The International Atomic Energy Agency today froze nearly two dozen of its technical assistance programs to Iran, a move to comply with U.N. Security Council sanctions approved in December (see GSN, Feb. 8).
After a review of 15 aid projects that involve Iran directly and 40 multinational projects, the agency elected to suspend 22 programs, according to a document circulated today to the agency’s governing board. Some of the frozen programs could be revived if they can be modified to avoid triggering the U.N. sanctions. The canceled programs include efforts to improve human resources management in Iran’s nuclear sector, to improve nuclear power technology, to establish a nuclear technology center and to provide some specific types of industrial technology. Projects that were allowed to continue include those with unquestionably peaceful purposes, such as medical or nuclear safety programs. The agency canceled support for five other programs last month (see GSN, Jan. 18) and a planned additional effort was ended in November before it could start (see GSN, Nov. 27, 2006; Greg Webb, Global Security Newswire, Feb. 9). In possible response to the IAEA measures, top Iranian nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani abruptly canceled planned meetings with agency head Mohamed ElBaradei today in Vienna and with senior European leaders who have gathered for a security conference this weekend in Munich (George Jahn, Associated Press/Forbes.com, Feb. 9). “We have heard that Mr. Larijani will not be coming to the conference due to illness,” said conference organizer Horst Teltschik (Mark Heinrich, Reuters/Washington Post, Feb.9). IAEA officials, however, said they were told Larijani would not visit for “technical reasons” (Jahn, Associated Press). Larijani’s cancellation disrupted a plan by European officials to hold informal talks to try to break the impasse over Iran’s nuclear activities, Agence France-Presse reported today. “They might agree on some sort of framework or concept under which the Iranians will pull the plug on centrifuges for a couple of months,” said a European diplomat in Vienna before the canceled meeting. In exchange, members of the U.N. Security Council could agree to take “no action for that period” on economic sanctions the council passed in December, the diplomat said (Michael Adler, Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, Feb. 9). Such an interim deal would mirror a “timeout” proposal issued recently by Mohamed ElBaradei (see GSN, Jan. 30). He repeated his call in a Der Spiegel interview published today. “I have been calling for a simultaneous timeout: That means Iran would take a break from all its enrichment-related work and at the same time, the U.N. Security Council would put a hold on implementing sanctions,” he said. He recommended the timeout should last three months. The failure of Iran and world powers to actively negotiate could lead all parties into “a spiral of escalation,” he said. “My concern is that if we only focus on sanctions, that might lead into a confrontation on both sides, ending in an uncontrolled chain reaction,” he said (Der Spiegel, Feb. 9). Meanwhile in Tehran, former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani warned the United States yesterday not to take any military action against Iran. “The enemy knows well that any aggression would face an all-out reaction of the Iranian nation towards the aggressors and their interests in all parts of the world,” he said. “Some people say that the U.S. president is not prone to calculating the consequences of his actions but it is possible to bring this kind of person to wisdom” (Bozorgmehr/Smyth, Financial Times, Feb. 8) In Washington, the CIA is studying the possible implications of accepting that Iran could become a nuclear-armed state, the New York Sun reported today. The study would examine whether a failed U.S. effort to curtail Tehran’s nuclear ambitions would lead Iran’s neighbors to seek nuclear capabilities, according to the Sun. One former CIA analyst said the prospects for living with a nuclear-armed Iran could depend on the nation’s leadership, consisting now of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. “At the end of the day, we could live with a nuclear Iran under the Khamanei leadership,” said former CIA analyst Kenneth Pollack, now at the Brookings Institution. “From the death of [Ayatollah] Khomenei up to now, the Iranians have been nasty, murderous, and all those things, but they have not been reckless or irrational.” If Ahmadinejad were to gain greater powers, however, the United States could have trouble deterring Iran, Pollack said (Eli Lake, New York Sun, Feb. 9).
By Chris Schneidmiller
Global Security Newswire
WASHINGTON — A host of internal obstacles threaten the U.S. goal of fully securing nuclear material and expertise in former Soviet states against acquisition by terrorists, a Washington think tank said in a report issued last week (see GSN, Sept. 21, 2006). “Cooperative nonproliferation programs between the U.S. and Russia have achieved remarkable successes during the past fifteen years. But despite their front-line importance for preventing the spread of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, materials and expertise, their potential has not been fully realized due to bureaucratic encumbrances, a sustained lack of White House and congressional support, and enduring vestiges of Cold War suspicion,” the Henry L. Stimson Center said in its report, 25 Steps to Prevent Nuclear Terror: A Guide for Policymakers. The Defense, Energy and State departments now spend more than $1 billion annually to secure unconventional weapons materials from the former Soviet Union and select other nations. Their accomplishments over the last 15 years include supporting deactivation of more than 6,900 former Soviet nuclear warheads, security upgrades at 83 percent of Russian sites that store weapon-usable fissile material, and conversion of 285 metric tons of weapon-grade uranium into a form that cannot be used in weapons. Running counter to this success are the 46 percent of Russian fissile material storage buildings that have to date received only limited security upgrades, according to Harvard University nuclear nonproliferation expert Matthew Bunn. Materials at these sites lack adequate accounting and are guarded by poorly trained security personnel. The days in which there were gaping holes in fences at fissile materials sites have passed. However, it is questionable whether security measures taken to date would be up to the job of countering a conspiracy within the Russian government to obtain nuclear material, or an attack by a sizable, well-armed terrorist force, Bunn said. The pace of work to secure these sites is not equal to the threat, according to the Stimson Center. One study found that at existing rates it could take until 2030 to completely safeguard Russian weapon-grade nuclear material. “This should be one of our highest priorities in the war on terrorism. It’s not sufficient to take tactical action against al-Qaeda and others. I think it’s equally important to secure these fissile materials, because if they do fall into the hands of al-Qaeda we’re going to be facing a disaster,” said Sammy Salama, a terrorism expert at the Monterey Institute’s Center for Nonproliferation Studies. There is also reason for concern about protection of former Russian biological weapons sites and the country’s chemical weapons depots, Bunn said. Under the Clinton and Bush administrations, the United States has failed to direct adequate resources and political attention to programs intended to reduce these security threats — the Cooperative Threat Reduction program at the Pentagon and its sibling efforts at the Energy and State departments, according to the report. This has resulted from a number of factors, from the lack of a single congressional committee with oversight over the programs to post-Cold War tensions between Moscow and Washington, said the report’s co-author, Stimson Center senior associate Elizabeth Turpen. “There’s nothing sexy about cleaning up the mess you made previously,” she said. “Another part of the problem is that over the course of time it became massively complex in terms of the number of program areas and all the acronyms associated with those programs.” Turpen and Stimson senior associate Brian Finlay based their findings on extensive individual and round-table interviews with nonproliferation program managers, contractors, government officials, experts and others. They identified a number of “inefficiencies” that hamper the operation of U.S. nonproliferation cooperation programs. “Fickle partners” receive their share of the blame — Russia being an unnamed but obvious example here (see GSN, Nov. 2, 2006) — but the authors also single out inadequate collaboration between agencies, unrealistic expectations, inefficient oversight by lawmakers, and needless restrictions on programs in Washington. For example: — There has been no strategic review over the last 15 years to ensure that existing programs are aligned to meet remaining threats; — Lawmakers are likely to seek a “quick fix” solution to a threat, such as placing radiation detectors at U.S. ports to catch incoming nuclear material, rather than taking a longer-term but more effective approach and ensuring it is secured at the source; — Programs to engage thousands of former Soviet weapons scientists in civilian research fail to produce sustainable employment, instead keeping them housed at “moribund weapons institutes” where they receive temporary work through grants; and — Nonproliferation program managers are forced to conduct “onerous” and unnecessary administrative work that distracts them from their primary focus. This includes certifying to Congress that recipient countries are meeting their arms control treaty requirements. The time-consuming process means little as the president is now allowed to waive certification requirements to ensure nations receive U.S. funding. Finlay and Turpen offered 25 recommendations for improving U.S. nonproliferation cooperation operations. Some address the initiatives as a whole, while others focus specifically on the Defense, Energy and State departments. Among the recommendations are: — Selection of a single person to conduct a comprehensive assessment of the international nonproliferation dangers and the appropriate U.S. responses; — Cooperation by the U.S. government and the private sector to move weapons scientists away from work based on short-term grants and toward ongoing employment; — Having the Energy Department’s National Nuclear Security Administration provide regular briefings to lawmakers and congressional staff, to promote transparency and oversight of its programs, and to raise their profile on Capitol Hill; and — Leveraging U.S. relationships with host countries, to ensure the nonproliferation objectives of both nations are met, and making other countries partners in the conception and implementation of nonproliferation projects, rather than simply patrons of U.S. aid. NNSA spokeswoman Julianne Smith said the agency would review the Stimson Center report to determine if it contains strategies for improving its nonproliferation efforts. The agency will continue to build upon its nonproliferation accomplishments, which include conversion of 46 nuclear reactors in 26 nations from use of highly enriched uranium to proliferation-resistant low enriched uranium, Smith said. She also cited the Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism and the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership as examples of the Bush administration’s commitment to nonproliferation. Officials with the Defense and State departments had not responded by deadline to requests for comment on the report’s recommendations. “I guess at times I felt we were reading a wish list from program managers,” said one congressional staffer. “I don’t know how much of this will come to pass. We’re certainly thinking about what can be done to help these programs out.” The staffer argued that lawmakers have been assertive in adding funds to executive branch budgets for cooperative nonproliferation programs. Just days after the White House issued its proposed fiscal 2008 budget, Senator Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) indicated he would seek another $100 million to secure pathogen strains in Central Asia and the Caucasus (see GSN, Feb. 7). Turpen said that the recommendations were devised specifically to be politically and operationally feasible, and that she is optimistic some will become reality. She said Stimson would talk to lawmakers and have discussions with officials at the agencies themselves about addressing the report’s findings. “They’re very feasible. You just need to find that little iota of political will and see what comes out of the mix,” Turpen said.
By Jon Fox
Global Security Newswire
WASHINGTON — The Energy Department has requested money to equip the FBI and other emergency first responders with technology to prevent a terrorist nuclear device from exploding before specialized national teams can permanently disable the weapon (see GSN, Oct. 25, 2005). Such technology is not fully available but there is urgent need to complete its development, Tom D’Agostino, acting administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration, said this week at a DOE roundtable. “There aren’t tools that currently exist. It’s not like buying fire extinguishers and just handing them out,” he said. “We recognized there was a need in order to respond to a potential improvised nuclear device to have that capability out there.” The Energy Department maintains Nuclear Emergency Support Teams, whose members are experts in identifying and defusing nuclear devices. The teams consist of officials from the country’s national laboratories and are structured for rapid response, but they still would not be at a scene immediately. Until then it would fall to authorities already in the area to deal with the weapon. “There’s a time gap between when something first happens out there in the country and when a group of NEST team folks arrive,” D’Agostino said. The Bush administration’s fiscal 2008 budget request includes new funding to address that gap, although officials are extremely tightlipped about the details (see GSN, Feb. 6). Within the Energy Department’s budget, requested funding for emergency response has increased by nearly 50 percent since fiscal 2006 to more than $145 million in 2008. Included in that is $16 million for something the department calls “stabilization.” Federal officials hope to develop and distribute technology that would allow those first on the scene to somehow prevent detonation until the trained nuclear bomb squad could arrive. The technology would require minimal training, they said. The goal is to develop tools that could be “predeployed” and available to first responders in the area. By first responders, NNSA officials said they are referring more to FBI agents than to local police, fire or medical personnel. The FBI is, under law, the agency responsible for investigating illegal activities involving nuclear material, including any domestic terror threat with an improvised nuclear device. The National Nuclear Security Administration said $15 million was first directed toward stabilization technology in 2006 and indicated that the research has been “promising.” The funding requested for 2008 could result in the production and implementation of first-generation technology, according to budget documents. Exactly how this technology might function, NNSA officials do not know or are not saying. “This is an unknown area I’ll have to admit upfront,” D’Agostino said. The concept of stabilization is to prevent “a device from going from a static state to a kinetic state” until the specialized national teams can arrive, according to the National Nuclear Security Administration. Revealing anything more would veer into the realm of classification, officials said. “I know this is an issue that they’re very interested in, and it’s one they’re holding very closely,” said William Happer, a physics professor at Princeton University and former energy research director at the Energy Department. Jay Davis, a nuclear physicist and former director of the Pentagon’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency, said he suspects scientists would direct research toward methods of “freezing” the mechanical and electronic mechanisms involved in triggering detonation in weapon. That could take the form of a microwave generator, said John Pike, a military expert who heads the Washington think tank GlobalSecurity.org. “It sounds like it would be a microwave device that would render the electronics of the device inert without detonating it,” he said. Such a device would be “larger than a flashlight but smaller than a searchlight,” Pike said.
Negotiators said today they were making limited headway at the latest round of six-party talks toward agreement on a Chinese plan to begin the nuclear disarmament of North Korea, the Associated Press reported (see GSN, Feb. 8). “There are some parts in which we had progress but on others we ran into difficulty,” lead Japanese negotiator Kenichiro Sasae said following today’s negotiations. “We will continue with the talks, but at this point in time I don’t feel there is a prospect of reaching an agreement.” U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill had a slightly sunnier take on the negotiations, but acknowledged that disagreements remain on the details. “The fundamental issues we’re OK on,” he said. “I’m still cautiously optimistic.” The Chinese plan calls for Pyongyang to shut down its Yongbyon reactor within two months in exchange for energy support from the other negotiating nations — China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States. North Korean concerns were focused on one paragraph of the Chinese document, which is being reworked in response, AP reported. Hill and lead North Korean envoy Kim Kye Gwan met for two hours today. That produced agreement on some, but not all, of the issues. “We are going to make more efforts to resolve them,” Kim said. Pyongyang is looking for Washington to first prove it no longer has “hostile” intentions toward the Stalinist state, according to the regime-friendly Choson Sinbo newspaper in Japan. “As conditions mature, (North Korea) can halt the operations of the Yongbyon nuclear facilities,” the newspaper said. “The (North’s) position is that it can take corresponding measures when the U.S. takes steps to show that it irreversibly gave up its hostile policy” (Jae-Soon Chang, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, Feb. 9). China hopes to see the negotiating nations form five working groups to address different aspects of North Korean nuclear disarmament, The Korea Times reported today. One would be focused on normalizing relations between Pyongyang and Washington, according to the Yonhap News Agency (The Korea Times, Feb. 9).
The United States plans to use a Staten Island, N.Y., port terminal to test new equipment for detecting nuclear weapons or radiological “dirty bombs” being brought into the country, the New York Times reported today (see GSN, Dec. 8, 2006). Testing is set to begin this spring of cargo-screening machines intended to be able to distinguish natural sources of radiation from weapons sources. One of the primary criticisms of monitor being used today is their inability to differentiate between uranium and harmless materials such as kitty litter and ceramic tile (see GSN, Oct. 18, 2006). Radiation alarms are also to be installed in a 50-mile circle around New York City, at bridges, tunnels, roads and waterways leading into the city. If the program succeeds in New York City, it could be deployed to other cities, as the Homeland Security Department prepares strategies for preventing attacks using a nuclear or radiological weapon constructed within the country. “How do you create deterrence against terrorism?” said Vayl Oxford, head of the Domestic Nuclear Detection Office at Homeland Security. “You complicate the ability for the terrorist to do what they want.” Mobile and fixed equipment would detect material at a distance away from a city. “Detecting it in the core of Manhattan is too late,” Oxford said. Critics argue that the programs could cost large amounts of money while providing minimal security benefits. The cargo-screening equipment alone could cost more than $1 billion, the Times reported. “This is just baloney,” said former assistant energy secretary Tara O’Toole. “They are forgetting that no matter what type of engineering solution they try in good faith to come up with, this is a thinking enemy and they will look for a way around it.” The cost of maintaining and operating the detection system could ultimately fall on local and state agencies. It is due to be finished in several years. “We are concerned that they will put money forward for a piece of hardware and then move to another project,” said New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly. “Whether or not it works, whether or not it causes too many false alarms, which causes a whole other set of problems, all of these things are still to be determined.” Hoping to work out all the details until a system is installed is not feasible, given the damage that could be done by a nuclear weapon or dirty bomb, Oxford said. “Our philosophy is not to wait for perfection, because perfection never comes,” he said (Eric Lipton, New York Times, Feb. 9).
The United States yesterday reaffirmed its interest in negotiating a treaty to ban the production of fissile materials for weapons, according to a U.S. State Department release (see GSN, May 18, 2006). “This opportunity must not be lost,” U.S. Ambassador Christina Rocca said in a speech to a plenary session of the U.N. Conference on Disarmament in Geneva. The United States circulated a draft text for a treaty last year, but the idea has been met with mixed views (see GSN, May 19, 2006). The U.S. text would ban nations from producing uranium or plutonium for nuclear weapons, but the text does not address existing stockpiles, Rocca said (U.S. State Department release, Feb. 8).
A U.S. Energy Department inspection has uncovered a number of safety problems at the Pantex nuclear weapons plant near Amarillo, Texas, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported yesterday (see GSN, Dec. 13, 2006). “We concluded that in most respects [contractor] BWXT implemented an effective chemical safety program,” the report states. “However, we identified several areas that needed improvement.” Among the findings: There was no fire extinguisher or equipment for alerting the fire department in one facility housing various flammable chemicals; more warning signs were needed at hazardous chemical storage buildings and other facilities; and accurate inventories were required of hazardous materials. The National Nuclear Security Administration has called on BWXT to correct the problems, the Star-Telegram reported (Anna Tinsley, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Feb. 8).
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