111th Congress S. Prt.
1st Session COMMITTEE PRINT 111-19
_______________________________________________________________________
IRAN: WHERE WE ARE TODAY
__________
A REPORT
TO THE
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
UNITED STATES SENATE
One Hundred Eleventh Congress
First Session
May 4, 2009
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
JOHN F. KERRY, Massachusetts, Chairman
CHRISTOPHER J. DODD, Connecticut RICHARD G. LUGAR, Indiana
RUSSELL D. FEINGOLD, Wisconsin Republican Leader designee
BARBARA BOXER, California BOB CORKER, Tennessee
ROBERT MENENDEZ, New Jersey JOHNNY ISAKSON, Georgia
BENJAMIN L. CARDIN, Maryland JAMES E. RISCH, Idaho
ROBERT P. CASEY, Jr., Pennsylvania JIM DeMINT, South Carolina
JIM WEBB, Virginia JOHN BARRASSO, Wyoming
JEANNE SHAHEEN, New Hampshire ROGER F. WICKER, Mississippi
EDWARD E. KAUFMAN, Delaware
KIRSTEN E. GILLIBRAND, New York
David McKean, Staff Director
Kenneth A. Myers, Jr., Republican Staff Director
(ii)
C O N T E N T S
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Page
Letter of Transmittal............................................ v
Iran: Where We Are Today......................................... 1
How We Got Here.............................................. 3
What It Means................................................ 8
What We Do................................................... 10
(iii)
LETTER OF TRANSMITTAL
----------
United States Senate,
Committee on Foreign Relations,
Washington, DC, May 4, 2009.
Dear Colleagues: For the first time in three decades, the
United States and Iran appear to be on a path toward direct
bilateral talks. President Obama and other administration
officials are determined to explore areas of mutual interest
and negotiate the difficult obstacles to an improved U.S.-Iran
relationship.
One of those obstacles is the suspicion surrounding Iran's
nuclear program. Iran's leaders say that its ambitions are only
to develop a civilian nuclear capacity to conserve the
country's oil and gas reserves, but the United States and many
of its allies have deep suspicions about the potential military
aspects of the program. Resolving the issue will be one of the
most difficult confronting negotiators for the two countries
and the international community.
The attached staff report presents findings from research
in Austria, Israel and the United States as well as information
obtained from numerous unclassified reports. The report is
intended to provide a baseline that will help us understand the
questions surrounding Iran's nuclear ambitions and the
challenges confronting negotiators as they endeavor to answer
them.
Sincerely,
John F. Kerry,
Chairman.
IRAN: WHERE WE ARE TODAY
----------
Iran's progress toward developing a nuclear weapons
capability has continued despite restrictions ordered by the
United Nations, additional economic sanctions imposed by the
United States and incentives to stop offered by the Europeans.
The latest landmark was registered in mid-February when the
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported that Iran
had enriched enough uranium to make an atomic bomb if it took
the next step in the enrichment process.
There is no sign that Iran's leaders have ordered up a
bomb. But unclassified interviews conducted by a member of the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff make clear that Iran
has moved closer to completing the three components for a
nuclear weapon--fissile material, warhead design and delivery
system. While there are open questions about Iran's progress on
a warhead, we do know that the time frame for substantive
action by the international community is narrowing and the road
to a solution could be long.
Iran's efforts to develop a nuclear weapons capacity carry
serious implications for the Middle East and for U.S. policy as
the administration starts down the path toward direct talks
with Iranian leaders. Senior American diplomats, foreign
intelligence officials and IAEA officials said in interviews
with the staff that engagement with Iran needs to reconcile the
twin goals of stopping Iran's progress short of a bomb and
avoiding another conflict in the Mideast.
Efforts to put the brakes on Iran's nuclear program since
it was uncovered in mid-2002 have had sporadic success, but
ultimately they failed. The IAEA, which is supposed to make
sure that peaceful atomic energy is not used for any military
purpose, has proven unable to persuade Iran to halt enrichment
or to answer questions about the suspected military dimensions
of its program. Agency officials acknowledged that they have
reached a complete impasse with Iran over the possible military
involvement in its nuclear efforts.
While parrying IAEA inquiries and shrugging off three
rounds of UN sanctions, Iran has gone from having no capability
to enrich uranium six years ago to operating nearly 4,000
centrifuges at an underground facility near Natanz in the
central part of the country. The centrifuges are enriching
uranium to reactor-grade, with 1,600 more machines ready to go
online. By mid-February, they had turned out roughly a ton of
low-enriched uranium hexafluoride gas suitable for
manufacturing fuel rods for a civilian reactor; the total is
estimated to be even greater now. A foreign intelligence agency
and some UN officials estimated that Iran could reconfigure its
centrifuge cascades and produce enough weapons-grade material
for a bomb within six months.
Testifying before the committee on March 3, Mark
Fitzpatrick, a former State Department nonproliferation
official now with the International Institute for Strategic
Studies in London, estimated that Iran would need several weeks
to enrich its stockpile of low-enriched uranium to weapons-
grade. He predicted it would take at least six months more to
convert the weapons-grade material into uranium metal and
fashion a weapon from it, the complex process known as
``weaponization.''
Natanz is monitored by the IAEA and a shift from producing
the permitted low-enriched uranium (LEU) to the prohibited
highly enriched uranium would likely be discovered. The same
relative confidence does not exist, however, when it comes to
the research and development under way at known and suspected
facilities that are off limits to IAEA inspectors.
The IAEA has been forbidden to visit plants where Iran is
known to be developing the IR-2, a more advanced centrifuge
that will enrich uranium two or three times faster than the P-1
version currently operating at Natanz. Iran also has refused to
allow the IAEA to inspect the work underway on a heavy water
reactor capable of producing plutonium for a weapon. Finally,
the agency has been refused access to workshops where evidence
provided by the United States and other countries suggests Iran
was working on developing a nuclear warhead.
The status of Iran's work on building a warhead is unknown
to outsiders. In late 2007, the U.S. intelligence community
said publicly that Iran's military had been working to design
nuclear weapons, but halted the effort in the fall of 2003. In
an updated assessment, Admiral Dennis C. Blair (USN, retired),
director of national intelligence, said in February that the
U.S. intelligence community has determined broadly that Iran
``has the scientific, technical and industrial capacity
eventually to produce a nuclear weapon.'' He said, however,
that the intelligence services believe that Iran had not
restarted the weapons design work as of at least mid-2007. He
added that, since the fall of 2003, Iran has conducted research
and development projects that could have limited use for
nuclear weapons.
Intelligence analysts and nuclear experts working for
foreign governments agreed in interviews with committee staff
that Iran had stopped its weapons work in late 2003. Some of
these officials said in unclassified briefings that by that
time, however, intelligence indicates Iran had produced a
suitable design, manufactured some components and conducted
enough successful explosives tests to put the project on the
shelf until it manufactured the fissile material required for
several weapons.
Many have doubts about whether Iran has a design for a
workable nuclear warhead. In early March, Defense Secretary
Robert Gates said that there is still time to persuade Iran to
abandon its suspected nuclear weapons program. ``They're not
close to a stockpile, they're not close to a weapon at this
point, and so there is some time,'' he said.
One danger associated with the opacity of Iran's program is
the perception of other countries of how much progress Tehran
has made toward a weapons capability. Admiral Blair told the
Senate Armed Services Committee in March that the U.S. and
Israel have the same basic intelligence about Iran's nuclear
efforts, but he said the Israelis ``take more of a worst-case
approach,'' which he suggested could lead to an Israeli-Iran
conflict.
Many regional experts say that Iran does not need to
demonstrate that it has the bomb to change the balance of power
in the Middle East. Many nations in the region already fear an
ascendant Iran. Simply producing a large enough stockpile of
low-enriched uranium for one or more weapons could confer on
Iran new leverage over the critical region. It also could
motivate some of its neighbors to seek their own nuclear
capability. That is why these experts argue that the
administration, in concert with Europe, Russia and other
countries, must undertake action to stop Iran's enrichment
program as soon as diplomacy permits.
How We Got Here
In August 2002, an Iranian exile group held a press
conference in Washington and disclosed that Iran was engaged in
a previously secret nuclear program. The organization
identified two major sites--the planned enrichment facility at
Natanz, which was under construction at the time, and the site
near Arak in western Iran, where work was starting on the heavy
water reactor--as well as several smaller research locations.
The IAEA sought immediate inspections of the sites, but
Iran was slow to permit the visit. The agency's director
general, Mohamed ElBaradei, and a team of IAEA officials did
not get into Iran until February 2003. They were allowed to
tour Natanz and a handful of other official facilities, but
some sites identified by the exile group were declared off
limits. It was the start of a cat-and-mouse game between Iran
and the IAEA that is still going on today.
The essentials of the game can be illustrated by what
happened at a small complex of buildings on the outskirts of
Tehran called the Kalaye Electric Company. The exiles claimed
that Kalaye was the site of advanced research into centrifuges
and that Iran had used enriched uranium as part of tests there,
which could violate the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)
created in 1968 to stop the spread of nuclear weapons. Iran
said the site was a watch factory where no nuclear activity had
taken place.
IAEA inspectors tried for months to get access to Kalaye to
conduct tests for radioactive residue from the alleged
research. Iran did not let them into the main building until
August 2003, weeks after a cleanup crew had swept through the
complex, repainting and retiling throughout and removing tons
of dirt in an apparent attempt to get rid of evidence. Despite
those efforts, IAEA inspectors found suspicious radioactive
particles lingering at Kalaye, which elevated concerns that
Iran might be further advanced than outsiders knew. Eventually
Iran was forced to acknowledge that it had conducted research
at Kalaye on development of centrifuges, the cylindrical
machines used to enrich uranium hexafluoride gas to produce
fissile material.
The pattern would be repeated many times in the years that
followed: The IAEA would receive evidence of suspicious
activities at one site or another, but its attempts to carry
out inspections would be delayed or denied. In fact, the
complex at Kalaye is once again being used by Iran for research
and development of centrifuges--this time, the work is being
done on the advanced IR-2 version and once again it is off
limits to the IAEA.
As evidence of deception piled up in previous years,
Iranian officials maintained steadfastly that their only goal
was to develop civilian nuclear reactors to supply electric
power so they could conserve the country's oil and gas. The
clandestine enrichment work, they argued, was only to develop
low-enriched fuel for those reactors, not to develop the highly
enriched version for weapons. They said they had to resort to
the nuclear black market and suppliers like Pakistan's renegade
scientist A.Q. Khan in the 1980s and early 1990s because of
sanctions imposed by the United States after the Iranian
revolution in 1979.
The United States accused Iran of concealing a weapons
program almost immediately after the disclosures in 2002. But
the failure of U.S. forces to find weapons of mass destruction
in Iraq after the invasion in March 2003 damaged its
credibility on the issue.
As a signatory to the NPT, Iran has the right to enrich
uranium for civilian uses. But its secret nuclear activities,
which date back to at least 1987, violated its safeguards
agreement with the IAEA to declare and allow inspections of all
nuclear-related sites. The United States, and later the
Europeans, argued that Iran's deception meant it should forfeit
its right to enrich, a position likely to be up for negotiation
in talks with Iran.
In reports to the IAEA Board of Governors starting in June
2003, ElBaradei criticized Iran, saying it had concealed its
nuclear activities and thwarted efforts by the agency to
determine whether there was a military side to its program. But
he resisted pressure from the United States to take the next
step and declare Iran in violation of the NPT because, he said
repeatedly, the IAEA had no proof of a military program.
In late 2003, Iran agreed to voluntarily suspend its
enrichment activities as part of negotiations with Britain,
France and Germany. The group, known as the EU 3, promised Iran
access to civilian nuclear technology in return for the
suspension. At the same time, Iran signed and provisionally
implemented an Additional Protocol to its safeguards agreement
with the IAEA; the provision permitted IAEA inspectors to make
visits on short notice to suspicious sites that were not part
of Iran's official nuclear program. But the negotiations with
the EU 3 dragged on for nearly two years without Iran providing
the assurances sought by the IAEA and the Europeans to clear up
doubts that its program was completely civilian. As a result,
Iran was denied access to the civilian technology it sought.
In August 2005, Iran informed the IAEA that it was breaking
the seals placed by the agency on its uranium conversion
facility at Isfahan as part of the enrichment suspension
because the talks were stalled. Then in January 2006, Iran
notified the IAEA that it was resuming enrichment activities
and instructed the agency to remove seals it had affixed to
equipment at Natanz and the other facilities. Iran also stopped
the visits to unofficial sites by IAEA inspectors under the
provisions of the Additional Protocol. The Europeans responded
by asking the IAEA to refer Iran to the UN Security Council for
sanctions.
In February 2006, the IAEA board approved a resolution
referring Iran to the Security Council. The resolution pointed
to Iran's ``many failures and breaches of its obligations to
comply with its NPT safeguards agreement'' and the absence of
any confidence that its nuclear program was solely civilian.
Iran responded by further restricting the places IAEA
inspectors could visit and proceeding at full speed to get the
Natanz enrichment plant up and running.
In December 2006, the UN Security Council ordered Iran to
suspend enrichment and imposed the first round of sanctions.
Countries were ordered to stop supplying Iran with material and
technology that could contribute to its nuclear and missile
programs. The overseas assets of 10 Iranian companies and 12
people affiliated with the programs were frozen. In the next
two years, the Security Council approved two more sets of
sanctions. Each time, Iran rejected the demands that it stop
enrichment, asserting its legal rights to enrichment under the
nonproliferation treaty.
Over the course of dozens of inspections by the IAEA in the
last six years, Iran succeeded in answering some of the
questions about the nature of its nuclear program. For
instance, the radioactive particles discovered at Kalaye were
eventually linked to second-hand centrifuge components
purchased from the A.Q. Khan trafficking network and tested at
the supposed watch factory.
But for every riddle solved, a new one seemed to arise. The
most significant questions focus on whether Iran has a separate
covert enrichment facility where it could produce weapons-grade
uranium, whether its nuclear activities were or still are aimed
at building a weapon, and whether the military remains involved
in the nuclear project. Iran denies any military role in its
nuclear efforts and so far no one has uncovered proof to the
contrary.
There is, however, a strong circumstantial case for
military involvement, which may or may not have stopped when
the weaponization work ended in late 2003. Potentially damning
evidence surfaced in 2004 when U.S. intelligence obtained a
laptop computer that it said had come from an Iranian engineer.
The computer contained thousands of pages of data on tests of
high explosives and designs for a missile capable of carrying a
nuclear warhead. It also contained videos of what were
described as secret workshops around Iran where the weapons
work was supposedly carried out.
Some of those documents as well as intelligence material
from other countries were shared with the IAEA, which refers to
them in its official reports as the ``alleged studies.'' When
the agency provided copies of some documents to Iran, the
Iranians denounced them as fakes.
Senior UN officials and foreign intelligence officials who
have seen many of the documents told the committee staff that
it is impossible to rule out an elaborate intelligence ruse.
But they said the documents come from more than just the
laptop and appear to be authentic, right down to the names,
addresses and telephone numbers of the workshops in Iran.
A senior allied intelligence official said the documents
contained blueprints for a nuclear warhead that was a perfect
match--``down to the last millimeter''--with designs his agency
had obtained from other sources inside Iran. Another document
tracked the flight path for a missile, with notations that its
warhead would detonate 600 meters above the ground, according
to foreign intelligence officials and UN officials. That height
would render a conventional explosive ineffective, but would be
the optimum elevation for a nuclear weapon intended to wipe out
a city.
Last August, IAEA officials thought that they had achieved
a major breakthrough when Iran agreed to permit a team of
inspectors to visit some of the workshops identified in the
alleged studies. The IAEA thought it would finally be able to
answer the questions raised in those documents. A specialist
familiar with the records was flown in immediately from IAEA
headquarters in Vienna to join inspectors already in Iran. But
on the day of the promised inspection, the agency was told the
government had changed its mind and they would not be allowed
into the facilities. After several days of fruitless
negotiations, the inspectors returned home empty handed,
according to staff interviews with UN officials involved in the
effort.
The initial approval for the inspections was granted by
officials from Iran's civilian nuclear agency. UN officials
said they suspect the permission was withdrawn after either
military officers or high-ranking officials in the government
learned of the prospective visits.
Senior UN officials now say discussion is stalled with Iran
over the accusations in those documents and over other
potential military aspects of its nuclear program. Iran refuses
to answer any further questions. When asked what's next, a
senior UN official said recently that he saw no new course of
action to end the stalemate.
A senior U.S. official monitoring the process said he
worries that ``Iran fatigue'' has set in among many of the 35
countries that comprise the IAEA Board of Governors, creating
the possibility that the agency lacks the political willpower
to resolve the conflict with Iran.
While the impasse drags on, Iran has made steady progress
over the last two years at Natanz and the number of centrifuges
spinning there increases slowly. The estimated one ton of low-
enriched uranium hexafluoride produced as of mid-February is
enough for a single nuclear weapon, when converted to HEU
through further enrichment, according to most estimates. Since
then, IAEA officials estimate Iran has added another 300 to 400
pounds of LEU to its stockpile.
Iran appears to have remained active on the international
black market. Iranian officials have told IAEA officials that
the nuclear program is self sufficient, but staff interviews
with American and foreign officials and intelligence analysts
found that Iran is operating a broad network of front
organizations to procure additional technology and material for
its nuclear projects. Among the most prized materials being
sought by Iran are carbon fiber used in the more advanced IR-2
centrifuges under development and maraging steel and specialty
aluminums for the IR-2 and the cruder centrifuges operating at
Natanz, according to unclassified information provided to the
staff.
``We know they received carbon fiber and have used it in
IR-2 rotors, but we have no clue where they got it or how much
they got,'' said a senior official at the IAEA.
On the missile front, Iran's launch of a satellite into
orbit in early February raised concerns that Tehran is
improving its ability to deploy long-range ballistic missiles
at the very time it is making progress on its nuclear program.
Iran is still developing its ballistic missile capability and
there are ways to delay its progress by tightening sanctions
and cracking down on the front companies involved in
procurement.
Authorities suspect that some purchases for Iran's nuclear
and missile program may have come through an elaborate ruse to
avoid U.S. financial sanctions on dealings with Iranian banks.
In January, a major British bank, Lloyds TSB, agreed to pay
$350 million to settle accusations that it helped Iranian banks
conceal hundreds of millions of dollars worth of transactions
that passed through U.S. financial institutions. The scheme
began in the mid-1990s and continued until January 2007.
Banks in Iran are banned from doing business with U.S.
financial institutions under sanctions imposed by the U.S.
government. According to statements by the district attorney's
office in New York City and the Justice Department, Lloyds bank
employees avoided those prohibitions by routinely removing
identifying information from electronic wire transactions
involving Iranian banks. This practice, known as ``stripping,''
allowed the transactions to evade software filters within the
U.S. banking system designed to block money transfers involving
Iranian banks.
The statements by the DA and Justice said Lloyds handled at
least $300 million of Iranian transfers that ended at American
banks and billions of dollars in additional transactions passed
through U.S. financial institutions before ending up outside
the country. The CIA and FBI have started going through the
hundreds of thousands of individual transactions to determine
whether the Iranians were buying technology and material for
their nuclear and missile programs through the scheme,
according to law enforcement officials.
In a separate inquiry, New York District Attorney Robert
Morgenthau charged a Chinese businessman and his company in
early April with selling tons of sensitive material to Iran in
violation of the UN resolutions banning trade that could assist
Tehran's nuclear and missile programs. Tungsten, high-strength
maraging steel and other exotic metals with military uses were
sold from 2006 to 2008 to entities affiliated with the Iranian
Defense Industries Organization. The state-owned defense
company was already under American sanctions for activities
related to developing weapons of mass destruction. Since many
of the transactions were conducted in US dollars, the
indictment said the Chinese firm used fictitious names and bank
accounts to evade US financial prohibitions on dealing with
Iran.
In mid-April, Canadian police charged a Toronto man with
attempting to ship devices to Iran that could be used to enrich
uranium to what Canadian authorities described as ``weapons-
grade product.'' The Iranian-Canadian man was arrested on
charges of violating the UN sanctions on shipping technology
with nuclear applications to Iran after attempting to buy 10
devices known as pressure transducers from a company near
Boston. Transducers are sophisticated gas-pressure gauges that
can be used by pharmaceutical and food companies or in
centrifuges for enriching uranium. While the man told the
company he planned to ship the items to Dubai, authorities said
the ultimate destination was Iran.
If Iran's leaders decide to move forward toward a nuclear
weapon, they could exercise what's known as the ``breakout
option,'' following North Korea's example by withdrawing from
the nonproliferation treaty, throwing out the IAEA inspectors
and reconfiguring the centrifuges at Natanz to produce weapons-
grade material. As an alternative, Iran might have a parallel
enrichment program where the conversion and enrichment of
undeclared uranium is already underway or to which LEU from
Natanz could be shipped in the event of a breakout scenario.
American and other intelligence agencies don't know which
option Iran might choose, but the unclassified portion of the
National Intelligence Estimate released in December 2007 said
the U.S. intelligence community believes that Iran would use a
covert facility to move from low-enriched uranium to weapons-
grade material.
What It Means
Iran embarked on its nuclear program in the mid-1980s when
it was locked in a devastating war with Iraq. Iran lost
hundreds of thousands of people in eight years of war,
including some killed when Saddam Hussein used chemical
weapons. At the time, Tehran's determination to develop a
nuclear deterrent was unquestionably a reaction to the Iraqi
threat.
More recently, Iran's concerns focused on tough rhetoric
from President George W. Bush and fears of a U.S. invasion,
particularly in the months after the start of the war in Iraq
in March 2003. But motives are rarely black and white. Iran is
clearly driven to establish its nuclear credentials as part of
its determination to assume what it views as its rightful place
as a regional power. It has invested tens of millions of
dollars--as well as a big measure of its prestige--on winning
legitimacy for its enrichment program.
Along with understanding Iran's motives, examining the
course of Iran's nuclear program since its exposure in mid-2002
offers lessons in how the administration should proceed if it
wants to break the current stalemate and resolve the dilemma.
Publicly available U.S. intelligence reports and published
reports show that Iran had been running a military nuclear
program in parallel to the supposedly civilian one since the
late 1980s when its work was exposed in mid-2002. Critical work
was being conducted at military facilities on designing and
testing explosives for a warhead and developing nuclear-capable
missiles.
The international community, initially through the IAEA,
applied pressure on Iran to come clean about its secret nuclear
history. Iran dragged its feet, drawing out negotiations and
dodging the tough questions. By the end of 2003, several
factors had changed and Iran put the military aspects of its
program on hold and decided to suspend enrichment activities.
While the reasoning of Iran's leadership is unknown, one
factor was probably the presence of tens of thousands of U.S.
troops next door in Iraq. But the public assessment by U.S.
intelligence says Iran's decision was influenced primarily by
the increasing international scrutiny and pressure from the
exposure of its previously secret nuclear work.
The enrichment suspension lasted until the end of 2005. By
that time, Iran's leaders had a different assessment of the
obstacles they confronted. The United States was unlikely to
attack because it was bogged down in Iraq and rising oil prices
meant Iran could withstand the expected UN sanctions. So Iran
announced that it was resuming enrichment activities.
In his annual threat assessment in February, Admiral Blair
said that since the fall of 2003 Iran has conducted some
research and development that has potential military
applications. He said, however, that the U.S. does not know
whether Iran currently intends to develop nuclear weapons,
adding that Tehran ``at a minimum is keeping open the option to
develop them.''
What is certain is that Iran has developed a sustainable
enrichment capacity, from purifying uranium ore and converting
uranium oxide to the gas used as feedstock for centrifuges to
churning out LEU at Natanz. About 4,000 centrifuges were
spinning in February, the last date reported by the IAEA, with
1,600 waiting in the wings. Piping has been installed for
another 9,000 centrifuges and Iran has said it intends to
eventually operate 54,000 centrifuges in the vast underground
halls at Natanz. Because of its success in mastering enrichment
technology, Iran believes that it has secured its right to
continue enrichment.
Iran's success at Natanz raises the question of whether the
world can live with an Iran that continues to enrich uranium.
Some experts argue that enrichment is a fait accompli, so the
world should focus diplomatic efforts on stopping Iran from
taking the next step and beginning to enrich to a weapons-grade
level. Others contend that Iran cannot be trusted after years
of deception, so it must relinquish its right to enrich
uranium.
In one scenario, Iran would freeze enrichment at current
levels while its parliament ratifies the Additional Protocol,
which allows the IAEA to make more intrusive inspections on
short notice. Side agreements might be required to establish an
even tighter safeguards regime at Natanz, something officials
at the IAEA refer to as ``Additional Protocol Plus.'' Iran also
could be required to ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban
Treaty, which prohibits nuclear weapons testing.
Under this approach, Iran also would be required to answer
the IAEA's long list of outstanding questions raised by the
laptop documents and other sources about its weapons work and
related clandestine activities. Only after implementing a
tougher inspections regime and getting a clean bill of health
on the military questions could Iran resume enrichment at
Natanz at civilian levels.
This version would offer Iran the opportunity to disclose
any military aspects of its past program in exchange for the
right to move forward on civilian enrichment. But questions
remain about whether this deal would end the suspicion: Each
time Iran has told the IAEA it has come clean in the past, the
agency has discovered concealed aspects of its nuclear program.
And from Iran's perspective, disclosure of incriminating
details about its nuclear efforts might lead to an
international outcry that could scuttle any deal.
A second approach would take a tougher stance, requiring
Iran to relinquish all rights to enrichment and close down
Natanz and related facilities. Proponents of this view argue
that Iran cannot be trusted because of its long history of
concealing nuclear activities and they do not trust the spotty
record of the IAEA when it comes to identifying clandestine
nuclear programs.
Further, this group believes that allowing Iran to continue
enriching and stockpiling enough LEU, even without converting a
gram to weapons-grade, would give Iran greater power in the
region and could lead neighbors like Saudi Arabia, Egypt and
possibly Turkey to seek their own nuclear capabilities--a
cascade certain to increase the risks of a nuclear
confrontation.
Neither scenario is perfect because the ultimate solution
to the conundrum of Iran's nuclear ambitions is not technical,
but political. In testimony before the committee during two
days of public hearings on Iran in early March, Karim
Sadjadpour, an associate at the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace, contended that the nuclear dispute must be
viewed as a symptom of the broader mistrust between the U.S.
and Iran, not as an underlying cause of the tension.
Deadlines have come and gone with Iran, and so have
predictions about when it might have a nuclear weapon. The fact
that it has enriched a significant quantity of reactor-grade
uranium gives Iran the option of moving quickly if its leaders
make a political decision to build a bomb. And even if Iran's
current leaders do not proceed, the decision is inherently
reversible as long as it retains its enrichment capability.
A complicating factor is how Israel might respond if Iran
continues to increase its uranium stockpile. There have been
reports that Israel sought American support for an attack on
Iran's nuclear installations in the last months of the Bush
administration and was turned down. Israel's public stance has
been that Iran must give up its enrichment capabilities, so a
deal which allows Iran to continue to enrich would be expected
to keep the possibility of an Israeli attack on the table.
What We Do
Unclassified U.S. intelligence assessments and staff
interviews with government officials and diplomats in
Washington and foreign countries leave little doubt that Iran
has the technological and industrial capacity to eventually
develop an atomic bomb. In the unclassified judgment of U.S.
intelligence, only a political decision by the country's
leaders is likely to prevent Iran from someday producing a
nuclear weapon. And that decision is inherently reversible. At
a minimum, one goal of the administration's strategy on Iran
should be to provide the right balance of pressure and
opportunity to persuade the regime to agree not to take any
further steps toward enhancing its capability to build a bomb
and to accept strict verification standards.
Direct engagement must be part of that strategy, but after
30 years of distrust and inflammatory rhetoric, providing a
climate conducive to successful talks will require patience and
discipline. Even the threshold decisions are complicated: Do
bilateral talks start at lower levels to promote trust or at
the top where the decisions will be made? Should negotiations
proceed slowly and methodically or should a time table be
imposed to prohibit Iran from dragging out the process while it
adds to its uranium stockpile? Are preconditions, such as a
freeze on further enrichment, required? Will the international
community, particularly Russia and China, back sanctions tough
enough to persuade Iran that failure to reach an agreement will
carry severe consequences? Can Iran be permitted to retain its
capacity to enrich uranium despite its history of deception?
In its two days of hearings in March, the committee
explored the status of Iran's nuclear ambitions with two panels
of expert witnesses. Among the witnesses there was unanimous
support for the administration's overtures to Iran, a consensus
that the path to success will be long and difficult, little
support for tough preconditions to talks, and broad agreement
that the United States cannot do it alone.
``There's no serious unilateral option for the United
States,'' Richard Haass, the president of the Council on
Foreign Relations and a former director of policy planning at
the State Department, told the committee. ``And the goal should
be to get international agreement on what we want of Iran, what
we are prepared to do for Iran, but also what we are prepared
to do to Iran if we can't get that agreement.''
Developing a regime of tougher sanctions to pressure Iran
will require that Russia, China and other allies and friends
accept the need for actions that could cause them economic harm
because of their trade ties with Iran. Among the proposed
sanctions discussed at the hearings was curtailing Iran's
ability to import gasoline and other refined petroleum products
essential for its economy. Iran could retaliate by reducing or
even stopping exports of crude oil, which would raise the price
of oil and have dramatic economic consequences for many
countries.
Some analysts argue that setting an advance time table for
progress in talks is a recipe for failure. Their argument is
that it will take time for the United States to assure Iran
that it cannot afford the price of acquiring a nuclear arsenal
and that Washington recognizes Tehran as an influential
regional player. For others, however, time is more critical
because of Iran's progress toward nuclear weapons capacity.
They contend that Iran should understand, either privately or
publicly, that substantive progress on negotiations must occur
within a specific time frame or Iran's failure to abide by the
UN Security Council resolutions will trigger significant new
sanctions.
None of the witnesses proposed removing the possibility of
military action as a last resort, but there was an overriding
concern about the consequences of an attack on Iran either by
Israel or the United States. Two former White House national
security advisers, Zbigniew Brzezinski and General Brent
Scowcroft, warned the United States against military action in
an attempt to destroy Iran's nuclear installations, saying the
results would be chaotic and dangerous. Former U.S. Ambassador
Frank Wisner cautioned that an attack by Israel would threaten
the interests of the United States and other countries in the
region.
If negotiations occur on Iran's nuclear ambitions, a major
sticking point for the United States and its allies may be
whether to permit Iran to continue to enrich uranium as part of
a final deal. As a signatory to the NPT, it has a legal right
to enrich uranium solely for peaceful purposes. The United
States and other countries have argued, however, that Iran can
no longer be trusted with that right because of its past
deception, the evidence that its nuclear program has a military
dimension and its refusal to abide by UN Security Council
resolutions demanding that it suspend current enrichment
activities. For their part, Iran's leaders have maintained
steadfastly that they will not bargain away their enrichment
capability, which they say is solely for civilian purposes.
A few years ago, the United States and its allies thought
they could stop Iran's nuclear ambitions short of mastering the
enrichment process. Iran has crossed that line and now expects
the international community to put the stamp of legitimacy on
its activities as part of any talks. This would be a highly
controversial concession, even if it came with strings
attached. The toughest inspection regime and fullest disclosure
by Iran about the likely military aspects of its program might
not ease the anxieties of the Israeli government and some of
Iran's neighbors. In fact, coming clean about the military
aspects of its program, even if they are in the past, may
increase distrust among Iran's neighbors. Despite the potential
problems of permitting Iran to continue enriching in defiance
of the UN Security Council, the administration has indicated
that it is willing to begin talks with Iran without demanding a
suspension of enrichment, according to senior State Department
officials.
None of the hearing witnesses or other experts interviewed
predicted that it will be easy to engage Iran in meaningful
negotiations on the future of its nuclear ambitions. Winning
support from Russia, China and other countries for a united
front will require difficult diplomacy on several fronts. But
there is reason for optimism in the administration's
willingness to talk and the recent overtures toward Iran by
President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. A
diplomatic solution on the nuclear issue, or even the process
of engaging Iran, would open the door for more effective U.S.-
Iran relations on issues like extremism in the Middle East,
smoothing the departure of U.S. troops from Iraq and bringing
stability to Afghanistan. It could also avoid a nuclear arms
race in the Middle East.
