Global Security Newswire

Experts have expressed doubt that a future Egyptian government would rekindle the country's past efforts to develop weapons of mass destruction, Voice of America reported yesterday (see GSN, Feb. 8).

The abrupt end last week to Hosni Mubarak's 30-year presidency has caused profound uncertainty about Egypt's future political direction. Analysts agreed, though, that the country could undermine security in the surrounding region by acquiring unconventional armaments.

"In the chemical and nuclear arenas, the costs to the Egyptians of attempting such programs are significant," Naval Postgraduate School nonproliferation analyst James Russell said. "And it just seems to me that any political leadership in Egypt, whatever its character, is going to have to look at these costs. And they are a strong discouragement to them moving down this path to sort of reconsidering the decisions which have been looked at by previous political leadership. I just do not see it."

Egypt is believed to have pursued a nuclear deterrent for a period in the 1960s, but the nation now lacks most technical capabilities that could generate fuel for such weapons, former State Department nonproliferation analyst Mark Fitzpatrick said (see GSN, June 10, 2010).

"Egypt conducted some experiments in plutonium separation that they did not notify the [International Atomic Energy Agency] in accordance with their safeguards agreement and it later came out and the IAEA did an investigation," Fitzpatrick said. "Most of that was cleared up, but there are some remaining questions."

"Most recently, some highly enriched uranium particles were discovered by the IAEA and I think they are still investigating the source of that. That all has not yet come out in IAEA reporting, so there is some small cloud hanging over Egypt's nuclear program. I am not saying they are going for nuclear weapons, but they did some things that were not fully in accordance with the rules," he said (see GSN, May 7, 2009).

Cairo's plutonium work occurred in recent decades, with word of the work spreading six to seven years ago, while the HEU situation was made public in the past couple years.

Though Cairo purportedly supported Iraqi chemical weapons activities in the 1980s and might have worked on a facility capable of supporting chemical warfare work, "I don't think that there is any assessment out there today that suggests that the Egyptians are engaged in research or really have any interest in developing chemical weapons," Russell said.

Egypt is also widely thought to have used chemical weapons in Yemen during the 1960s. Today, though, Cairo lacks manufacturing capabilities necessary to produce chemical armaments, Russell said.

"The truth of the matter is that almost all countries around the world -- the United States and Russia included -- everyone has come to the conclusion that these are not just terribly militarily useful weapons, or that it is a technology which really has limited use in the military arena," he said (André de Nesnera, Voice of America, Feb. 17).