Iranian nuclear program

From Citizendium, the Citizens' Compendium

Iran has a nuclear program that is highly controversial, with arguments that it is intended to result in nuclear weapons. Its government insists that its uranium enrichment work is permissible under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), of which it is a signatory as a nation without nuclear weapons.

It is not a given that Iran has made the internal decision to commit to nuclear weapons production, but many Western groups want to stop any capability to do so. If they wanted a peaceful program, one possibility to lower tensions would be for them to buy power reactor fuel from outside countries, perhaps shipping low-enriched uranium outside the country.

President of Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has argued that it is unfair to impose nuclear restrictions on countries when there is a generally acknowledged Israeli nuclear weapons program. A counterargument, however, is that Israel is not a signatory to the NPT while Iran agreed to it.

Current negotiations

The International Atomic Energy Agency has brokering talks on alternatives, with a draft agreement in October 2009 "on how to provide Iran with fuel for a civilian nuclear research facility." ^[1] France, Russia and the United States approved the draft, but Iran asked for more time, saying it was considering it favorably but would probably answer in the following week.^[2]

Iran approved the agreement but with reservations. Their most important request for change is that they want to ship low-enriched uranium out of the country in stages, while the other countries wanted them to ship 70% at once, leaving them without enough for any plausible weapons construction.^[3]

Intelligence issues

One of the factors that had gone into Western thinking was a National Intelligence Council estimate that concluded that Iran had ceased active weapons research in 2003. According to the unclassified summary,

We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program1; we also assess with moderate-to-high confidence that Tehran at a minimum is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons. We judge with high confidence that the halt, and Tehran’s announcement of its decision to suspend its declared uranium enrichment program and sign an Additional Protocol to its Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Safeguards Agreement, was directed primarily in response to increasing international scrutiny and pressure resulting from exposure of Iran’s previously undeclared nuclear work.^[4]

On 21 September 20088, Iran sent a letter to IAEA “that a new pilot fuel-enrichment plant is under construction,” Located in an underground facility in a mountain 100 mi/160 km southwest of Tehran, near the city of Qom, it has been described as inside a highly guarded Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) base. ^[5]

On 25 September 2009 US President Barack Obama, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy accused Iran of building a secret nuclear facility - a charge Iran denied. Mr. Obama, made the announcement Friday at the G20 economic summit in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The leaders accused Iran's government of building a covert, underground plant to produce nuclear fuels. They insisted the International Atomic Energy Agency have access right away to ensure it is not being built to produce nuclear weapons. Mr. Obama said Western countries presented evidence of the facility to the IAEA Thursday. He said "the size and configuration of this facility is inconsistent with a peaceful program."

The recent disclosures of a hidden uranium enrichment facility at Qom has drawn questions on the intelligence work. This facility was built underground, inside a base of the IRGC. Its 3000 separation centrifuges are considered too few to produce enough refined uranium for a civilian nuclear power project, but enough for three bombs.

Special nuclear materials manufacturing

Describing the steps in building nuclear weapons is beyond the scope of this article, but a key step is obtaining weapons-grade uranium or plutonium. Highly enriched uranium (HEU) can be used directly in bombs, and less enriched uranium can be a feedstock for plutonium. Low-enriched uranium is a dual-use material applicable to electrical power generation and research. In general, it is easier to make a uranium bomb, but harder to miniaturize it to a point that it will fit into a missile warhead.

The National Intelligence Estimate stated "We assess centrifuge enrichment is how Iran probably could first produce enough fissile material for a weapon, if it decides to do so. Iran resumed its declared centrifuge enrichment activities in January 2006, despite the continued halt in the nuclear weapons program. Iran made significant progress in 2007 installing centrifuges at Natanz, but we judge with moderate confidence it still faces significant technical problems operating them.

• We judge with moderate confidence that the earliest possible date Iran would be technically capable of producing enough HEU for a weapon is late 2009, but that this is very unlikely.
• We judge with moderate confidence Iran probably would be technically capable of producing enough HEU for a weapon sometime during the 2010-2015 time frame. INR judges Iran is unlikely to achieve this capability before 2013 because offoreseeable technical and programmatic problems.) All agencies recognize the possibility that this capability may not be attained until after 2015."^[6]

Facilities within the system include:^[7]

"Front End"

• uranium mining
  • Saghand mine in Yazd
  • Gchine mine near Bandar Abbas
• Milling and uranium conversion
  • Industrial-scale: Esfahan Nuclear Technology Center (ENTC)
  • laboratory-scale: at the Tehran Nuclear Research Center (TNRC)
• uranium enrichment
  • Gas centrifuge technology
    • Natanz
    • Qom; the Qom facility was kept secret until recently, although IAEA inspection is planned ^[8]
  • Laser-based uranium enrichment
    • TNRC
    • Lashkar Ab’ad
• Fuel fabrication: ENTC
• Light water reactor, civilian use: Bushehr

"Back End"

• Heavy water production: Arak
• Heavy water reactors, plutonium producing: Arak, scheduled to be operational in 2014

Other weapons components

Vulnerability analysis

In 2006, before the existence of the Qom enrichment site was reported in the open literature, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology considered the feasibility of an attack on the critical links in the Iranian system, modeled after the 1981 Raid on Osirak. This did not assume that Iranian defenses include the Russian S-300 series advanced surface-to-air missile, or the less capable but still potent Chinese derivative of the S-300.

This analysis said the Israeli Defense Forces do not have the capability, unless they used ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads, to wipe out the entire system. "To have a reasonable chance of success, both in the mission and in the ultimate goal of rendering Iran’s nuclear program impotent, the target set must be narrowed to concentrate on the critical nodes in Iran’s nuclear infrastructure... Iran’s nuclear complex has three critical nodes: Esfahan, with its conversion facility, the Natanz enrichment facility, and the heavy water plant and future plutonium production reactors at Arak."^[9]

Delivery systems

To assess the nuclear threat, one must consider the means of delivery, which, considering the potential target, would most likely be a ballistic missile although sea-based cruise missiles or even suicide submarines are possible. The Iranian Air Force has quite limited capabilities and would be unlikely to be able to penetrate a strong air defense carrying a gravity bomb.

Ballistic missiles are limited both in weight and size of the payloads they can carry. The open literature does not have clear indications of the state of, or even existence, of Iranian nuclear warhead designs. If, however A.Q. Khan's P-1 or P-2 designs are assumed, which derive from a Chinese weapon of 500 kg weight and 1 m diameter, that can be carried by Iran’s Shahab-3 (missile).^[10]

References