Iran and the NPT’s Grand Bargain

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A major news story the past few days has been the release of a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) by the National Intelligence Council (NIC) regarding Iran’s nuclear ambitions. This NIE has stirred a great deal of controversy because it reverses the NIC’s previous findings by stating that they now have a high degree of confidence that Iran shelved its nuclear weapons program in 2003, and a moderate degree of confidence that the program has not been resumed. 

For many, this suggests it may be time to pull back from an aggressive hard-line stance and to pursue a more diplomatic strategy, and, furthermore, it has resulted in a collective sigh of relief that perhaps we won’t end up embroiled in a military engagement on a front that the US can ill-afford at the moment (even presuming it were restricted to counter-proliferation air-strikes and dealing with the Iranian response.) However, the Bush Administration is engaged in a press to shift the focus to two other findings that have not been center-stage in the conversation. First, the statement with high confidence of suspension of a nuclear weapons program implies an equally high confidence that there was such a program in the first place. Second, the NIE proposes (also with high confidence) that the suspension of the weapons program was in response to international scrutiny and pressure. The take-home lesson that the Administration hopes people will be convinced of is that maintaining pressure is the key to rolling back Iran’s enrichment program.

Iran continues civilian uranium conversion and enrichment activities (conversion converts solid uranium to a gas that can be run through centrifuges in order to create an output that has a higher proportion of the fissionable isotope Uranium-235 [U-235]) that are under safeguards of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA.) The international community has asked Iran to suspend these activities until all the outstanding questions posed by the IAEA have been worked out. The Bush Administration is concerned because the same facilities that can do the work of producing Low Enriched Uranium (LEU) for a light water reactor (Iran’s stated intention) can be used to produce fissionable material  for nuclear weapons.

What is the threat involved with Iran’s development of uranium enrichment technologies? The NIE estimates that it is unlikely but theoretically possible that Iran could produce enough Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU) for a weapon by late in 2009, but more likely the time-frame would be sometime in the early to middle portion of the next decade. This is not in contradiction with the information that the IAEA has produced about where the Iranians are with respect to their capabilities currently. The November 15, 2007, IAEA report states that the Iranians have been operating eighteen 164 centrifuge cascades, and have enriched a small amount of material to about four percent U-235 (well under what is needed to produce even a feeble bomb.) To do the separative work required for a weapon (or for producing fuel on the scale needed for the power plant they hope to bring on-line) they would need significantly more plant.

The question is how Iran would get from being under safeguards with the IAEA knowing more-or-less exactly how much uranium they have run through the machines and (at least periodically making a determination of what its enrichment level is), to producing bomb-grade material and weaponizing it.

Two possibilities exist. One is that Iran might try to make some sort of strategic breakout of the regime. Any party to the NPT can withdraw (as North Korea did) with 90 days notice because ”extraordinary” events “jeopardize the nation’s supreme interests.” However, this is a risky path for Iran because support for immediate counter-proliferation strikes would probably be widespread. Also, while getting material from low enriched to high enriched may not be extremely burdensome, there are significant time lags. It is not as though Iran could declare withdraw and have a nuclear deterrent the next day.

The second possibility is probably the greater threat, but nonetheless presents nontrivial hurdles. It is the possibility that Iran will develop a covert parallel program in which it takes what it learns from its “aboveboard” activities and puts it to use in a secret facility somewhere else in the country. This is not a simple undertaking to be sure. These facilities are sizable, use a lot of power and other resources, require shipments of components and equipment, and require a great deal of skilled manpower to construct. Because of this, there are a lot of potential telltale signs that the intelligence community might be able to take advantage of from loose-lipped technicians to following the power-lines. However, if the Iranians could achieve this (and it is a big country with a government that can exercise strict controls to accomplish it), they might be able to produce a weapon covertly.

In getting to the initial point of this posting, an interesting question is whether the handling of Iran undermines the NPT’s grand bargain? The bargain of which I speak is the commitment of the nuclear weapon states to not hinder (and, in fact, to help) states develop peaceful nuclear technologies. While Iran has been under pressure to suspend its program until such time as it produces satisfactory answers to a series of unanswered questions, there is no reason to think that Iran’s pursuit of uranium enrichment could be permanently stopped (except voluntarily.) Iran has produced answers to a number of these outstanding questions, the answers provided (at least in part) can be seen in the November 15th IAEA report. These responses have so far been deemed insufficient. However, should these issues be cleared up, Iran would not be outside its rights to continue to work on uranium enrichment. Of course, the Bush Administration (and probably any feasible successor administration) would like to see Iran not suspend, but, rather, discontinue uranium enrichment.

The question at hand is whether denying that the NPT gives Iran the right to pursue enrichment for peaceful uses undermines the legitimacy of the bargain posed by the Treaty. In the eyes of states other than Iran and North Korea, will this denial be seen as a selective enforcement of the portions of the Treaty that the nuclear states find appealing while turning their back on the rest. In other words, is there a risk that reasonable states will say, ”the nuclear weapon states don’t mean what they say about allowing us to have peaceful nuclear technologies, they just want to maintain their oligopoly on nuclear fuel.”

There are a couple ways that the situation with Iran may be viewed. One is to view countries like Iran and North Korea as outliers, and, like outliers in Statistics, they may need to be removed from consideration to avoid a skewed picture of reality. Thus if Iran and North Korea, because of their past bad behavior, are put in a different box in terms of their treatment on nuclear issues, other countries may understand. However, states which are in good-standing may also say that the behavior of Iran and North Korea is just a cover for a subtext that undermines the Treaty’s legitimacy.

Like any rule of law, a Treaty’s legitimacy is in part derived from fair and impartial application. If one says Iran can’t pursue these technologies ever, even though they are a member of the regime (albeit not in full compliance), but India, which is not a member, should be given access to a wide variety of nuclear technologies, the message that may be heard is that what is important is not being a compliant member of the regime, but rather how good a relationship one has with the authorities. Some will say, as I think the Administration hopes, that the lesson that should be learned is that true constitutional democracies should be rewarded  and various untoward forms of governance punished, but the lesson learned may be that one should play golf with the judge and not worry about whether one stays inside the law or not, because your good relationship will stave off receipt of the same punishment as some other violator.

Without the deal that states can pursue all peaceful uses of nuclear technology, there is not much in the Treaty to keep most of the 183 members that are not declared nuclear weapon states engaged. Certainly the good-faith effort of the other five to disarm is in dire suspicion.            

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