Don’t Bomb Iran

Below is an extract from a good discussion go to this page at TPMCAFE

First on poster listed the common allegation, then another poster replied with some explanations

ALLEGATIONS

Evidence

I described the IAEA’s issues with Iran yesterday and discussed some US suspicions of Iran here.

A partial list of suspicious Iranian actions includes:

–failing to disclose numerous nuclear programs and activities to the IAEA for  a very long time.  These include plutonium separation experiments, uranium enrichment and conversion experiments, two different enrichment programs (laser and P-2 centrifuge), a huge centrifuge facility, the importation of various uranium compounds, and attempts to procure hot cells.

– Concealing sites and destroying evidence (e.g., burying the Natanz centrifuge facility and sanitizing a facility where Iranian scientists enriched uranium).

–Starting an expensive nuclear program in the middle of the war with Iraq.

–Failing to cooperate fully with the IAEA.  The IAEA has repeatedly criticized Iran for being  slack about providing access to documents and personnel.

–Making false statements to the IAEA.  For example, Iran falsely claimed that it hadn’t enriched uranium when it actually had. Iran also claimed that it hasn’t procured any foreign components for its P-2 centrifuge program.  That wasn’t true either.

–Possessing the design for a missile warhead that might be for the delivery of nuclear weapons.

–Possessing documents and conducting experiments that have few, if any, non-weapons applications ( the uranium casting document and polonium-210 experiments).

–Developing a heavy water reactor (a potentially excellent plutonium factory) that Tehran claims is for producing medical isotopes, even though they already have a reactor with unused capacity that is capable of doing so.

–Tehran’s insistence on continuing with its program RIGHT NOW when there’s no good reason for them to do so.

–Iran claims to be developing a large civilian nuclear power program but doesn’t have anywhere near the required amount of indigenous uranium.  (It does, however, have enough uranium for about 250-300 nuclear weapons.)

On one hand,  I find it hard to believe that these are all coincidences. It’s not that any one is all that damning  (for example, an economically inefficient project is not by itself very convincing evidence of ill intent), but there’s a pretty long list of things to explain away.

On the other…

The evidence that Iran is currently  pursuing undeclared nuclear activities isn’t all that good - many of the activities discussed above took place some years ago (e.g. plutonium and polonium experiments, the acquisition of P-1 centrifuge documents and components, uranium imports)  A track record of untrustworthy behavior gives good reason to be suspicious, but it’s not damning evidence of a nuclear weapons program.

Furthermore, when one looks at what Iran is currently doing in the nuclear arena, the list is not as scary as you might think.  Iran has, for example, said it won’t reprocess spent reactor fuel, it has given up on laser enrichment, and the IAEA hasn’t found any new safeguards violations for a while.

It could well be that Iran has something to hide But there are alternative explanations for some of Iran’s lapses of cooperation.  For example, failure to turn over all the relevant documents could be the product of bureaucratic incompetence or right hand/left hand issues. It’s worth noting that Iraqi officials destroyed some WMD and related materials without the knowledge of Saddam Hussein. Snafus like that were partly responsible for Iraq’s inability to account for some of its WMD and related materials.

Recent bureaucratic changes in Iran may give some plausibility to the above explanations.

Jeffrey already posted about the bureaucratic changes related to Iran’s nuclear program. I will just add that a decreasing role for  Iran’s military could mean a couple of things:

1.A decision to end (or at least reduce) nuclear weapons efforts.

2. Some of Iran’s lack of cooperation may be the result of incompetence and turf fighting which frequently accompanies bureaucratic shifts.  For example, some documents may have been lost, others may have been deliberately withheld by dissenting officials.

Constraints

Even if Iran develops a uranium enrichment capability, it still faces some constraints:

–Iran has limited amounts of indigenous uranium.  This is a possible choke point -  if Iran, for example has to export its uranium to Russia and can’t import any of its own , they’ll have limited

–the CIA has said that Iran probably can’t use safeguarded facilities to produce fissile material without getting caught.

–the IAEA has sweet skills, provided that they get the proper access.  Example - the Iranians cleaned out and repainted a workshop to cover up the fact that they had enriched uranium there.  The IAEA still determined what Iran had done in remarkable detail.

–Testing - if Iran can’t test nuclear weapons,  they can only produce fairly simple weapons - not the kind that are deliverable by longer-range missiles.

The issue which is very much open to question, is whether they can put their skills gained from centrifuge R&D to use in secret facilities.  But most experts seem to think that it is fairly easy to hide centrifuge facilities, but not so easy to hide uranium conversion facilities [cautionary note - the jury still seems to be out on the latter issue].

On top of that, it seems to me that Iran would have a tough time concealing the movement of tons and tons of  uranium to a secret conversion facility.   Iran could go the route of acquiring centrifuge feedstock from abroad, but that carries its own risks.

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SOME EXPLANATIONS