It's all about oil

Important evidence used against Iran is that it has violated its nuclear safeguards agreements with the International Atomic Energy Agency. It did not disclose that it had an enrichment program nor that it conducted modest experiments with plutonium re-processing.

Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU) and plutonium can both be used as the fissile material for a nuclear weapon. Both enrichment and reprocessing are actually legal under the NPT framework but non-disclosure is a violation of safeguards. It is this non-disclosure that is of concern.

But non-disclosure does not necessarily equate to a bomb program.

Let us assume that Iran does have a nuclear weapons program. Certainly it would have a strategic rationale for having one. Israel in the past, as a part of its “phantom alliance” with Turkey, has conducted mock bombing runs with nuclear capable aircraft on the Iranian border.

In the Bush administration’s 2002 Nuclear Posture Review, excerpts of which were leaked, Iran was listed as a target of US nuclear weapons. The US, partly, invaded Iraq in order to gain a permanent military presence in Baghdad. Iran has had testy relations with Pakistan, ironically enough given Pakistan’s previous support for the Taliban in Afghanistan.

If Iran has a nuclear weapons program it less reflects a desire for regional hegemony and more a reflection of genuine security concerns. Iran would seek nuclear weapons primarily to deter the United States.

How long would it take Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon and what kind of threat would it be? If we focus on enrichment, using conservative gas centrifuge capacity figures, Iran would have enough HEU (25kg per bomb) for a strategic deterrent of 5-6 weapons by about 2012-2015 . This is assuming that Iran successfully constructs a large gas centrifuge cascade consisting of thousands of centrifuges.

Currently, Iran has a 164-machine cascade of doubtful working order. Analysts have pointed out that Iran’s enrichment program is bedevilled by impurities and it would require outside assistance to overcome these, if acquiring weapons grade enriched uranium were Tehran’s goal. Given these impurities it is doubtful whether Iran could produce the high grade of enriched uranium needed for a nuclear weapon.

Of much more concern would be plutonium. Iran is constructing a heavy water research reactor that would act as an efficient breeder of plutonium. It has been described as a “bomb factory”. This reactor could produce 8kg of plutonium a year, enough for 1-2 nuclear weapons a year. Best estimates suggest that this reactor would not be operational until 2014.

However, the plutonium from this reactor would still need to be reprocessed and in the latest report on Iran the IAEA stated, “there are no indications of ongoing reprocessing activities at those facilities, or at any other declared facilities in Iran”.

Of course Iran may have a secret un-declared program but according to Seymour Hersh the CIA has concluded that Iran has no secret nuclear facilities additional to the ones that we already know about.

That is to say, the Iranian nuclear threat, such as it is, is not a particularly acute one so far as time is concerned. This stands in complete contrast to many scare mongering antics, from the usual suspects, that suggest that we have only “months” in which to take military action in order to forestall an Iranian nuclear bomb.