By Jon Fox
Global Security Newswire
WASHINGTON — A pair of top nonproliferation analysts expressed hope today that the new National Intelligence Estimate on Iranian nuclear efforts would open a door to greater diplomatic engagement between Iran and the United States (see GSN, Dec. 3). The Bush administration has long alleged that Iran is operating a nuclear weapons program and has refused any direct discussions with the Iranian government on the matter. With the news yesterday that U.S. intelligence analysts concluded with “high confidence” that Iran suspended nuclear weapons research in 2003 and those efforts remained suspended as of mid-2007, the United States has arrived at a position held in many European capitals and at the International Atomic Energy Agency. “What you have yesterday is the United States recalibrating itself,” said David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security. “Perhaps it needed a two-by-four in terms of information to change its mind but it came to a point that many had come to much earlier.” Albright, speaking at an Arms Control Association forum, said he hoped the new estimate removes the specter of military action against Iran. “The military option appears increasingly unnecessary and counterproductive,” he said. Albright called for a similar recalibration in the level of U.S. diplomatic engagement with Iran. In discussing Iran, U.S. officials have said repeatedly that all options are open to consideration, including the use of force. Nonproliferation expert Joseph Cirincione, speaking at the forum, called the new intelligence estimate a “nail in the coffin of the Bush doctrine.” The idea that force and the threat of regime change can be used to address proliferation concerns “has proved to be a complete disaster,” said Cirincione, nuclear policy director at the Center for American Progress. The new estimate, he said, “is a clear sign of the struggle within the Bush administration, within the executive branch, over proliferation policy, over strategic direction for the United States.” In the short term, Cirincione suggested the new assessment from the 16 intelligence agencies could undermine U.S. efforts to exert pressure on Tehran but that over time the estimate could reap benefits. “I wouldn’t see this as frozen in time,” he said. The report could open the door for more pragmatic elements within the administration to push for a greater level of diplomatic contact with Iran. Engagement, Cirincione argued, was used to great effect with Libya and seems to have aided progress in the nuclear standoff with North Korea. Talks could start at levels below Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, he said, perhaps through the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations or Nicholas Burns, the State Department’s point man on Iran, he said. Both Albright and Cirincione warned that this new assessment does not mean Iran is not a concern. “I start from the premise that we do not know for certain what Iran’s intentions are. Is it still interested in acquiring nuclear weapons or are they willing to end or defer the program for a different strategic relationship with the West?” Cirincione said. “Our policy has to test the latter while minimizing the chances of the former.” He called for efforts to contain the Iranian enrichment program and to verify the extent of the nation’s nuclear activities. Efforts to pressure Iran on the nuclear issue “remain valid and urgent,” Albright said. “There is an urgency to this problem, the NIE is not saying everything is OK.” “Iran continues to make progress on developing a nuclear weapons capability that would produce weapons grade uranium relatively quickly following a decision to do so,” he cautioned.
The U.S. intelligence community’s conclusion that Iran stopped developing nuclear weapons in 2003 could undermine efforts to impose U.N. Security Council sanctions on Iran over its uranium enrichment program, European officials told the New York Times yesterday (see GSN, Dec. 3). European governments plan to formally review the U.S. report on Iran’s nuclear capabilities and ambitions, the officials said, but they expressed puzzlement over the timing of the report’s release two days the six world powers agreed to move forward on a third set of sanctions against Iran. “Officially, we will study the document carefully. Unofficially, our efforts to build up momentum for another resolution are gone,” said a European official close to diplomatic efforts. A second European official said the report’s conclusions were “unfathomable.” Russian U.N. envoy Vitaly Churkin welcomed the report while declining to guess how it could affect the international push for new sanctions. “We have always been saying there is no proof they are pursuing nuclear weapons,” Churkin said. A high-level official in the International Atomic Energy Agency used the report to credit IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei for weathering accusations that he was not sufficiently pressuring Iran to disclose details on its current nuclear work. “Despite repeated smear campaigns, the IAEA has stood its ground and concluded time and again that since 2002 there was no evidence of an undeclared nuclear weapons program in Iran,” the official said. “It also validates the assessment of the director general that what the IAEA inspectors have seen in Iran represented no imminent danger.” Gregory Schulte, the U.S. representative to the U.N. nuclear watchdog, told ElBaradei by telephone that the U.S. report’s conclusions are “close to what you’ve been saying,” the IAEA official said (Elaine Sciolino, New York Times I, Dec. 4). The U.S. report backs up IAEA conclusions that no concrete evidence exists to support an Iranian nuclear weapons program or secret Iranian nuclear facilities, ElBaradei said in a statement. He cautioned, though, that “Iran still needs to clarify some important aspects of its past and present nuclear activities.” ElBaradei expressed confidence that the new report could help resolve the Iranian nuclear standoff and called for immediate confidence-building talks between interested parties on the future of Iran’s nuclear program. The talks are “also needed to bring about a comprehensive and durable solution that would normalize the relationship between Iran and the international community,” the statement said (International Atomic Energy Agency release, Dec. 4). U.S. intelligence officials said that media photographs of Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility helped form the basis for the U.S. conclusion that the site still faces major technical obstacles hampering its uranium enrichment capability, USA Today reported. The report used new findings to determine that Iran stopped its nuclear weapons development program less than a year before a 2005 U.S. intelligence report indicated it continued to host a nuclear weapons program, according to four intelligence officers. This week’s estimate concluded with “high confidence” that secret Iranian nuclear weapons development efforts stopped in the fall of 2003. “Increasing international scrutiny” and continued attention to Iran’s civilian nuclear activities pressured Tehran to shutter the project, the sources said. The intelligence sources said that U.S. agencies continued to vet the information supporting the report’s conclusions until several weeks ago. In compiling the report, the agencies considered “lessons learned” from a 2002 intelligence estimate that overemphasized indications that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, the officials said. “We had to show our homework” by supporting conclusions to win their approval from intelligence agency leaders, said one of the officials (Richard Willing, USA Today, Dec. 4). Bush administration officials said the new intelligence estimate emerged from a series of discoveries that began with Iranian illustrations acquired in 2004 and ended with intercepted telephone conversations between officers in the Iranian military, the Washington Post reported. A source close to the findings said that a high-level Iranian military commander specifically said in one call that the country’s nuclear program had been shut down for a number of years. The instance was one of more than 1,000 sources referenced in the report’s 150-page classified version, another official said. U.S. officials close the report’s preparation said White House policy-makers expressed skepticism regarding the telephone intercepts adding that several top Bush advisers suggested the information drawn from the wiretaps was part of a sophisticated Iranian disinformation effort. The estimate’s release was delayed significantly as groups of intelligence analysts attempted to puncture its evidence in “Red Team” exercises and other reviews to determine if Iranian trickery was involved. Iran continues to enrich uranium under a civilian energy program analysts have determined not to be linked to military efforts, the report said. “The key judgments show that the intelligence community has learned its lessons from the Iraq debacle,” said Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman John Rockefeller (D-W.Va), in reference to Democratic claims that the Bush administration manipulated prewar intelligence on Iraq to support its case for war. “[The intelligence community] has issued judgments that break sharply with its own previous assessments, and they reflect a real difference from the views espoused by top administration officials,” Rockefeller said. The report asserted that the Iranian military was “working under government direction to develop nuclear weapons” until fall 2003, when ruling Iranian clerics pushed to halt the country’s large and expensive clandestine military nuclear program in the face of international threats of censure and economic isolation. The estimate warns that Iran has preserved its nuclear options by developing a civilian nuclear power capacity within international law that it could direct toward nuclear weapons development if it chooses to in the future (Linzer/Warrick, Washington Post, Dec. 4). The report has eliminated military action against Iran’s nuclear program as a viable option for the near future, said one U.S. lawmaker. The intelligence report removes “the urgency that we have to attack Iran, or knock out facilities,” said Senator Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.). “I don’t think you can overstate this.” Hagel said he hoped Bush administration officials would grow more flexible in their diplomatic dealings with Iran in the last year of the president’s term as it had with North Korea over its own nuclear weapons program. Hagel said Iran’s halt of nuclear weapons development indicated the country is more open to reason than Bush suggested when he said Tehran threatened to put the Middle East “under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust.” “If we’re wise here, if we’re careful, I think we have some opportunities,” he said (Steven Lee Myers, New York Times II, Dec. 4). Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki today praised the U.S. intelligence estimate’s potential to “correct” allegations that Iran was actively pursuing nuclear weapons, the Associated Press reported. “It's natural that we welcome … countries that correct their views realistically which in the past had questions and ambiguities about (Iran's nuclear activities),” Mottaki said (Ali Akbar Dareini, Associated Press/Google News, Dec. 4). Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert urged continued cooperation between the United States and Israel to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon, the BBC reported today. Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said the U.S. report’s findings were “made in an environment of high uncertainty” and suggested that Iran has resumed its nuclear weapons development after pausing it for a short time (BBC, Dec. 4).
Al-Qaeda affiliates could hijack Pakistan’s nuclear weapons if the country fails to root out its Taliban insurgency, former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto warned today (see GSN, Dec. 3). Bhutto drew attention to Pakistan’s Swat valley, a former tourist haven 90 miles north of Islamabad now beleaguered by fighting between the Pakistani army and Islamic militants, the Australian reported. “Whatever is happening in Swat and the tribal area today, that can come to Islamabad tomorrow,” Bhutto said. She warned that a security failure affecting Pakistan’s nuclear weapons stockpile could provoke other countries to intervene. The international community “will not look on as spectators if Kahuta falls into [insurgents’] hands,” she said, referring to the site of the flagship Pakistani nuclear facility founded by former top nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan. Pakistan’s Foreign Office yesterday said the nation’s nuclear weapons are “as safe as those of any other nuclear weapons state” (Bruce Loudon, Australian, Dec. 4).
The United States has agreed to provide Latvia with equipment and training in an effort to prevent nuclear material from being smuggled through the Baltic nation, the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration announced yesterday (see GSN, May 26, 2005). Under the agreement, the U.S. nuclear agency through its Second Line of Defense program plans to install radiation detection and communications equipment at Latvian airports, seaports and border crossings and to provide training for personnel staffing the sites. Working with Latvian State Border Guard Service, U.S. experts have begun surveying areas where the nuclear sensors could be deployed. “The United States and Latvia will work closely to keep dangerous nuclear and radiological material out of the hands of terrorists and criminals,” said NNSA Deputy Administrator William Tobey in a press release (U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration release, Dec. 3).
Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill yesterday became the top U.S. official to view North Korea’s sole operating nuclear reactor, the Associated Press reported (see GSN, Dec. 3). Hill, the lead U.S. representative to the six-party talks on North Korea’s nuclear program, observed continuing efforts to disable the reactor and two other facilities at the Yongbyon complex, according to a spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Seoul. He did not provide further information. Hill today met with North Korean Foreign Minister Pak Ui Chun, according to the official Korean Central News Agency. Pyongyang pledged in October to issue a full declaration of its nuclear program and to disable the three facilities by the end of 2007. Removal of roughly 8,000 spent fuel rods from the reactor is now expected to stretch disablement activities into 2008, South Korean negotiator Chun Young-woo said last week. Six-party talks nations hope this work would be followed by a full stop to North Korea’s nuclear activities, for which the regime would receive energy aid and diplomatic and security benefits (Jae-Soon Chang, Associated Press I/Washington Post, Dec. 4). Washington is working on its commitments under the denuclearization plan to established normal diplomatic ties with North Korea and remove the Stalinist state from U.S. terrorism and sanctions lists, Hill said yesterday. “We have some obligations in Washington. We have been working very hard to complete those obligations,” he said. “I think it would begin a process of bringing (North Korea) into the international community, begin the process of completing normalization of U.S. ties,” Hill added. “But this can only be done in the context of complete denuclearization” (Associated Press II/International Herald Tribune, Dec. 2). Meanwhile, a South Korean official today reaffirmed reports that the next round of full six-nation negotiations would not begin Thursday as previously anticipated, Reuters reported. There is not sufficient time to prepare the three-day session, said Foreign Ministry spokesman Cho Hee-yong (Reuters/Washington Post, Dec. 4).
India plans to lease a Russian nuclear-missile submarine within two years to begin training naval personnel for a future generation of domestically designed vessels, Indian naval chief Adm. Sureesh Mehta said yesterday (see GSN, June 7, 2004). “In our credible minimum deterrent plans, placing of nuclear weapons undersea is the third triad,” he said. “I am hopeful that in the times to come, more attention would be paid to it.” India would first lease an Akula-class submarine from Moscow, the Xinhua News Agency reported. “We want the Russian nuclear submarine to enable our boys to train on how to operate nuclear reactors and platforms and other systems,” Mehta said. The nation is also pursuing an indigenous nuclear-powered submarine, called the Advanced Technology Vessel (see GSN, Oct. 16). “The scientists have confirmed that they would have the project ready for trials by 2009,” Mehta said (Xinhua News Agency, Dec. 3).
Canadian political opposition leaders have criticized the government’s decision to join a U.S.-led nuclear power promotion program, the Canadian Press reported Friday (see GSN, Nov. 30). The Global Nuclear Energy Partnership foresees expanding the use of nuclear power and calls for recycling nuclear fuel, a step often questioned by nuclear nonproliferation proponents. “It is great news for Canada to be part of this partnership,” Natural Resources Minister Gary Lunn told the House of Commons on Friday. Political opponents, however, expressed concern that they were left out of the decision process. Lawmakers and citizens had no opportunity to debate joining the partnership, critics said. “Why have the Canadians been kept completely in the dark?” said New Democratic Party leader Jack Layton. One energy expert speculated that Canada announced its participation to improve its chances of selling reactors to the United States. The Canadian CANDU reactor could be fueled by spent fuel byproducts created in light-water reactors, said Ottawa energy policy consultant Steve Aplin. Canada has “a better bargaining position inside the GNEP than outside of it,” he said (Bruce Cheadle, Canadian Press/680 News Radio (Toronto), Nov. 30).
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