Giving Iran the Bomb

October 31, 2006
The Wall Street Journal
Original Source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB116225591754008359.html
Does the Bush administration seriously mean to give Iran a nuclear bomb? Look carefully at the confidential text of a forthcoming U.N. Security Council resolution, and the answer, it would seem, is yes.
This is a Halloween column, but it is not a prank. Through diplomatic efforts spearheaded by Undersecretary of State Nick Burns, the administration is prepared to endorse a European draft of a U.N. resolution that imposes limited sanctions on the Islamic Republic for flouting its Aug. 31 deadline to stop enriching uranium. The chances the resolution will soon be voted and agreed on increased with last week's news that Iran has again enriched uranium using a second cascade of 160 or so centrifuges. Iran plans to operate 3,000 such centrifuges -- which can spin uranium hexafluoride to either reactor- or weapons-grade levels -- by March of next year.
In an interview last month with this newspaper, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice allowed that while a sanctions resolution would not satisfy the U.S. on every point, it would usefully ratchet up the pressure on Tehran and pave the way, if necessary, for tougher Security Council action later on. On its face, the current draft of the resolution does just that. After noting that the International Atomic Energy Agency is unable to conclude that there are no undeclared nuclear materials or activities in Iran, the resolution forbids the sale or transfer of all items, materials, equipment, goods and technology which could contribute to Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile programs. It also freezes the financial assets of everyone and everything known to be involved in those programs.
But then we come to the Bushehr exception, so broad the Iranians could drive a truck through it -- or, to be more precise, a truck carrying 330 kilograms of reactor-grade plutonium. That's enough to make about 55 Nagasaki-type atomic bombs.
Bushehr is a light-water nuclear reactor that Russia began building for Iran in the mid-1990s over the objections of the Clinton administration. Ten years on, the billion-dollar facility is nearly complete: All that remains to make it operable is reactor-grade uranium, which Moscow promises to supply by next October. In a sop to the Russians, the draft resolution specifies that the prohibition on technology transfers to Iran shall not apply to supplies of items, materials, equipment, goods and technology, nor to the provision of technical assistance or training, financial assistance, investment, brokering or other services . . . related to the construction of Bushehr I.
For years it was widely believed that a light-water reactor could not be used -- at least not covertly -- to generate weapons-grade uranium or plutonium. It was for this reason that President Clinton agreed to supply two such reactors in 1994 to North Korea in exchange for freezing the reactor at Yongbyong, which lent itself more easily to nuclear-weapons production.
But as Henry Sokolski of the Washington-based Nonproliferation Education Center explains in a phone interview, the problem with that view is that it is at least 30 years out of date. Iran could secretly remove fuel rods of lightly enriched uranium pellets from Bushehr by substituting dummy rods, something the IAEA would be unlikely to notice using current inspection practices. It could then use its 3,000 centrifuges to enrich the uranium to weapons-grade levels in as little as five weeks.
That's not all. After a year's operation the Bushehr reactor would produce the previously mentioned 330 kilograms of plutonium in the form of spent fuel. That plutonium could be reprocessed at small and dispersed facilities, completely hidden from the IAEA's view. And unlike uranium, reactor-grade plutonium is only slightly less serviceable than the weapons-grade stuff when it comes to building a bomb. It would take as little as 10 days of operation to get the first significant quantity [of plutonium] and then you could get a bomb's worth every day, says Mr. Sokolski. You're talking about weeks, not months.
This means we need to radically revise our estimates of how soon the Islamic Republic will have all the ingredients and know-how it needs to build a bomb. National Intelligence Director John Negroponte speculated in June that Iran would be there sometime between 2010 and 2015 -- long after President Bush and presumably Mr. Negroponte are out of office. But as Mr. Sokolski notes, once Bushehr is operational, Iran could go nuclear before the end of next year. We know that Iran already possesses a design for a functional weapon, probably courtesy of the A.Q. Khan proliferation network.
Proponents of the draft resolution argue that the Bushehr exemption is the only way the Russians will agree to any sanctions, and that an incremental resolution is better than none. This argument is questionable on three counts. Why would the Russians oppose the completion of Bushehr next year when they refuse to do so today? Why should the international community allow Iran to get a reactor when it is already in material breach of the safeguards agreement of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty?
Finally, why should the U.S. hand Moscow a bargaining chip for its broader strategic ambitions, which are increasingly antithetical to America's? Imagine if Vladimir Putin demanded that the U.S. abandon its support for the embattled Republic of Georgia in exchange for his compliance on the Iranian issue. Is that a trade-off George W. Bush would be willing to accept?
Tehran has grown shrill in its warnings that there will be repercussions if any step is taken to halt its nuclear programs. Whatever. It's time the Bush administration called Iran's bluff, and regained its nerve, by taking effective action in the face of the present danger. The Kabuki dance now being played out at Turtle Bay is not that.