by Eric Martin
The American Foreign Policy Project has put forth a fact-based, level-headed and insightful (warning pdf) policy paper on the Iranian nuclear issue. It is both a valuable primer on the contours of the background facts and ongoing process, and a useful guide to setting achievable objectives going forward.
The report cuts through the hype to provide the facts on the current intelligence:
Although we often hear it said or implied that Iran is clearly pursuing nuclear weapons, the facts are more complex than that.
The Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair has just re-affirmed the December 2007 finding that Iran shut downits weaponization and covert enrichment activities in Fall 2003, with no evidence of a re-start. What we know Iran to be doing is enriching uranium at Natanz, openly under IAEA safeguards, and improving its ability to enrich more efficiently, while slowly accumulating a small stockpile of low-enriched uranium. It is also building a heavy-water reactor at Arak. These projects will shorten the lead-time for developing a nuclear weapon, should Iran decide to do so in the future. That is the sense in which, as Mr. Blair puts it, we know Iran to be "developing a nuclear weapon capability" and "preserving a weapons option."
In practice, Iran's current path preserves at least three different options, the first and last of which are not mutually exclusive: (a) pursuing enrichment for nuclear energy use as a source of national pride and a symbol of Iran's refusal to be cowed, (b) using its enrichment as a bargaining chip in larger negotiations with the United States and its allies, or (c) pursuing a weapon either to deter a feared U.S. or Israeli attack, or to support aggressive goals, including expanding its influence in the region. The U.S. intelligence community believes that Iran probably has not yet made a firm decision with regard to nuclear weapons, and that decision may well depend in large part on what the United States and its allies do.
According to U.S. intelligence community estimates, Iran is not expected to accumulate enough fissile material for even a single weapon until sometime in the 2010-2015 time frame, and that would require a "break-out" that almost certainly would be detected. What this means, in Secretary of Defense Robert Gates' words, is that: "They're not close to a stockpile, they're not close to a weapon at this point, and so there is some time." The only effective way to illuminate – and, if necessary, constructively alter – Iran's intentions is to use that time for skillful and careful diplomacy.
Meanwhile, publicly assuming the worst in the absence of evidence – and issuing an immediate ultimatum based on that assumption — is a singularly bad idea. It will provoke a needless confrontation if the assumption is wrong. It will deprive Iran of a face-saving way to shift course if the worst-case assumption is correct. And continuing to threaten to bomb Iran – as Israel is doing – is the best way imaginable to make the worst-case scenario a self-fulfilling prophecy.
To reiterate some points made in the above excerpt, Iran will not be able to create a nuclear weapon unless either: (1) it "breaks out" from the IAEA monitoring process which would set off all types of alarm bells (and would leave us a window to act military should that be the option selected – though I oppose it); or (2) Iran has secret facilities that have thus far escaped detection – in which case bombing the known facilities would serve little purpose because the secret, hidden facilities represent the real threat in terms of weaponization. In fact, attacking Iran under such a scenario would likely lead the ruling regime to redouble efforts to create a weapon via those hypothetical secret facilities, only now with an even more antagonistic and hostile posture at precisely the time that easing tensions and normalizing relations would have added urgency.
More from the report on setting realistic, attainable objectives:
In setting goals for diplomacy, U.S. policy-makers should be guided by one basic question: What observable policy changes by Iran that are realistically achievable will make us most secure, given that Iran's present intentions are unknown?
"Give up the pursuit of nuclear weapons" is not a meaningful demand since Iran denies it is pursuing weapons and the United States has no clear evidence with which to dispute that denial.
Past U.S. policy has focused to the point of obsession on forcing Iran to (a) answer all questions about alleged past weapons work, (b) suspend its open and safeguarded enrichment at Natanz, and (c) stop construction of a heavy-water reactor at Arak. Alliances have been built, UN resolutions pushed through, and sanctions imposed — all for the purpose of pressuring Iran to submit to these three demands.
The third objective responds to a longer-term concern and can be readily incorporated into the diplomatic strategy that we propose. However, in our judgment the first two of these objectives are simply the wrong priorities. Iran has shown no indication that it is willing to take such actions, even under international pressure, and focusing on these demands comes at the expense of other achievable steps that would provide greater benefit to our security. Rather than simply take up where the Bush Administration left off, the Obama Administration needs to re-think its objectives with three key points in mind:
(a) Open, declared, safeguarded enrichment is not the greatest threat. Let us suppose for the sake of contingency planning that Iran were to decide to pursue a nuclear weapon. How would it do so? U.S. officials are not unjustified in worrying that Iran might close off access to the Natanz facility, evict inspectors, and start transforming its low-enriched uranium into high-enriched weapons material. North Korea did something analogous with spent reactor fuel and plutonium a few years ago. It's a most unlikely scenario, however, in the case of Iran. Any such maneuver would be immediately known, confronting Iran with a high risk of a forceful response, from Israel if not others. This being so, any Iranian decision to pursue a weapon would much more likely follow a clandestine path.
(b) Focus on transparency. Past U.S. policy has so fixated on stopping all open, safeguarded enrichment in Iran that it has left itself half-blind to the more consequential risk of a clandestine program, should Iran decide to pursue a weapon.
Guarding against the clandestine risk requires, first and foremost, getting Iran to resume implementing the co-called "Additional Protocol" to each country's Safeguards Agreement with the IAEA. The Additional Protocol is not a panacea. One still needs intelligence to tell the IAEA where to look. But with the Additional Protocol one has a way of confirming or denying suspicions of clandestine nuclear work furnished by intelligence. Without it, there is none.
Adherence to the Protocol is voluntary, however. Brazil is pursuing enrichment, but hasn't signed the Protocol. Iran signed the Protocol and had been voluntarily implementing it, but stopped doing so in response to UN sanctions aimed at stopping Iran's safeguarded enrichment.
Iran has offered to resume applying the Additional Protocol and possibly accept other safeguards in the context of an overall settlement. There is only one way to find out whether this offer is serious or not, and what its contours are: start talking to Iran.
(c) The West probably can't have it all. Ideally, of course, one would get it all. Iran would simply capitulate: stop enriching, come clean about its past and resume implementation of the Additional Protocol. In the real world, this is unlikely to happen, and it is vitally important that the best not become the enemy of the good.
While the Additional Protocol probably should be required of all nations who engage in nuclear activities, it is currently a voluntaryarrangement that has to be bargained for. Moreover, as the relevant UN Security Council resolutions acknowledge, Iran is entitled under the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) to use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, and that right has long been understood to encompass enrichment under safeguards. Nothing in the NPT or Iran's Safeguards Agreement supports the notion that a country is barred from enriching uranium if it has ever pursued a weapons program, even one halted years ago.
What this means is that the dispute that has put Iran at loggerheads with the West is not over whether Iran may enrich uranium. It is over whether Iran must first suspend enrichment for a period and answer all questions about allegations of past weapons work to regain the "confidence" of the international community – before resuming enrichment.
In our judgment, this difference is not so fundamental as to be worth the conflict it has evoked. Achieving a temporary suspension of open and safeguarded enrichment at the cost of the Additional Protocol would be a pyrrhic victory – and might well just drive enrichment underground. And forcing Iran to answer potentially embarrassing questions about the past is far less important than safeguarding the future.
The statement "The West probably can't have it all" is one of the strongest critiques of the brash, petulant, bellicose foreign policy that has come to dominate the Republican Party in recent decades. It is a foreign policy posture that is born out of maximalist fantasy of the United States' position in the world, fed by delusions of unipolarity on steroids. In this cartoonish view, the United States is so omnipotent that it can traipse across the globe, disregarding the interests of other states (which, when counter to our own in any way, are de facto illegitimate), making demands that must be met en toto…or else! No compromise. No give and take.
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