Iran's Nuclear March: Is it Unstoppable ?

Even as West Asia is embroiled in the midst of its latest crisis in Egypt, the hazy contours of its spillover in the region could begin to emerge. As the region plunges into deeper crisis, attention is bound to turn towards the continuing Iranian nuclear quagmire and the unrelenting efforts of the West to bring the Iranian regime to agree to what they term as a coherent negotiating strategy over Iran’s nuclear ambitions.This, in a West Asia, whose strategic equations remain inflammatorily fragile, and more so, with the latest turn of events.

During the recently concluded Istanbul meeting in January 2011, the expectations for a tangible breakthrough between the Islamic Republic of Iran and six negotiating nations; the P5+1 (permanent members of the Security Council plus Germany) were rather bleak. While the US continues to harp on the twin-track approach, one of simultaneously engaging Tehran in talks whilst exerting pressure by means of sanctions, the hardline stance adopted by Tehran was clearly visible. The Istanbul talks saw a forcefully assertive Iranian delegation headed by the Supreme National Security Council’s Secretary, Saeed Jalili where he stressed on “prerequisites” for any future negotiations, thus challenging the twin-track approach taken by the West, led by Washington.

Iran is unwilling to enter into any potential framework for talks wherein it is projected as a “violator”. The regime in Tehran appears to be working towards a scenario in which the West will come around to accept Iran’s right to enrichment as a confidence-building measure and suspend prevailing sanctions. This newfound assertiveness was in evidence in an editorial published in the Iranian hardline daily, ‘Kayhan’, just around the outset of the Istanbul talks. The editorial accentuated the need for defining a purpose for any future negotiations and condemned Iran’s negotiating strategy during the era of the reformists while stressing that it had, in fact, caused significant harm to the country. By virtue of literature like the one cited above, it is evident that the entrenched political discourse doing the rounds within Iran is one to be treated “at par” and not that one of an inferior.

In a recent study on Iranian nuclear capabilities, Mark Fitzpatrick at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, London has cautioned that the Iranian strategic weapons programme should certainly not be taken lightly. That Iran has violated its obligations of the NPT safeguards and obstructed IAEA investigations in nuclear-weapons-related work is well documented. Ever since the mid-1980s when uranium enrichment was initiated, Tehran has chosen to pursue both the plutonium and highly enriched uranium (HEU) route towards realising its nuclear dream.

Fitzpatrick has argued in his article that although the plutonium path is farther away, the Bushehr reactor, due to going on stream soon, is a potential source of weapons-usable plutonium. Its annual discharge rate of approximately 25 tonnes of spent fuel will, in theory, contain enough plutonium for a few dozen nuclear weapons. However, the ‘reactor-grade’ plutonium produced as a by-product of electricity generation is unsuitable for weapons.

In so far as the heavy-water research reactor under construction at Arak is concerned, Fitzpatrick states that it ostensibly is for civilian purposes. To separate the plutonium from the reactor’s spent fuel would require a reprocessing capability that Iran currently does not possess. It could be safely stated that as far as the Arak facility goes, the scheduled completion deadline of 2013 cannot be met since Iran is yet to produce or procure large metal components for the reactor.

It would only be far-sighted to assume that the most pressing proliferation concern stems from Iran ’s development of uranium-enrichment technology. Technical snags owing to the faulty design of the first-generation centrifuges and limited access to key raw materials and equipment employed at the Natanz facility has put its operational capability into question. Notwithstanding these technical obstacles at Natanz, Tehran has already produced a sizable amount of low-enriched uranium (LEU), which, if further enriched, will suffice for one or two nuclear weapons.

Attributing to the wastage factor, the first bomb would require about 2,900 kg of 3.5 per cent of LEU—which is what Iran had on its hand at the end of 2010. Going by its current rate of production, Fitzpatrick contends that Iran can produce this much LEU in ten months. In order to address the wastage factor, a faster route, in theory, termed as the ‘batch enrichment’ process, does not require cascade reconfiguration in producing the initial bomb’s worth of highly-enriched uranium (HEU). In this given scenario, the first weapon’s worth of HEU could be produced in six months and subsequent bomb quantities produced in four months. However, this method would require more LEU feed material and has never been done in practice.

The Iranian leadership would surely build a credible nuclear deterrent, when the programme matures. For this purpose, just a single nuclear weapon would not be enough and would require larger numbers to ensure a second-strike capability. Fitzpatrick has stated that the clandestine HEU production seems to be the most likely break-out option. Iran would have to keep secret both the enrichment plant and the upstream feed-material chain—uranium mining, milling and UF6 (Uranium Hexafluoride) conversion. Iran’s willingness to construct secret enrichment facilities, under the guise of adherence to an obsolete reporting requirement if they are discovered, therefore is extremely troubling.

It should also be brought to light that the new uranium enrichment facility, under construction in Qom , southwest of Tehran in September 2009 was declared by Iran to the IAEA after reports of Western intelligence gathering information about the site. The facility situated in Qom has generated concern in the international community as Tehran intends to use new centrifuges that are faster in order to enrich uranium. Supposedly, the new model of the centrifuges is capable of doubling or even tripling the output rate. According to the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation, Ali Akbar Salehi, “We have put our effort on research and development of new machines in the past two or three months so that we would be able to produce machines with high efficiency and completely indigenous… at the (Qom-area) Fordu site.” The facility in Qom is Iran ’s second uranium-enrichment site, following the plant in Natanz.

The Iranian regime has maintained that its nuclear pursuit is entirely directed towards achieving nuclear energy for peaceful civilian purposes. However, its ensuing actions tell a different tale altogether starting with the 2006 suspension of adherence to the IAEA Additional Protocol and reluctance to grant access to IAEA inspectors to sites for meticulous inspections. The commencement of enriching uranium to nearly 20 per cent in 2010 has fuelled further apprehension in so far as the military dimension of Iran ’s nuclear programme is concerned. In the given situation of Tehran being able to produce large numbers of more advanced centrifuges, the break-out options are all likely to become disturbing.

As far as the means of delivering a nuclear weapon is concerned, in May 2010, the International Institute for Strategic Studies, in its strategic dossier titled ‘Iran’s Ballistic Missile Capabilities’ concluded that Tehran’s Sajjil-2 missile, which has a range of about 2,200 km, is still two to three years of flight testing away from becoming fully operational—crucially adding to the timeline of Iran getting its hand on a nuclear weapon, which according to various estimates ranges anywhere from late 2012-2015.

Presently, Iran’s lacks the capability to produce reactor fuel of any kind from enriched uranium. Fitzpatrick argues that even if Iran is eventually able to fabricate fuel from the 19.75 per cent enriched uranium, standard safety practices would require the fuel to be tested for an extended period of time in a reactor before it could be safely used. Despite claims of self-sufficiency, the enrichment programme continues to depend on foreign supplies of certain materials and components. Although Iran may be able to overcome these constraints over time, but strict application of export controls and intelligence scrutiny of international black markets will hamper its ability to rapidly expand uranium production.

The scenario circulating at the moment which constitutes to be of supreme concern includes a plausible reality that once Iran is able to produce quantities of low-enriched uranium, it could well build a stockpile of the material and consequently design a bomb and build its non-nuclear components. Tehran has sought to develop all elements of the nuclear fuel cycle while emphasising on the ‘enrichment’ part, although its progress in different areas cannot be empirically determined to exact figures.

Going by a presumable premise that these facilities would produce nuclear energy exclusively meant for peaceful civilian purposes, as Iran has been claiming since long, the potential prospect of diverting the acquired nuclear capability to produce weapons-grade fissile material, cannot be ruled out completely. The entirety of available information indicates beyond reasonable doubt that Iran seeks a capability to produce nuclear weapons for military purposes. The day this option shall be available on hand to the hardline leadership in Tehran which under President Ahmadinejad has indicated a hardening of foreign policy posture, it would be nearly impossible for Tehran to resist the temptation of translating the nuclear potential into reality.

Dr Monika Chansoria is a Senior Fellow at the Centre for Land Warfare Studies (CLAWS)

(Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent the views either of the Editorial Committee or the Centre for Land Warfare Studies).