This annotated chronology is based on the data sources that follow each entry. Public sources often provide conflicting information on classified military programs. In some cases we are unable to resolve these discrepancies, in others we have deliberately refrained from doing so to highlight the potential influence of false or misleading information as it appeared over time. In many cases, we are unable to independently verify claims. Hence in reviewing this chronology, readers should take into account the credibility of the sources employed here.

Inclusion in this chronology does not necessarily indicate that a particular development is of direct or indirect proliferation significance. Some entries provide international or domestic context for technological development and national policymaking. Moreover, some entries may refer to developments with positive consequences for nonproliferation.

1990
Installation and commissioning of R120 separators at Al Tarmiya commence. [By the time of the Gulf War, a total of eight R120 separators are in limited operation.]
—"Fourth Consolidated Report of the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency under paragraph 16 of Security Council resolution 1051 (1996)," S/1997/779, 8 October 1997, p. 36, <http://www.iaea.or.at/worldatom/Programmes/ActionTeam/reports/
s_1997_779.pdf>.

1990
Iraq attempts to purchase vacuum diffusion pumps from CVC, a machinery firm in Rochester, N.Y. The US Department of Commerce blocks the export just prior to shipment after customs inspectors determine it was to be used for uranium enrichment. A US official says, it had been "assumed'' that the pumps were destined for Iraq's gas centrifuge program. [US officials later believe the CVC pumps might have been intended for use in Iraq's calutron project.]
—Mark Hibbs, "U.S. Believes Iraq Has Built Magnetic Isotope Enrichment Plant," 20 June 1991.

January-February 1990
Former MAN Technologie employee Kark-Heinz Schaap supplies Iraq with 20 carbon fiber centrifuge rotors.
—Mark Hibbs, "German Expert Wanted By Authorities for Giving Iraq Carbon Centrifuge Rotors," Nuclear Fuel, 9 November 1992.

Spring 1990
The first magnetic centrifuge using a carbon fiber composite rotor is successfully assembled and tested at an operating speed of 60,000 rpm over a period of several months in a mechanical test stand.
—"Fourth Consolidated Report of the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency under paragraph 16 of Security Council resolution 1051 (1996)," S/1997/779, 8 October 1997, p. 36, <http://www.iaea.or.at/worldatom/Programmes/ActionTeam/reports/
s_1997_779.pdf>.

Early 1990
Personnel, sophisticated equipment, and testing systems pertaining to Iraq's weapons efforts are transferred from Al Tuwaitha and other sites to Al Atheer. [Al Altheer remains undiscovered for months after the end of the Persian Gulf War. Its true significance was not understood until Hussein Kamel's defection in 1995.]
—David Albright and Mark Hibbs, "Iraq's Bomb: Blueprints and Artifacts," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, January/February 1992, <http://www.bullatomsci.org/issues/1992/jf92/jf92.albright.html>; Shyam Bhatia and Daniel McGrory, Brighter than the Baghdad Sun (London: Little, Brown and Company, 1999), p. 19.

7 May 1990
The Minister of Industry and Military Industrialization (MIMI) Hussein Kamel opens the Al Atheer facility for Saddam's bomb designers, who are known as Group 4.
—David Albright and Mark Hibbs, "Iraq's Bomb: Blueprints and Artifacts," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, January/February 1992, <http://www.bullatomsci.org/issues/1992/jf92/jf92.albright.html>; Shyam Bhatia and Daniel McGrory, Brighter than the Baghdad Sun (London: Little, Brown and Company, 1999), p. 21.

June 1990
Iraq completes construction of the soft iron foundry located at the Nasser General Establishment and begins producing the soft iron necessary for the EMIS magnets.
—David Albright, Kate Buehler, and Corey Hinderstien, "Roadmap to Responsible Export Controls: Learning from the Past," Institute for Science and International Security, 2003, <http://www.exportcontrols.org/print/emisprocurement.html>.

August 1990
Project 601 at Al Tuwaitha is established to extract HEU from the French and Russian research reactor fuel to use as the core material of a nuclear weapon. [After the Persian Gulf War when it became clear that Project 601 could no longer be housed in the Active Metallurgy Testing Laboratory (LAMA) building, the uranium recovery plant was redesigned—as Project 603—so that it could be reinstalled at Al Tarmiya which had sustained lesser bomb damage.]
—UN Security Council, "Fourth Consolidated Report of the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency under Paragraph 16 of Security Council Resolution 1051 (1996)," S/1997/779, 8 October 1997, <http://www.iaea.or.at/worldatom/Programmes/ActionTeam/reports/
s_1997_779.pdf>, p. 48; Khidhir Hamza and Jeff Stein, Saddam's Bombmaker: The Terrifying Inside Story of the Iraqi Nuclear and Biological Weapons Agenda (New York, NY: Scribner Press, 2000), p. 237.

2 August 1990
Iraq invades Kuwait.

6 August 1990
UN Security Council Resolution 661 banning the sale of Iraqi oil is imposed, precluding Iraq from purchasing special equipment and materials from abroad before it could finish its facilities or produce significant quantities of fissile material. The Security Council acting under Chapter VII of the United Nations decides that "All States should prevent the import into their territories of all commodities and products originating in Iraq or Kuwait exported therefrom after the date of the present resolution."
—David Albright and Robert Kelley, "Has Iraq Come Clean at Last?" Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, November/December 1995, <http://www.bullatomsci.org/issues/1995/nd95/nd95.albright.html>; UN Security Council, "The Situation Between Iraq and Kuwait," S/RES/661 (1990), 6 August 1990, <http://www.un.org/Docs/sc/committees/IraqKuwait/IraqResolutionsEng.htm>.

Mid-August 1990
Hussein Kamel initiates a crash program to extract HEU from Iraq's stock of safeguarded HEU fuel to build a nuclear weapon by the end of February 1991. Project 601 is established Al Tuwaitha to extract HEU from the French and Russian research reactor fuel to use as the core material of a nuclear weapon. [After the Persian Gulf War when it became clear that Project 601 could no longer be housed in the Active Metallurgy Testing Laboratory (LAMA) building, the uranium recovery plant was redesigned—as Project 603—so that it could be reinstalled at Al Tarmiya which had sustained lesser bomb damage. Table 1 lists the quantities of safeguarded enriched uranium the Iraqis have declared they planned to divert. The total amount of HEU (in terms of initial uranium mass) was 39.5kg with an average enrichment of about 84 percent contained in 175 fuel elements.] The program is composed of the chemical processing of both unirradiated and irradiated research reactor fuel, the re-enrichment of part of the HEU through the use of a 50-machine centrifuge cascade, and the conversion of the HEU chemical compounds to metal. Iraq also considers the direct use of HEU without further enrichment because the centrifuges are not ready at this time.

Iraq's Safeguarded Fuel

Sources: David Albright, "Iraq's Programs to Make Highly Enriched Uranium and Plutonium for Nuclear Weapons Prior to the Gulf War," Institute for Science and International Security, October 2002, <http://www.isis-online.org/publications/iraq/iraqs_fm_history.html>; David Albright and Robert Kelley, "Has Iraq Come Clean at Last?" Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, November/December 1995, <http://www.bullatomsci.org/issues/1995/nd95/nd95.albright.html>.

Iraq aims to produce a missile warhead with a 20-kiloton yield. Design details indicate that Iraq is trying to develop a solid-core HEU weapon, which would use a simple peryllium-polonium source as a neutron initiator built into the center of the bomb core and activated by the crushing action of the implosion package. The reflector/tamper for the bomb is manufactured from natural uranium metal, not beryllium. [Later, because the weight and size of the device was too big to be mounted on a missile, Iraqi scientists pursued the development of beryllium and graphite reflectors that would be many pounds lighter than the uranium metal reflectors originally planned.] Iraq decides to adopt a levitation design, which leaves a gap around the bomb core and surrounding components to create a bigger bang per kilogram than other designs the Iraqis could have managed. [The Allied bombing campaign in mid-January 1991 stops Iraq's effort to build a nuclear weapon before its completion. Hamza asserts that the idea was to construct a warhead that could be mounted on a missile and fired at Israel if Allied forces invaded. Bhatia and McGrory say the plan was to place a nuclear device near Kuwait City.]
—David Albright and Khidhir Hamza, "Iraq's Reconstitution of its Nuclear Weapons Program," Arms Control Today, October 1998, <http://www.isis-online.org/publications/iraq/act1298.html>; "Iraqi Nuclear Weapons," Federation of Atomic Scientists, <http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/iraq/nuke/program.htm>; "Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction-The Assessment of the British Government," <http://www.ukonline.gov.uk/featurenews/iraqdossier.pdf>, p. 13; David Albright, "Iraq's Programs to Make Highly Enriched Uranium and Plutonium for Nuclear Weapons Prior to the Gulf War," Institute for Science and International Security, October 2002, <http://www.isis-online.org/publications/iraq/iraqs_fm_history.html>; Mark Hibbs, "Iraqi Execution of Bomb Design ‘Two Years Away' Data Suggests," Nuclear Fuel, 14 October, 1991, cited in <http://www.lexis-nexis.com>; Shyam Bhatia and Daniel McGrory, Brighter than the Baghdad Sun (London: Little, Brown and Company, 1999), p. 12; "Iraq's Nuclear Weapon Program," Iraq Watch, <http://www.iraqwatch.org/wmd/nuclear.html>; David Albright and Robert Kelley, "Has Iraq Come Clean at Last?," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, November/December 1995, <http://www.bullatomsci.org/issues/1995/nd95/nd95.albright.html>; Khidhir Hamza with Jeff Stein, Saddam's Bombmaker: The Terrifying Inside Story of the Iraqi Nuclear and Biological Weapons Agenda (New York: Scribner Press, 2000), p. 237; Shyam Bhatia and Daniel McGrory, "Brighter than the Baghdad Sun: Saddam's Race to Build the Bomb," (London: Little Brown and Company, 1999), pp. 235-240.

September 1990
Iraq decides to transfer several engineers and technicians from Al Tarmiya to Al Tuwaitha to work on designing and installing equipment for projects 601 and 602.
—David Albright, "Iraq's Programs to Make Highly Enriched Uranium and Plutonium for Nuclear Weapons Prior to the Gulf War," Institute for Science and International Security, October 2002, <http://www.isis-online.org/publications/iraq/iraqs_fm_history.html>.

September 1990
Eight 1200mm electromagnetic isotope separators begin operating at Taramiya. The separators eventually produce 640 grams of enriched uranium with an average enrichment of 7.2 percent and 685 grams with an average enrichment of 3 percent.
—"Tarmiya, Iraq Special Weapons Facilities," Federation of American Scientists, <http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/iraq/facility/tarmiya.htm>; "Iraq's Nuclear Weapon Program," Iraq Watch, Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, <http://www.iraqwatch.org/wmd/nuclear.html>.

19-20 November 1990
The IAEA records Iraq's research reactor fuel inventory and finds that the safeguarded material is intact implying that Iraq did not make any practical progress in the recovery of the HEU material. [Had Iraq been able to proceed, it is possible that the HEU material from the fresh and lightly irradiated reactor fuel could have been recovered and made available in metal form toward mid-1991.]
—UN Security Council, "Fourth Consolidated Report of the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency under Paragraph 16 of Security Council Resolution 1051 (1996)," S/1997/779, 8 October 1997, <http://www.iaea.or.at/worldatom/Programmes/ActionTeam/reports/
s_1997_779.pdf>, p. 52; David Albright and Robert Kelley, "Has Iraq Come Clean at Last?," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, November/December 1995, <http://www.bullatomsci.org/issues/1995/nd95/nd95.albright.html>.

22 November 1990
US President George Bush warns US troops in Saudi Arabia of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's nuclear program. He says, "Those who would measure the timetable for Saddam's atomic program in years may be seriously underestimating the reality of that situation and the gravity of the threat."
—David Albright and Mark Hibbs, "Hyping the Iraqi Bomb," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (47) 2, March 1991, <http://www.bullatomsci.org/issues/1991/m91/m91albright.html>.

Late November 1990
Assistant US Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger alleges that "Iraq has clandestinely obtained a cache of unsafeguarded highly enriched uranium from an outside source."
—David Albright and Mark Hibbs, "Hyping the Iraqi Bomb," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (47) 2, March 1991, <http://www.bullatomsci.org/issues/1991/m91/m91albright.html>.

15 December 1990
Iraq suspends operations at Tarmiya. [Subsequent damage during the Gulf War prevents operations from resuming.]
—"Fourth Consolidated Report of the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency under paragraph 16 of Security Council resolution 1051 (1996)," S/1997/779, 8 October 1997, p. 36, <http://www.iaea.or.at/worldatom/Programmes/ActionTeam/reports/
s_1997_779.pdf>.

December 1990
The LAMA laboratory of Project 601 is installed in Al Tuwaitha's building 22. [Iraq hopes that the laboratory would be able to produce up to 25kg of HEU in two to three months.]
—"Iraq's Nuclear Weapon Program," Iraq Watch, accessed on 27 November 2002, <http://www.iraqwatch.org/wmd/nuclear.html>.

December 1990
The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) receives its first clue about the progress of Iraq's nuclear weapons program when Iraq releases Western hostages held near the Al Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Center. Uranium carbide particles removed from the hostages' clothing show that the uranium specks had been enriched beyond the 20 percent needed for routine experiments.
—Shyam Bhatia and Daniel McGrory, Brighter than the Baghdad Sun (Washington, DC: Regenery Publishing Inc., 2000), p. 18.

Mid-December 1990
Project 521C (the centrifuge program at the Engineering Design Center/Rashidiya facility) in charge of taking the Russian-supplied HEU and further enriching it in a short cascade up to 93 percent plans to commission the cascade in April 1991 and introduce uranium hexafluoride by July 1991. [The actual enrichment level of this material, half of which was irradiated varied from 56 to 80 percent, with an average of 70 percent. The cascade was designed to have 49 centrifuges, each with a separative output of 2 SWU per year. The tails assay was 40 percent and the nominal feed rate was 6.9kg per month. Overall, the centrifuge program is unlikely to have succeeded in making a cascade on the schedule mentioned.]
—David Albright, "Iraq's Programs to Make Highly Enriched Uranium and Plutonium for Nuclear Weapons Prior to the Gulf War," Institute for Science and International Security, October 2002, <http://www.isis-online.org/publications/iraq/iraqs_fm_history.html>.

Late 1990
Iraq produces an exact model of a nuclear weapon made of machined metal parts. [The IAEA learns of the mockup in 1995, but by 1998, IAEA inspectors are still unable to find the mockup or its parts.]
—Mark Hibbs, "IAEA and UNSCOM Puzzled Over Iraqi Mockup of Nuclear Bomb," Nucleonics Week, 12 February 1998, cited in
<http://www.lexis-nexis.com>.

End of 1990
Project 602 is installed and commissioned and produces a 10kg test batch of natural UF4.
—UN Security Council, "Fourth Consolidated Report of the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency under Paragraph 16 of Security Council Resolution 1051 (1996)," S/1997/779, 8 October 1997, <http://www.iaea.or.at/worldatom/Programmes/ActionTeam/reports/
s_1997_779.pdf>, p. 50.

3 January 1991
An Iraqi internal report (PC-3 report 1556) reveals calculations estimating the HEU content of 62 irradiated fuel elements (80 percent enriched) based on tabulated data of the burn-up and cooling-time of each elements. These 62 elements, together with the 34 elements remaining in the core of the IRT-5000 reactor, represent the total inventory of 96 irradiated fuel elements of 80 percent enrichment.
—UN Security Council, "Fourth Consolidated Report of the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency under Paragraph 16 of Security Council Resolution 1051 (1996)," S/1997/779, 8 October 1997, <http://www.iaea.or.at/worldatom/Programmes/ActionTeam/reports/
s_1997_779.pdf>, p. 49.

12 January 1991
At an internal meeting, Iraq specifies the precise design dimensions of the explosive lenses to build a nuclear bomb. [Later, Iraq admits that it had specified the dimensions of the lenses, but denies that it had been making similar decisions regarding the design of the weapons components. Iraq admitted only to have RDX/TNT explosives when in fact, Iraq had imported three hundred tons of HMX, a more powerful kind of explosive, which is used to make lighter and more powerful lenses than those it had declared.]
—Mark Hibbs, "Renewed Conflict with Baghdad Defers Russian Bid to End IAEA Inspections," Nuclear Fuel, 9 February, 1998, cited in
<http://www.lexis-nexis.com>.