Meeting the Challenge: U.S. Policy toward Iranian Nuclear Development (Page 4)

Continued from Page 3

Iran's Nuclear Program (Continued)

Iran’s Ability to Produce Weapons Grade Uranium

Iranian officials state that their centrifuge enrichment plant will provide low-enriched uranium fuel for its nuclear reactor in Bushehr.  The same plant and technology, however, could produce enough highly enriched uranium to fuel a nuclear bomb in a matter of weeks and, under certain circumstances, within the period between IAEA inspections.

As of November 2007, Iran had nearly 3,000 centrifuges in operation at Natanz. In July 2008, Ahmadinejad announced that an additional 3,000 of the next-generation P-2 centrifuges had been installed. The IAEA, however, was only able to confirm 4,000 installed centrifuges of which 3,500 were regularly enriching uranium. According to the IAEA, the Natanz plant has thus far only produced low-enriched uranium which would be suitable for nuclear power reactor fuel but unusable for nuclear weapons.  

Low-enriched uranium can be used as feedstock to create the fissile material for an atomic weapon: highly enriched uranium. According to a study commissioned by this Task Force, the centrifuges already installed at Natanz give Iran the technical capability to create the 20 kilograms of 93.1 percent highly enriched uranium necessary for a nuclear weapon in a month, or possibly in as few as 2-3 weeks.[1] However, Iran would first have to possess a sufficient feedstock—about 700 kilograms—of 4.8 percent low-enriched uranium. Iran does not yet appear to have an adequate supply of low-enriched uranium. The first physical inventory conducted at Natanz on December 12, 2007 found about 75 kilograms of uranium product with an enrichment of 3.8 percent.[2] More recent IAEA inspections found that since February 2007, 3970 kilograms of uranium hexafluoride (UF₆) had been fed into the operating cascades at Natanz.[3]

Estimating the enrichment capacity of the Natanz plant—and any parallel covert enrichment plant—is not difficult. Iran’s machines are similar to Pakistan’s P-1 centrifuges which in turn are based on early URENCO technology; an elementary separation factor of 1.3 is consistent with early URENCO technology. A separation factor of 1.2972 equates to fifteen separation stages to enrich natural uranium to 4.8 percent. Current estimates of the annual separation capacity of an early URENCO plant suggest that its machines would range from two to three separative work units per year.[4] 

Early pressurized water reactors used a low-enriched uranium fuel with uranium enriched to around 3 percent. Over time this enrichment has increased allowing for better fuel economy. Elemash, the Russian manufacturer of fuel for Russian pressurized water reactors, has indicated that reactors of the VVER-1000 type used at Bushehr can utilize fuel with an enrichment as high as 4.8 percent, the level of enrichment which the Iranian officials have stated that they have achieved. It is therefore reasonable to assume that any Iranian enrichment plant designed to produce low-enriched uranium fuel for its pressurized water reactor at Bushehr will produce uranium with an enrichment of 4.8 percent. However, even if an Iranian enrichment plant produces a somewhat lower enrichment than the 4.8 percent, it does not alter the conclusion that current safeguards do not prevent Iran’s centrifuge enrichment plant from potentially producing enough weapons grade uranium to produce a bomb without the knowledge of the international community.   

For the 3,000 centrifuges at Natanz, the assumption of 2.5 separative work units per machine per year would mean that the total plant would produce 7,500 separative work units per year. The plant would then produce 1,070 kilograms of 4.8 percent product per year requiring 11.7 metric tons of natural uranium feed. For such a plant, equilibrium time would be less than four hours, and its inventory in the enrichment stages themselves would only be about 5 kilograms of uranium. In order to calculate the plant equilibrium time and inventory, it is necessary to know the “stage holdup time,” which is the time it takes material to flow through one stage. French officials have given information on the equilibrium time of centrifuge enrichment plants which suggests the stage holdup time is 180 seconds.[5]  

Since the annual fuel requirements for Iran’s Bushehr pressurized water reactor is 14.2 metric tons, the current plant is not large enough to supply the fuel. Iran has indicated that it plans to expand the Natanz plant to 50,000 centrifuges by 2012. At 2.5 separative work units per machine per year this larger plant would produce 125,000 separative work units per year which would be able to produce 17.9 metric tons of 4.8 percent enriched fuel using 195 metric tons of natural uranium feed. Such a plant would be able to supply the fuel for Iran’s single pressurized water reactor. The equilibrium time for this plant would be less than four hours, and the inventory in the enrichment stages would be about 75 kilograms of uranium. 

Building a plant to produce weapons-grade highly enriched uranium from natural uranium requires a much larger number of enriching stages. Using 58 enriching stages including the feed stage produces uranium with an enrichment of 93.1 percent. Using six stripping stages excluding the feed stage produces tails with an enrichment of 0.287 percent. To produce one kilogram of highly enriched product at a plant with these characteristics requires 219 kilograms of natural uranium feed and 204 separative work units. Using centrifuges producing 2.5 separative work units per machine per year, and assuming that 20 kilograms of highly enriched uranium are required to produce a nuclear weapon, then about 1,630 centrifuges would be required to produce one weapon’s worth of highly enriched uranium in a year. 

If 4.8 percent uranium is used as feed instead of natural uranium and the tails enrichment remains 0.287 percent, then 20.6 kilograms of feed and 60.5 separative work units would be required to produce one kilogram of 93.1 percent enriched uranium. Since 204 separative work units are required to produce one kilogram of 93.1 percent enriched uranium starting from natural uranium, this means that the 4.8 percent enriched uranium already has 70 percent of the separative work units required to go from natural uranium to 93.1 percent enrichment. Table 5 shows variants of separative work units and Feed requirements to produce 20 kilograms of bomb-grade enriched uranium.

Table 5:Separative work Units (SWU) and Feed Required to Produce 20 kg of 93.1 percent Enriched Uranium From 4.8 percent Enriched Feed as a Function of the Number of Stripping Stages

*Excluding the feed stage. 

An intermediate number of stripping stages is preferable since it balances both the feed and the separative work units requirements. It is reasonable to assume, therefore, that any clandestine Iranian enrichment plant uses five stripping stages and has a tails enrichment of 2.26 percent. This clandestine enrichment plant would have an equilibrium time of about one day.

Should Iranian officials decide to end cooperation with international safeguards, the technical characteristics of the centrifuge enrichment process allow for relatively rapid production of highly enriched uranium. One of the major variables that would affect speed of enrichment is the number of centrifuges (Table 6).

Table 6: Time Required to Produce 20 kg of Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU) by Batch Recycling at Centrifuge Enrichment Plant at Natanz

Types of centrifuges also matter (Table 7).

Table 7: Time Required to Produce 20 kg of 93.1 percent Enriched Uranium From 4.8 percent Enriched Feed as a Function of the Number of Centrifuges*

*Tails enrichment 2.26 percent

**Includes one day to account for equilibrium time. 

There are two main scenarios by which Iran might breakout from safeguards. The first scenario involves Iran using a clandestine enrichment plant to produce highly enriched uranium from either its stock of low-enriched uranium or from natural uranium, and the second class of scenarios involves Iran producing highly enriched uranium by batch recycling, presumably at its enrichment plant at Natanz.

Under the first scenario, if Iran breaks out of safeguards and uses a stockpile of 4.8 percent enriched uranium as feed, then it can produce a weapon’s worth of highly enriched uranium—20 kilograms—in a few weeks or perhaps one month, a period less than the current safeguards can monitor. If Iran were to feed natural uranium into the enrichment plant, the time would be 100-200 days. In this scenario, however, Iran would not have to break safeguards, since they do not apply to Iran’s uranium mining operations. The IAEA would be unlikely to detect this production absent Iran allowing implementation of the Additional Protocol. 

Table 8: Time Required to produce 20 kilograms of 93.1 percent Enriched Uranium as a Function of the Number of Centrifuges in a Clandestine Enrichment Plant

*Includes one day to account for equilibrium time.

**Tails enrichment 2.26 percent

***Tails enrichment 0.287 percent

The second class of scenarios involves production of highly enriched uranium by batch recycling at Natanz (Table 9). If Iran carries out its planned expansion from the current 3,000 centrifuges at Natanz to 50,000 by 2012, the time required for Iran to produce a weapon’s worth of uranium will drop from 95 days to less than a month. The time required is so short that with the full 50,000 centrifuges, even 100 kilograms—five weapons’ worth of highly enriched uranium—could be produced in little more than a month, even in the extreme case that the centrifuge separative capacity is only 1.0 separative work units/year-machine, instead of 2.5. This means that Iran could produce enough highly enriched uranium for a bomb in between the current IAEA inspections. In such scenarios, the Additional Protocol would not add safety because both the centrifuge plant at Natanz and the stockpile of enriched uranium are permitted under current international arrangements.

Table 9: Time Required to Produce HEU by Batch Recycling in Centrifuge Enrichment Plant at Natanz

*Includes two days to account for equilibrium time and cascade fill time. 

Since a plant designed to produce 4.8 percent enriched uranium from natural uranium feed has only 26 percent of the enriching stages required to enrich natural uranium to highly enriched uranium, the enriched uranium would have to be passed through the plant three additional times. Each pass would be in a batch mode, where the cycle produced the feed required for the next cycle. This feed would include not only the uranium required to produce the product but also the plant inventory required to fill the plant for the next cycle. Operating the plant in this fashion raises criticality concerns, especially for the last cycle. [6] 

Diversion is easier when Iran is producing tens of thousands of centrifuges. Diverting even 6,000 centrifuges would reduce the time required to produce 20 kilograms of highly enriched uranium to just sixteen days. Though the Islamic Republic is currently using P-1 type centrifuges at Natanz, it has also received information from Pakistan to construct an improved P-2 centrifuge. The P-2 centrifuges have an output of 5 separative work units per machine per year, twice the output of the P-1 centrifuge. In early 2008, the Iranian government announced that it would install 6,000 of these P-2 centrifuges at Natanz.

A third Iranian option—albeit one that is more easily detectable—would be to reconfigure the centrifuge cascade by changing the piping. Centrifuge enrichment plants utilize parallel cascades to produce the desired output. Such a reconfigured plant could operate as if it had been designed from the beginning to produce highly enriched uranium and could operate continuously. Fully reconfigured, a 125,000 separative work units per year plant could produce 613 kilograms of 93.1 percent enriched uranium per year from natural uranium feed or 339 kilograms of 93.1 percent enriched uranium per month from 4.8 percent enriched uranium feed.

The current centrifuge enrichment plant at Natanz has about 3,000 centrifuges of the P-1 type. At 2.5 separative work units per machine per year, the plant’s output is 7,500 separative work units per year. The plant inventory is about five kilograms of uranium. If the Iranian objective is to produce 20 kilograms of highly enriched uranium, the feed, product and time required for each cycle may vary (Table 10).

Table 10: Time, Product and Feed Requirements for the Production of 20 kg of HEU by Batch Recycling in a 7,500 SWU/yr Plant Designed to Produce LEU

*Includes two days to account for equilibrium and cascade fill time. 

Since the plant at Natanz is designed to produce 4.8 percent product from natural uranium, its cascade is more tapered than is optimal for the upper stages of an enrichment plant designed to produce highly enriched uranium. As a result, some of the separative work units output of the plant cannot be utilized, especially during the latter cycles of the batch production process. The flow at the product end of the cascade restricts the plant. The time required per cycle is then determined by the amount of product required and the amount of product the plant can produce per day, not by a separative work units calculation. For example, the current 3,000 centrifuge plant at Natanz can produce 1,070 kilograms of product a year, or 2.93 kilograms of product per day. The third cycle in Table 10 produces 20 kilograms, and 20 divided by 2.93, equal to 6.83 days. In addition, equilibrium time of about four hours for each cycle and the cascade drain and fill time of about twelve hours adds about two full days for three cycles. Therefore, the production of 20 kilograms of highly enriched uranium requires a total of about 95 days, and so this method might not be attractive to Iranian officials. 

Should Iran fulfill its plans to install all 50,000 centrifuges, and if these were all of the P-1 type, then the plant would be able to produce 125,000 separative work units per year. Again, under such a scenario, the time required to produce 20 kilograms of highly enriched uranium would be approximately 17 days (Table 11). 

Table 11: Time, Product and Feed Requirements for the Production of 20 kg of HEU by Batch Recycling in a 125,000 SWU/yr Plant Designed to Produce LEU

*Includes two days to account for equilibrium and cascade fill time. 

To produce one hundred kilograms of highly enriched uranium–five weapons’ worth–would take slightly more than one month (Table 12).

Table 12: Time, Product and Feed Requirements for the Production of 100 kg of HEU by Batch Recycling in a 125,000 SWU/yr Plant Designed to Produce LEU

*Includes two days to account for equilibrium and cascade fill time. 

To produce one bomb’s worth of highly enriched uranium in a batch recycling process with 25,000 (Table 13) and 50,000 SWU per year (Table 14) would take just 37 and 24 days respectively.

Table 13: Time, Product and Feed Requirements for the Production of 20 kg of HEU by Batch Recycling in a 25,000 SWU/yr Plant Designed to Produce LEU

*Includes two days to account for equilibrium and cascade fill time. 

Table14: Time, Product and Feed Requirements for the Production of 20 kg of HEU by Batch Recycling in a 50,000 SWU/yr Plant Designed to Produce LEU

*Includes two days to account for equilibrium and cascade fill time. 

While Iran’s uranium enrichment program is significantly more developed than its plutonium reprocessing program, its plutonium program has been a cause of concern given the government’s failure to provide a complete history of its plutonium experiments and the discovery of highly enriched uranium on spent fuel containers. Iran is currently building a heavy water reactor at Arak which it claims will become operational by 2009. While Tehran says the reactor is strictly for research purposes, it is expected to produce enough plutonium for use in one to two bombs a year upon completion. Operative paragraph two of UNSC Resolution 1737 prohibits further construction on the facility, but Iran has failed to comply with this measure.

Though Resolution 1737 prohibits work on uranium enrichment-related activities and heavy water-related reprocessing activities, it does not prohibit the construction of light-water reactors, an exception carved out for the light-water reactor being constructed by Russia at Bushehr. This willingness to permit construction of a light-water reactor stems in part from the conventional wisdom that light-water reactors are less likely sources of proliferation, covert activity, and diversion to weapons programs as they use low-enriched uranium (LEU). This does not mean that light-water reactors do not pose a risk, however. The fresh fuel they require has enough U-235 to produce many bombs, and their spent fuel has enough plutonium to produce multiple weapons.

Part of the Iranian strategy in developing its nuclear program has been to argue that it has an “inalienable right,” under Article IV of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, to nuclear technology for peaceful purposes and is thus legally permitted to develop a nuclear fuel cycle. Iran, so goes the argument, must acquire a complete nuclear fuel cycle so as to achieve “energy independence.” This claim has come under scrutiny for two important reasons. First, while the Non-Proliferation Treaty does assure its signatories the right to nuclear technology for peaceful purposes, it does not necessarily ensure them a right to a complete nuclear fuel cycle. Outside sources, for example, might provide Iran with nuclear fuel to guarantee that there is no diversion to a weapons program. Tehran, however, has rejected such a possibility on several occasions and continues to insist it must have access to all aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle. This insistence on obtaining a full nuclear full cycle rather than just nuclear energy per se remains a source of international concern, especially given doubts as to whether an indigenous nuclear fuel cycle is either economically feasible or capable of leading to “energy independence.”

Whatever enrichment strategy the Islamic Republic might pursue, the fact remains that it can produce highly enriched uranium quickly enough to build a nuclear bomb. Inspections are not fool-proof, even for declared facilities. Because inspectors do not conduct round-the-clock, real-time verification, inspections are more political than technically effective. Between March 2007 and February 2008, the IAEA conducted only nine unannounced inspections in Iran. There were no unannounced inspections for three months between the scheduled inspections. This means under current verification mechanisms, it could take the IAEA one month to detect any Iranian violation of its nuclear commitments. Should Tehran divert material, the IAEA will only find out after the fact. Given the slow pace of UN Security Council diplomacy, it will take days if not weeks to authorize any counter-action.

The IAEA uses cameras to monitor facilities and sends inspectors to check seals placed on facilities. However, both because the IAEA must gain the consent of the inspected party and because of funding constraints, it does not remotely monitor facilities in near-real-time in Iran. Given the Islamic Republic’s history of cheating, obfuscating, and lying, the lack of near-real-time monitoring represents a major procedural weakness. The IAEA or other international consortia should break with current practice, and use remote cameras which provide near-real-time surveillance capabilities and employ on-site inspectors 24 hours per day, seven days each week. However, video monitoring can only apply to Iran’s declared sites. Written into any agreement should be verification procedures to address undeclared nuclear programs inside the country. Given the IAEA’s inability to detect undeclared activities with confidence, however, such verification procedures might resemble mechanisms applied by the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.

Legality of Iranian Nuclear Activity

Manouchehr Mottaki, the Islamic Republic’s Foreign Minister, denies that Iran has violated its Non-Proliferation Treaty obligations and argues both that the Islamic Republic has an inalienable right to nuclear development, including uranium enrichment, and that the United Nations Security Council Resolutions that demand Iran stop enriching uranium are illegal. This claim is based on an incomplete interpretation that does justice neither to the text nor expressed intention of the Treaty. First of all, in addition to the Article II ban on production of nuclear weapons, Article III.1 stipulates that non-nuclear weapon state parties to the Treaty must accept and abide by a safeguards agreement concluded with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) for the purpose of verifying compliance with Article II. The IAEA has found Iran to be in breach of that safeguards agreement and, consequently, of the NPT. Secondly, the inalienable right to nuclear development that Iran claims under Article IV.1 of the NPT must be understood within the context of the goals and intentions of the Treaty: nonproliferation. No right, therefore, can be claimed under the NPT to a technology—such as enrichment—that cannot be adequately safeguarded and places a state mere days or hours from having weapons-grade nuclear material.

Iran’s assertions of legality rest upon an interpretation of the NPT which holds that: (1) the only obligations incurred by non-nuclear-weapon state parties to the NPT (under Article II) are to neither acquire nuclear weapons nor divert nuclear materials for the purpose of constructing such a weapon (2) the NPT recognizes (in Article IV.1) that the development, research, production and use of nuclear energy is an inalienable right that constitutes a jus cogens—a preemptory norm that cannot be derogated by any law or treaty.

First, the Iranian government not only declares itself compliant with the terms of the NPT, but also claims that the International Atomic Energy Agency is of the same opinion.[7] Such a claim rests upon reading the NPT as placing only an obligation “not to manufacture or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons or other explosive devices….”[8] However, while it is true that the IAEA has certified that Iran has not diverted knownnuclear material from peaceful purposes, the claim that the manufacture of nuclear weapons or IAEA-verified diversion of nuclear materials for such purposes are the sole criteria of illegality is spurious.

In reality, the NPT imposes more obligations on signatories than Iranian officials acknowledge. Indeed, the NPT requires that states accept and abide by a safeguards agreement concluded with the IAEA, in addition to the ban on production of nuclear weapons prescribed in Article II, as  Article III.1 stipulates:

Each non-nuclear-weapon State Party to the Treaty undertakes to accept safeguards, as set forth in an agreement to be negotiated and concluded with the International Atomic Energy Agency in accordance with the Statute of the International Atomic Energy Agency and the Agency’s safeguards system, for the exclusive purpose of verification of the fulfillment of its obligations assumed under this Treaty with a view to preventing diversion of nuclear energy from peaceful uses to nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices.

The authority and conditions for the IAEA’s application of safeguards are further spelled out in the Agency’s Statute, Article XII.C, which requires that:

The staff of inspectors shall also have the responsibility of obtaining and verifying the accounting referred to in sub-paragraph A-6 of this article and of determining whether there is compliance with the undertaking referred to in sub-paragraph F-4 of article XI, with the measures referred to in sub-paragraph A-2 of this article, and with all other conditions of the project prescribed in the agreement between the Agency and the State or States concerned. 

It is the first of these requirements, provided for by sub-paragraph A-6 of Article XII of the IAEA Statute, that is of particular concern here. It declares that states subject to IAEA safeguards must “account for source and special fissionable materials supplied and fissionable products and determine whether there is…use in furtherance of any military purposes.”[9]

On May 15, 1974, Iran signed a Safeguards Agreement with the IAEA accepting these requirements:

The Government of Iran undertakes, pursuant to paragraph 1 of Article III of the Treaty, to accept safeguards, in accordance with the terms of this Agreement, on all source or special fissionable material in all peaceful nuclear activities within its territory, under its jurisdiction or carried out under its control anywhere, for the exclusive purpose of verifying that such material is not diverted to nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices.[10]

The IAEA Board of Governors has long questioned Iranian compliance with the Safeguards Agreement (See Appendix A). In September 2003, an IAEA Board of Governors resolution called for Iranian cooperation and transparency, citing “failures by the Islamic Republic of Iran to report material, facilities and activities as it was obliged to do pursuant to its safeguards agreement.”[11] After this warning, on November 10, 2003, the Director General of the IAEA reported that Iran was not living up to its obligations under the Agreement.

Consequently, on November 26 2003, the IAEA’s Board of Governors passed a resolution deploring Iran’s “past failures and breaches of its obligation to comply with the provisions of its Safeguards Agreement.”[12] The Board of Governors continued to express these concerns and calls for transparency in a number of resolutions adopted over the course of the next two years. Then, on September 24, 2005 the Board explicitly found that “Iran’s many failures and breaches of its obligations to comply with its NPT Safeguards Agreement…constitute non-compliance in the context of Article XII.C of the Agency’s Statute,” and referred the matter to the United Nations Security Council.[13]

This IAEA-verified breach of Iran’s obligations under its Safeguards Agreement constitutes non-compliance with the IAEA Statute and also with the NPT; Iran has clearly not “accepted the safeguards, as set forth in [the safeguards] agreement,” as specified by Article III.1 of the NPT.

Second, Tehran’s assertion that “the right of the people of Iran to peaceful uses of nuclear technology is a clear example of the realization of ‘the right to development,’ ‘right to natural resources’ and ‘right to self-determination,’”[14] is also questionable. The basis for this argument is Article IV.1 of the NPT: “Nothing in this Treaty shall be interpreted as affecting the inalienable right of all the Parties to the Treaty to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination and in conformity with articles I and II of this Treaty.”[15]

By claiming that nuclear development, including enrichment, is done “according to the NPT regulations and the IAEA Statute, and is for absolutely peaceful purposes,” Iran has further argued that “the UN Security Council can not decide against this program or try to limit this inalienable right.”

Thus, Iran claims a peremptory right to nuclear development that cannot be derogated by any international law or institution. According to this interpretation, the right to nuclear development is not simply granted by Article IV of the NPT, but is recognized as an inalienable and fundamental right of sovereign states. As the right is not created by law or treaty, Iran claims, the UN cannot abrogate this right, even by invoking Article 103 of the Charter, which states that “in the event of a conflict between the obligations of the Members of the United Nations under the present Charter and their obligations under any other international agreement, their obligations under the present Charter shall prevail.”

The Iranian argument is spurious; it does justice neither to the text nor expressed intention of the Treaty. First of all, it must be understood that for any non-nuclear weapon state party to the NPT, the right to develop, research, produce and use nuclear energy is subordinate to the goals of nonproliferation. The Treaty makes its conditionality clear: “Nothing in this Treaty shall be interpreted as affecting the inalienable right of all the Parties to the Treaty to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination and in conformity with articles I and II of this Treaty [italics added].”[16] Therefore, any circumstance in which a state’s nuclear program is intended either for non-peaceful purposes or gives the state nuclear weapons constitutes a violation of Article IV.1. The central question for interpreting this right, therefore, is how broadly or narrowly to understand the non-proliferation condition placed on nuclear development. 

The Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, which sets out the generally accepted principles of treaty interpretation, states that, “a treaty shall be interpreted in good faith in accordance with the ordinary meaning to be given to the terms of the treaty in their context and in the light of its object and purpose.”[17] Should additional means of interpretations be necessary, the Vienna Convention allows that “recourse may be had to supplementary means of interpretation, including the preparatory work of the treaty and the circumstances of its conclusion.”[18] In the case of the NPT, there is sufficient textual, contextual, and supplementary evidence to support an interpretation in which civil nuclear development is a secondary objective, subordinated to the goal of containing the spread of nuclear weapons (as stated in Articles I and II).

Iran’s claims about the legal status of its nuclear development are, therefore, doubtful. Given the safeguards obligations incurred by signatories of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which the IAEA Board of Governors has found Iran to have violated, Iran is clearly in breach of the NPT. Furthermore, no right can be claimed under the NPT to a technology—such as enrichment—that undermines nonproliferation by placing a state mere days or hours from having weapons-grade nuclear material.

Responses to Iranian enrichment

In early 2006, the Bush administration and other countries formed the “Permanent Five (of the United Nations Security Council) Plus One (Germany)” – the “P5+1” grouping on the issue. In the three years prior to the alignment of these six countries, diplomacy had been led by three European Union countries – Britain, France, and Germany, acting as the so-called “EU-3.” The EU-3 had reached two agreements with the Islamic Republic for it to suspend uranium enrichment, but in both cases these broke down, most recently in August 2005, shortly after Ahmadinejad’s election.   The P5+1 gained more diplomatic weight when, on May 31, 2006, the United States offered to join nuclear talks with Iran if it first suspended its uranium enrichment, but Iranian authorities have labeled this a precondition and refused.  On June 1, 2006, the P5+1 agreed to a package of incentives and disincentives to be offered to Iran, including offering Iran entry into the World Trade Organization, an easing of U.S. sanctions, energy partnerships, guarantees of nuclear fuel for a civilian nuclear reactor, and other benefits in exchange for verifiable guarantees that Iran’s nuclear program could not be used for a nuclear weapon.   Tehran ultimately rejected the deal.

After a renewed attempt to break the diplomatic impasse and after Resolution 1696 foreshadowed for Tehran the consequences of defiance, the IAEA referred the Iranian case to the United Nation’s Security Council which, on December 23, 2006, unanimously passed Resolution 1737, imposing sanctions on some trade and technology sharing as well as targeted sanctions against individuals and entities linked to Iran’s nuclear program (See Appendix C). On March 24, 2007, the United Nations Security Council augmented sanctions with the passage of Resolution 1747 and, a year later, augmented them yet again with Resolution 1803. But Russia, China, and other countries have been reluctant to impose harsh sanctions, which suggest there will be greater difficulty in passing a new sanctions resolution. Under French President Jacques Chirac, the French government suggested that Paris might drop insistence that the Iranian government suspend enrichment and instead settle for a “partial suspension.”   While Nicolas Sarkozy has taken a far tougher line on Tehran than Chirac, Iranian authorities may cite Chirac’s more generous offers as precedents from which to start bargaining.

The passage of Resolutions 1737, 1747, and 1803 came amid an effort by the Bush administration to ratchet up military pressure on Iran. In his January 10, 2007 statement on Iraq, President Bush signaled that the Administration is now favoring a containment option in the case of Iran.  He confirmed in his speech that the United States would send a second U.S. aircraft carrier group into the Persian Gulf, and he announced the extended deployment of Patriot anti-missile batteries in the region, reportedly in Kuwait and Qatar. He has also proposed increased military aid to, as well as increased intelligence sharing with, the Persian Gulf states.  Other reports say that U.S. aircraft have increased overflights of the Iran-Iraq border.  At the same time, U.S. forces in Iraq arrested several Qods Forces officers allegedly involved in arming Iraqi Shi‘i militias, including the Jaysh al-Mahdi. On September 20, 2007, U.S. forces arrested another alleged Qods Force operative in Sulaymaniyah, Iraqi Kurdistan. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, has said that he sees the U.S. buildup as a means of building leverage against Iran that could be useful in bolstering U.S. diplomacy, and he has repeatedly denied that the military moves are a prelude or part of planning for any U.S. military attack on Iran.   However, the President and his top aides have continued to stress that military options against Iran’s nuclear facilities remain “on the table." Although the emphasis of Bush Administration policy has been to pressure Iran to a degree greater than of previous administrations, the Bush administration has nonetheless engaged Tehran directly on Afghanistan and Iraq.

The Bush Administration has offered broader direct dialogue if Iran curbs its nuclear program.  On May 31, 2006, the State Department announced that it would join multilateral talks with Iran if it were to suspend its uranium enrichment, although the State Department appears to have waved this precondition and redline when, on July 15, 2008, it announced that Undersecretary of State William Burns would attend multilateral talks with the Islamic Republic’s nuclear negotiator.

However, the intelligence and policy communities in Washington and abroad do not know how far the Iranian government is from acquiring a nuclear bomb. Portions of a U.S. National Intelligence Estimate leaked in August 2005 reported that the Iranian regime was between five to ten years away from acquiring a nuclear bomb, but this Estimate assumed that Iran’s production of nuclear fuel was entirely domestic.   Should the Iranian government receive nuclear material from other sources—Tehran has yet to fully account for all of its uranium imports from Beijing, for example, and its relations with Pyongyang continue to develop—then it could happen much more quickly. Judgments about how far Iran may be from a bomb depend in part on an estimate of how difficult it would be for Iran to acquire nuclear materials from outside sources. A study commissioned for this report found that once Iran has amassed sufficient amounts of low-enriched uranium feedstock, it might be able to produce 20 kilograms of highly enriched uranium—the minimum amount necessary for a bomb—in as little as 16 days. This is the worst-case scenario, but one that certainly is possible.

I ndeed, Iran could arguably achieve significant strategic success by simply obtaining a nuclear capability—that is, the technological base and infrastructure necessary to produce enough weapons grade uranium for use in a weapon—without even producing a nuclear bomb. This would offer them a “breakout capability,” which would allow them to produce a weapon after withdrawing from the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, expelling inspectors, and enriching uranium to bomb-grade levels at the time of its choosing, as North Korea has done.

Page 5: "Iran's Nuclear Program" Continued