North Korea) cannot return to the talks in the midst of the continued pressure (from the United States),” said Ri, who led the North Korean delegation at the meeting (Associated Press/USA Today, March 8).
The president of Venezuela denied yesterday that his country had shipped uranium to the Middle East to be used in a bomb, the Associated Press reported (see GSN, Dec. 20, 2005). “Now they are saying that I'm sending uranium to make atomic bombs from here, from Venezuela's Amazonas, to send it directly to the Persian Gulf,” President Hugo Chavez said. The president accused U.S. newspapers of taking part in a Washington-directed campaign to make him out to be a dictator and Venezuela a rogue nation. “They have no limits in their capacity to make up lies, to attack our country, of course, it's part of an imperialist plan,” he said. Chavez, in 1999 since 1999, has developed relationships with several Middle Eastern countries, including Iran. Cooperation agreements between the two have drawn concern from Washington, according to AP (Associated Press, March 8).
| 
Back to top
