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“For 50 years, the Arms Control Association has educated citizens around the world to help create broad support for U.S.-led arms control and nonproliferation achievements.”

– President Joe Biden
June 2, 2022
July/August 2005
Edition Date: 
Friday, July 1, 2005
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News Analysis: Israeli Officials See Few Prospects for Arms Control

Miles A. Pomper

Muslim governments often point to the willingness of the United States to tolerate Israel’s nuclear weapons program as evidence of a double standard. Most prominently, Iran has said that efforts to prevent it from building the capacity to enrich uranium are unfair in light of Israel’s assumed capabilities.

Similarly, part of Egypt’s motive in holding up the deliberations of a May international conference to review the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) was an attempt to focus attention on Israel’s program (See ACT, July/August 2005).

But in a series of recent interviews in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, Israeli officials told Arms Control Today that their counterparts in Egypt and Iran often seem more intent on scoring diplomatic points than making concrete progress on arms control measures. They blame a lack of reciprocity from other states and a lack of interest from the United States for their failure to move forward on other arms control efforts, such as ratifying the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) or signing the Biological Weapons Convention.

As a result, there is little support in Israeli political circles for altering the policy of maintaining a substantial but secretive nuclear program. Nor is there a willingness to make concessions, such as permitting international inspections of Israel’s controversial Dimona reactor, even if they might aid a solution to the crisis over Iran’s program.

Israeli officials say that their current policy has served them well for almost four decades. They argue that, until there is a comprehensive Middle East peace, they need to maintain a nuclear hedge to protect them against such threats as existing Syrian chemical weapons, possible Iranian nuclear arms, and potential nuclear weapons programs in Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

“Once it will be clear that Israel and the six million Jews in Israel are secured, like people in Holland feel secure today, then Israel will be ready to discuss an arms control regime or arrangement in the Middle East,” said Yuval Steinitz, chairman of the Knesset (Parliament) Foreign and Defense Committee. “Unfortunately, I don’t see this forthcoming in the near future.”

Instead, Israeli officials are sounding alarm bells about the potential threat posed by Iran’s nuclear program. Although they vary in their assessments of Iranian capabilities and intentions, they agree that Israel cannot tolerate a nuclear-armed Iran. They contend that Tehran, equipped with such weapons, would step up its support for anti-Israel terrorism, encourage other regional states to develop a similar capacity, and shatter the nuclear nonproliferation regime.

To forestall this possibility, Israeli officials are largely supportive (if skeptical) of current talks in which the European Union is seeking to convince Iran to forswear enriching uranium. But they are also pushing U.S. policymakers to consider sanctions and ultimately the use of military force if those talks fail.

U.S. officials such as Vice President Dick Cheney have invoked the threat of an Israeli attack if Iran proceeds to develop nuclear weapons, but Israeli officials are more guarded, warning that the high diplomatic and military costs and potentially limited military benefits of such an operation mean that it should only be considered as a last resort.

Israel’s Nuclear Program

Israel’s nuclear program was developed in the 1950s and 1960s when Israeli leaders feared they would lose a conventional arms race with their Arab neighbors. Time has proved those concerns to be unfounded. Boosted by billions of dollars in U.S. aid, Israel’s forces now far outclass those of other countries in the Middle East.

Moreover, current and former Israeli officials acknowledge that Israel’s strategic environment has changed substantially in the last few years, largely for the better.

“As far as the situation on the ground, we’ve never had it so good,” said Efraim Halevy, who formerly headed Israel’s National Security Council and the Mossad, Israel’s equivalent of the CIA.

The threat from one of Israel’s long-term strategic adversaries, Iraq, has been lifted, while an emerging problem in Libya has been defused. The removal of Syrian troops from Lebanon has weakened the danger from another of Israel’s long-term enemies, while the presence of U.S. troops in Iraq has more deeply tied the interests of Israel’s closest ally to the region.

Yet, even though not fully acknowledged in public, nuclear weapons are still viewed as the ultimate security policy in a country whose very existence has long been threatened.

“We don’t build our strength against the concrete contemporary ability of the Arabs today. We should maintain the superiority in a way which will give a prompt answer if something in the region is changed,” said Ephraim Sneh, a former deputy defense minister and current chairman of the Knesset Subcommittee on Security Perception. “At the moment that we are no more the strongest power between Baku and Casablanca, we would not exist.”

Under its policy of nuclear ambiguity, Israel does not publicly acknowledge or deny the existence of its nuclear weapons program. Instead, it sticks by its long-held promise that “it will not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons into the Middle East.” Most Israeli officials privately characterize that as a pledge not to publicize or test already existing nuclear weapons capacity.

Israel is one of only three countries not to have signed the NPT; the other two, India and Pakistan, have tested nuclear weapons. Israel is believed to possess between 75 and 200 nuclear weapons.

Yet, Israeli officials dispute any parallels between their program and Iran’s nuclear efforts. They say that their stockpile is purely defensive. Meanwhile, they claim that while an Iranian arsenal might serve a deterrent purpose, it would also allow Iran to threaten Israel or at least provide Tehran with a nuclear umbrella under which it could step up aid to terrorist groups such as Hezbollah on Israel’s northern border and Islamic Jihad and Hamas in the Palestinian territories.

And they say that Israel’s small size and population compared to Muslim countries mean that its nuclear deterrent will not be effective against such a threat.

As evidence, they point frequently to a 2001 speech by Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the runner-up in Iran’s June presidential elections: “If one day, the Islamic world is also equipped with weapons like those that Israel possesses now, then the imperialists’ strategy will reach a standstill because the use of even one nuclear bomb inside Israel will destroy everything,” Rafsanjani said. “However, it will only harm the Islamic world.”

And Israeli officials point out that Rafsanjani was the moderate in the race and fear that the winner, Tehran Mayor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, will take an even tougher stand toward them.

Rather than attempt any direct diplomatic means of ending the threat, however, Israeli officials have sought to use their relationship with the United States and European countries as leverage in the dispute. In particular, they have pushed Western countries to impose sanctions on Iran’s oil and gas industries either directly or through the United Nations.

In the United States, pro-Israel groups are pushing legislation in Congress that would tighten current sanctions intended to punish countries that invest in Iran and that would seek to build a democratic opposition to the clerical regime in Tehran. A majority of House members have signed on as co-sponsors of a bill introduced by Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.).

Most Israeli officials support the EU talks with Iran as a possible means of slowing Iran’s nuclear timetable. Most also believe, however, that such talks are unlikely to prove fruitful and will certainly only be successful if Iran is convinced that the alternative is very costly.

“If the Iranians tend to believe that the Western world is not going to allow them to become nuclear, they might give up in advance,” Steinitz said, “because why suffer isolation, sanctions, a blockade, and maybe even the threat of aerial bombardments or something like that. Why suffer through those things if you’re going to fail anyway?”

Other Regional Issues

Israel’s tensions with other countries in the region are less acute but still substantial. Israeli officials fear they could worsen if Iran obtains nuclear weapons, with Egypt, Syria, and Saudi Arabia often cited as countries that could follow suit.

Yet, Israeli officials say that they cannot hold arms control talks with countries such as Syria that do not recognize Israel’s right to exist.

“How do you construct some kind of regional arms control mechanism with a state that says you shouldn’t exist? Who do you deal with?” asked one senior Israeli official.

Egypt and Israel, on the other hand, have had more than two decades of peace. Yet, the two still have had a great deal of difficulty making progress on arms control issues.

Egyptian officials say that arms control measures should move in tandem with the peace process rather than follow it.

In a June 16 interview with Arms Control Today, Maged Abdelaziz, the permanent representative of Egypt to the United Nations, said other countries cannot be asked to give up all of their weapons before Israel gives up its nuclear weapons. There has to be a “balanced implementation of commitments,” he said.

But Israeli officials say that their neighbors have resisted arms control discussions unless Israel first pledges to give up its nuclear weapons.

For example, they blamed Egypt for pulling out from a planned late-January forum that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei had agreed on last year. The meeting would have discussed nuclear-weapon-free zones and the possible relevance of creating such a zone in the Middle East. They noted that the Egyptian decision came as ElBaradei was chiding Egypt for failing to disclose small-scale facilities, materials, and experiments to the IAEA. (See ACT, March 2005.)

Likewise, they say that the failure of previous Israeli arms control initiatives to win reciprocal gestures from their neighbors has discouraged further moves. For example, after signing the CWC in 1993, Israeli officials have opted not to ratify it because Syria is believed to have substantial holdings of chemical weapons and has not signed the treaty.

In other areas, the Bush administration’s lack of support for some multilateral arms control treaties has apparently prompted the Israelis not to support or move forward on some agreements.

For example, Israel signed the CTBT in 1996 and had been considering ratifying the agreement if certain details about the treaty’s on-site inspection provisions could be ironed out. Particularly, Israel sought assurance that verification measures would not allow foreign inspectors access to Israeli national security facilities beyond those required to carry out their mission. Israeli officials say a norm against testing is in their national interest because it might help prevent other countries from matching Israel’s arsenal.

But Israel’s eagerness to ratify the treaty has changed since the Bush administration made clear that it would not seek Senate ratification of the CTBT. Israel’s stated policy has not changed, but senior Israeli officials and outside experts say Israel will not risk upsetting its allies in Washington by ratifying the CTBT while the current administration is in office.

Likewise, Israel in 1998 reluctantly allowed negotiations to begin on a proposed fissile material cutoff treaty that would seek to end the production of highly enriched uranium or plutonium for military purposes. Israeli officials have never been thrilled with the proposed agreement for fear it would require them to end their policy of nuclear ambiguity, particularly in regard to the Dimona reactor.

Now they claim to be concerned that it would also benefit Iran by helping to enshrine the civilian production of such materials as a legal right, a position that Iran has embraced in relation to the NPT and that U.S. and Israeli officials have rejected. The Iranian challenge has also meant that the Bush administration’s push against requiring verification provisions in the accord has not been greeted warmly in Israel.

Frustrated by regional and multilateral arms control discussions, Israeli officials say they are trying to take steps on their own to contribute to nonproliferation efforts, in particular by embracing the rules of international export control regimes as domestic law. These include the Nuclear Suppliers Group; the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR); and the Australia Group, which governs materials that could be used in the production of chemical and biological weapons.

Israel has been blocked from joining the regimes per se because most want members to have ratified related multilateral treaties. For example, MTCR members want candidates to have ratified the NPT. Israeli officials say they do not want to apply to the regimes and be rejected, for fear of generating a backlash. “We are not going to do it unless we are sure the answer will be positive,” said one Israeli official.

 

U.S., Israel Seek to Cut Deal On China Arms Sales

Miles A. Pomper

Under pressure from the Bush administration and Congress to cut off arms shipments to China, Israel hopes to iron out an agreement this summer with the United States on how future potential sales to Beijing will be considered.

Israeli government officials and a nongovernmental expert in Washington familiar with the issue said the two sides were seeking to fashion a memorandum of understanding that would make such sales more transparent by defining “rules of the road.” The United States has considerable leverage over Israel as U.S. defense technology is often incorporated in Israeli weapons.

“I believe that very soon we are going to agree on a procedure with regard to Israeli exports to China,” Yuval Steinitz, chairman of the Israeli Knesset (Parliament) Foreign and Defense Committee told Arms Control Today in a June 8 interview.

Still, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice acknowledged June 16 that some outstanding issues remain. “We have had some difficult discussions with the Israelis about this,” Rice told reporters.

The nongovernmental expert said that the differences involved exactly how much Israel would defer to the United States on such sales and whether the agreement would be limited to Israeli sales to China or extended to Israeli sales to other countries. Israel is pushing for a limited agreement, while the United States would prefer a broader pact.

At the same time, a version of the fiscal year 2006 defense authorization bill approved by the House May 25 requires the secretary of defense not to procure any goods or services for five years from any firms that transfer arms to China, a provision that could affect Israel’s defense sector, which is one of its largest industries. U.S. officials have been pushing in recent months to prevent U.S. allies from selling high-tech weapons to China, which might be used against the United States or Taiwan in a future military conflict. Under U.S. pressure, the European Union has delayed plans to lift its arms embargo on Beijing. (See ACT, April 2005.)

“Israel has a responsibility to be sensitive” to U.S. concern about China, “particularly given the close defense cooperation between Israel and the United States,” Rice said during a visit to Israel June 19. The United States provides billions of dollars of military aid to Israel each year.

The recent dispute stems in part from Israel’s planned sale to China of spare parts for a fleet of as many as 100 Harpy Killer unmanned drones. The drone sale was singled out in a 2004 report from the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, which said that the unmanned aerial vehicles could “detect, attack, and destroy radar emitters,” posing a significant threat to command-and-control facilities on Taiwan and to U.S. operational forces in the region. U.S. officials fear that Israel planned to help China upgrade the systems and not just supply spare parts. In particular, they fear the addition of sensors that might be able to detect radar sites even when they are turned off.

The Israeli newspaper Ha`aretz reported June 26 that under the proposed memorandum, the Israeli government will not return the drone components to China and expects to pay compensation.

Ha`aretz reported June 13 that Washington has demanded that Israel provide details of more than 60 recent security deals with China. It claimed that, in the interim, the United States has suspended cooperation with the Israeli Air Force on developing a new fighter through the Joint Strike Fighter project and on other high-tech military equipment used by ground troops, out of concern that China could then obtain the technology.

Independent analysts and government officials say that Israeli arms sales to China have fallen off since July 2000, when the United States persuaded Israel to cancel the sale to China of the Phalcon, an advanced, airborne early warning system. A senior Israeli government official said that incident “sensitized” Israel to U.S. security concerns about Beijing and that it has subsequently been cautious about such sales.

By contrast, Israeli officials contend that U.S. complaints elsewhere often reflect the desire of U.S. defense firms to prevent competition from other suppliers.

As an example, they point to India, where the United States is considering selling a version of the Patriot missile defense system but has prevented Israel from selling the Arrow, a similar joint U.S.-Israeli system.

U.S. officials argue that they oppose sales of the Arrow because they would violate the provisions of the Missile Technology Control Regime, whose 34 members are supposed to restrict exports of missile systems and technologies capable of delivering a 500 kilogram payload at least 300 kilometers. U.S. officials say the Arrow system exceeds this threshold while the Patriot does not.

But Israeli officials seethe. “It is one of the great absurdities of U.S.-Israeli relations. We developed this system together, we produced together, we can earn together, we can gain together,” former Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh, a leading Labor Party voice on defense policy, told Arms Control Today in a June 8 interview. “This is the best operational anti-missile defense in the world, and we are not allowed to export it?”

 

Deal Reached in Georgia, Russia Dispute

Wade Boese

The foreign ministers of Georgia and Russia signed a preliminary deal May 30 that calls on Moscow to close down its final two military bases in the former Soviet republic before the end of 2008. The United States and key European leaders greeted the news enthusiastically but also reminded Russia of a similar unfulfilled commitment to Moldova.

The deal struck by the two foreign ministers fulfills a task that Russia had once claimed would be completed in 2000. Specifically, the deal sketches out a rough timetable for when Russian forces will vacate bases located at Akhalkalaki and Batumi. The Kremlin has cited the high costs of relocating its forces and lingering security concerns in the region as reasons for its delayed withdrawal.

The agreement stipulates that Russia will begin withdrawing some of its armored combat vehicles (ACVs) and tanks beginning this year, with the goal of having no troops or weaponry at the Akhalkalaki base by the end of 2007. Moscow will have an additional year to empty its base at Batumi. Roughly 3,000 Russian troops, 80 tanks, 140 heavy artillery pieces, and 200 ACVs are estimated to be currently stationed in Georgia.

Georgian Ambassador to the United States Levan Mikeladze told Arms Control Today June 9 that the foreign ministers’ deal was “quite important.” But he said, “The most important thing will be implementation.”

Final implementation will depend on Georgian and Russian negotiators hammering out an agreement that will codify and flesh out the steps agreed to by the two foreign ministers. Both capitals say their parliaments will need to approve the finished document.

Mikeladze said negotiators from the two sides are working “quite intensively.” There is no known deadline for the negotiations.

The negotiators have some outstanding issues to resolve. These include specifying rules for the transit of troops and weaponry back to Russia, demarcating the borders between the two countries, and establishing a joint anti-terrorism center in Georgia.

Another thorny issue is the disputed status of the former Russian military base at Gudauta. Russia says it fulfilled its commitment to close the base in 2000, but Georgia disagrees, citing the continued presence of 300 Russian troops there. Moscow says these forces are peacekeepers and are not covered by its military withdrawal commitments.

The two governments have indicated they intend to take Germany up on a previous offer to lead an international inspection of Gudauta to help settle the matter. No date has yet been set for the mission.

Despite its preliminary nature, the May 30 agreement received high praise. Dimitrij Rupel, the current head of the 55-member Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, deemed it “significant progress,” and NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said it “advanced security in the Caucasus region.”

The Department of State also hailed the news as a “significant step forward” and “important for the region as a whole.” The United States and NATO also used the occasion to urge Russia to fulfill a similar 1999 withdrawal commitment to Moldova.

Moscow had said it would end its military presence in the small Black Sea country by 2002, but an estimated 1,400 troops remain, along with an ammunition dump totaling nearly 21,000 metric tons.

Perhaps encouraged by the progress between Georgia and Russia, Moldova’s parliament unanimously passed a resolution June 10 demanding that Moscow withdraw its last troops from Moldovan soil by the end of this year. Russian troops do not occupy territory controlled by the Moldovan government, however. They are located instead in the breakaway Transdniestria region.

If Moscow meets its withdrawal obligations to Georgia and Moldova, NATO members, including the United States, have promised to move forward on ratifying a revised version of a treaty limiting major offensive weapons in Europe. Russia is eager for the adapted Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty to enter into force so Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania can join the accord and have ceilings put on the number of tanks, ACVs, and heavy artillery that can be located within each of their borders.

Moscow says it is concerned about the potential for these three Baltic countries to host unlimited amounts of NATO weaponry on Russia’s periphery. The three countries joined NATO in 2004 but are not part of the original 1990 CFE Treaty that is currently in force and will remain so until all of its 30 states-parties ratify its successor. Only Belarus, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Ukraine have done so. No provision exists in the original treaty for outside countries to accede to it.

 

IAEA: More Questions on Iran Nuclear Program

Paul Kerr

Shortly before Iran elected a new president, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) officials reported that Tehran had still not resolved several outstanding issues about its nuclear programs. Iran has, however, continued to adhere to its November promise to suspend its uranium-enrichment program.

After meeting with the IAEA Board of Governors, agency Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei told reporters June 17 that Iran has been “a bit slow” to provide relevant information but expressed hope that some of the issues will be resolved by September.

Since beginning an investigation in 2002, the IAEA has revealed that Tehran conducted a variety of clandestine nuclear activities in violation of its safeguards agreement. Such agreements require states-parties to the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty to allow the agency to monitor their declared civilian nuclear activities to ensure that they are not diverted to military use.

The report came against the backdrop of the presidential race. Tehran mayor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad defeated former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani in a June 24 runoff election. Rafsanjani was widely viewed as being more willing to compromise on the nuclear issue. Israel’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Mark Regev, stated that “it’s clear now that no… change will take place” in Iran’s nuclear policy, Reuters reported June 25.

Officials from France, Germany, and the United Kingdom had said that they did not expect their ongoing negotiations with Iran to produce results until after the election, but their diplomatic efforts have continued. A European diplomat told Arms Control Today June 24 that the three countries are formulating a specific negotiating proposal. The Europeans in May agreed to provide the proposal to Iran by August after Tehran threatened to break the suspension. (See ACT, June 2005 .)

The new European proposal is expected mostly to contain the same incentives that Europeans have previously offered since negotiations began in December. (See ACT, April 2005.) But it is hoped that the complete proposal will persuade Tehran that “there’s a lot there,” the diplomat said. No new meetings have been announced.

Tehran agreed in November to suspend its gas centrifuge-based uranium-enrichment program while the two sides negotiate an agreement that includes “objective guarantees” that Iran’s nuclear program is “exclusively for peaceful purposes,” as well as cooperative arrangements on economic, political, and security matters.

Uranium enrichment increases the concentration of the uranium-235 isotope, producing either low-enriched uranium for civilian nuclear reactor fuel or highly enriched uranium (HEU). If enriched to high enough levels, HEU can be used as fissile material in nuclear weapons. Gas centrifuges enrich uranium hexafluoride gas by spinning it at very high speeds. Iran currently has a 164-centrifuge pilot facility and is continuing limited work on a larger commercial facility.

Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazzi said June 19 that Iran is “committed to the suspension” but described the coming months as the Europeans’ “last chance.” Iran has previously expressed dissatisfaction with the European incentives.

In return for any incentives, the Europeans want Iran to cease the enrichment program completely, but Tehran has repeatedly said it will not do so. Nevertheless, Iran has suggested some possible compromises. (See ACT, May 2005.)

Sirus Naseri, head delegate to Iran’s talks with the Europeans, told Agence France Presse May 21 that Tehran is considering a Russian offer to enrich Iranian uranium, but the terms of the deal are unclear. Russia has told the United States that it offered to produce enriched uranium from Iranian lightly processed uranium ore, or “yellowcake.” But Iran claims that Russia offered to use Iranian uranium hexafluoride, a Department of State official told Arms Control Today June 10. Iran has a uraniumconversion facility designed to convert yellowcake into uranium hexafluoride. Uranium hexaflouride is perceived as the greater proliferation threat.

Iran has also suggested that it may accept limits on its centrifuge facilities. For example, Iran offered in March to limit its enrichment program to an IAEA-monitored plant containing about 3,000 centrifuges. However, the text of an Iranian proposal reportedly presented at an informal meeting the next month reveals that Tehran ultimately intends to produce and install centrifuges “up to the numbers envisaged” for the commercial facility, which is more than 50,000, according to the IAEA.

Additionally, Iranian officials have informally offered to limit the country’s centrifuge facility to a “few hundred” centrifuges, a State Department official confirmed June 24. The official did not know when they made this offer.

Washington continues to support the negotiations, but U.S. officials have recently begun demanding that Iran dismantle its nuclear fuel facilities, a requirement the Europeans have not publicly articulated. However, European diplomats have privately said that dismantlement of the relevant facilities would logically follow an Iranian decision to halt enrichment.

IAEA Investigation

IAEA Deputy Director Pierre Goldschmidt briefed the agency’s board June 16 about the ongoing investigation. He said that the probe has raised further questions about Iran’s nuclear program and cooperation but he did not reveal any previously unknown nuclear activities.

The IAEA continues to investigate Iran’s efforts to obtain P-1 gas-centrifuge technology. Goldschmidt stated that Iran must resolve some discrepancies in its account of these efforts so that the agency can determine whether Iran has failed to disclose any “enrichment design, technology, or components.” (See ACT, April 2005.)

For example, Iran has told the IAEA that it received offers for centrifuge designs and components from foreign “intermediaries” in 1987 and “around 1994,” Goldschmidt said. Iran claims that only a single, handwritten document exists regarding the 1987 offer and also asserts that no government officials had contact with the intermediaries during the intervening years.

The agency has not identified these “intermediaries” but has previously revealed that Iran received its centrifuge materials from a clandestine supply network run by former Pakistani official Abdul Qadeer Khan.

U.S. Ambassador Jackie Sanders suggested in a statement to the board that another undisclosed entity in Iran may have received these components to conduct enrichment work.

The IAEA has also found additional inconsistencies in Tehran’s account of two shipments of centrifuge components and designs it received during the mid-1990s. According to Goldschmidt, both the first shipment and related meetings with the intermediary occurred earlier than Iran had initially claimed. The agency is continuing to investigate the matter.

The IAEA has also been investigating Iran’s work on a more advanced P-2 centrifuge, but Tehran has not provided any new information about that program, Goldschmidt stated. The agency is concerned that Iran has conducted undisclosed work on that program.

However, the IAEA could make progress on its investigation of enriched uranium particles found in Iranian facilities. According to Goldschmidt, Pakistan provided the agency with “a number of centrifuge components” in late May. Environmental sampling of these components, which will take about two months to complete, could help the IAEA determine the particles’ origin, he said.

Iran has admitted to producing uranium with very low proportions of uranium-235, but IAEA inspectors have found particles enriched to much higher levels. ElBaradei has previously reported that the IAEA’s evidence “on balance” supports Iran’s claim that the particles came from imported centrifuge components. IAEA inspectors have also taken samples from several locations in Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates.

Other Concerns

The IAEA has determined that Iran provided inaccurate information to the agency concerning the dates of its plutonium-separation experiments. Iran first said that it completed this work in 1993 but has now admitted continuing experiments until 1998. The agency is still investigating the matter.

Separating plutonium from spent nuclear reactor fuel is another method of obtaining fissile material.

Goldschmidt also expressed concern about “complex arrangements” concerning Iran’s Gchine uranium mine. Specifically, the agency is investigating why Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization suspended work on the mine between 1994 until 2000 to work on a “much less promising” deposit of uranium ore at another location. Sanders asserted that Iran “went to great lengths to conceal” the mine until the IAEA asked about it in 2004.

Both the State Department official and a European diplomat said that Iran’s military or an affiliated organization may have begun working at the mine in an effort to obtain an independent uranium source. The European diplomat cautioned, however, that “politics” may explain Iran’s selection of the other site.

ElBaradei said that Iran has allowed agency inspectors access to nuclear facilities and materials covered by Tehran’s IAEA safeguards agreement and additional protocol. Iran has signed but not ratified an additional protocol, which augments the IAEA’s authority to uncover secret nuclear activities.

But the agency has had greater problems attempting to conduct further inspections at two sites where Iran is suspected of having performed either nuclear weapons or nuclear weapons-related work. Although agency inspectors have previously visited those sites, Iran has not allowed them to visit one for several months and the other for about a year. Arrangements for visiting the site are still under discussion, ElBaradei told the board. Naseri indicated that Iran may allow the IAEA access to the sites, Agence France Presse reported June 15.

Because these sites are not safeguarded, the IAEA has limited authority to visit them without evidence that Tehran is conducting nuclear activities there.

Missile Engine Tested

Iranian Defense Minister Ali Shamkhani said May 31 that Iran had successfully tested a solid-fuel missile engine for its medium-range Shahab-3 ballistic missile, Agence France Presse reported. He did not say when the test was conducted.

Shamkhani explained that the new engine would increase the missile’s accuracy and allow for long-term storage of fueled missiles. Most liquid fuels must be placed in a missile shortly before it is to be launched. Solid-fuel missiles are also more mobile and can be deployed more quickly.

Uzi Rubin, a former top Israeli missile defense official, speculated that Iran may be attempting to add another stage to the Shahab-3 in order to increase its range, Jane’s Defense Weekly reported June 8.

The United States has long expressed concern about Iran’s ballistic missile program. U.S. intelligence estimates the range of the Shahab-3, which is Iran’s most advanced, flight-proven missile, to be 1,300 kilometers. But Rafsanjani claimed last October that Iran has a missile with a 2,000-kilometer range. It is unclear whether this 2,000-kilometer range missile is an improved Shahab-3 or a new missile.

 

Key U.S. Interdiction Initiative Claim Misrepresented

Wade Boese

When the Bush administration is challenged on its dedication to nonproliferation, officials like to point to the two-year-old Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) as evidence of the administration’s nonproliferation bona fides. In particular, officials have repeatedly hailed the initiative for its role in intercepting nuclear contraband destined for Libya and thereby helping persuade that country to renounce its illicit nuclear weapons program. Yet, it is now apparent that the Libya interdiction did not occur because of PSI.

Launched by President George W. Bush in May 2003, PSI aims to improve countries’ capabilities and readiness to stop shipments of biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons, as well as related materials and missiles, at sea, on land, and in the air. Since its inception, some 60 countries have endorsed the initiative, and more than a dozen interdiction training exercises have been carried out.

Washington frequently describes PSI as an “activity, not an organization” because it is voluntary and lacks any formal structure. Assistant Secretary of State for Arms Control Stephen Rademaker noted in a June 3 interview with Arms Control Today that the initiative encourages governments to bolster their domestic legal authorities to be in a better position to act against proliferation and “establishes patterns of communication and cooperation between governments that facilitate interdiction operations.”

Bush administration officials tout PSI as one of their top accomplishments and innovations. In a Sept. 7, 2004, Financial Times op-ed, then-Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton cited PSI as a leading example of how the administration is “reinventing the nonproliferation regime it inherited, crafting policies to fill gaping holes, reinforcing earlier patchwork fixes, assembling allies, creating precedents, and changing perceived realities and stilted legal thinking.”

Selected Bush Administration Statements on the Proliferation Security Initiative

“It was a very important success of the Proliferation Security Initiative that we interdicted a cargo that was headed to Libya from North Korea,[1] probably helping Colonel Gaddafi and his decision to give up his weapons of mass destruction [WMD].”
—Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, May 27, 2005

“Exposure of the [Abdul Qadeer] Khan network this past year, helped along by the PSI interdiction of nuclear materials aboard the BBC China and the subsequent decision of Libya to forgo its nuclear and other [WMD] programs, has brought to light the breadth of the shadowy trading network in [weapons of mass destruction].”
—Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton, Oct. 27, 2004

“In October, after we and our allies in the Proliferation Security Initiative seized a nuclear-related shipment headed for Tripoli, Libya permitted the first Americans into the country and made the admissions that ultimately ended their programs.”
—Assistant Secretary of State for Verification and Compliance Paula DeSutter, Sept. 22, 2004

“So that our action through the Proliferation Security Initiative to interdict the shipment of uranium centrifuge equipment bound for Libya in late October 2003 was a critical element in convincing Gaddafi that we knew what he was doing.”
—Bolton, July 21, 2004

“I think what [the BBC China interdiction] shows is that the PSI…is robust, producing results, [and] fulfilling the mission for which it was intended.”
—State Department deputy spokesperson Adam Ereli, Dec. 31, 2003

ENDNOTE
1. The source of the cargo was not North Korea but the Abdul Qadeer Khan nuclear black market network.

Within months of the initiative’s start, Bush administration officials asserted that PSI had scored some successes, but claimed that they were unable to reveal details for fear of disclosing and damaging sensitive operations and intelligence sources and methods. Nevertheless, after Libya revealed and pledged to abandon its secret arms programs in December 2003 (See ACT, January/February 2004.), Bush administration officials pointed to PSI as having underscored for Tripoli the risks and hardships of pursuing its weapons ambitions. Specifically, they chalked up as a PSI success the October 2003 interdiction of the BBC China, a German-owned ship carrying centrifuge components for Libya’s nuclear weapons program.

Bolton said Sept. 28, 2004, “The seizure of that ship and the equipment on it, we think, had a major, perhaps dispositive role in Libya’s decision to give up the pursuit of weapons of mass destruction last year.” Bolton and other officials further said the interdiction helped lead to the unraveling of the nuclear black market network run by Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, which was the source of the centrifuge components. (See ACT, March 2004.)

Bush administration officials explicitly said the interdiction resulted from PSI. In a typical example, then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice stated Feb. 26, 2004, “PSI has already proven its worth by stopping a shipment of centrifuge parts bound for Libya last fall.”

However, John Wolf, who served as assistant secretary of state for nonproliferation from 2001 to 2004, told Arms Control Today May 25 that the BBC China operation was “separate” from PSI. He said the incident stemmed from previous efforts to track and uncover the Khan network.

A foreign official familiar with the operation corroborated Wolf’s version of the event. “The BBC China operation was carried out in the spirit of PSI, but it was not a PSI operation,” the official informed Arms Control Today May 31.

Recently, the administration appears to be backing away fromsome of its earlier claims. In a May 31 event commemorating PSI’s second anniversary, Rice, now secretary of state, claimed that, “[i]n the last nine months alone, the United States and 10 of our PSI partners have quietly cooperated on 11 successful efforts.” She said some of those operations involved arms-related shipments to Iran, but declined to provide further details. Similarly, Ulrik Federspiel, Denmark’s ambassador to the United States, asserted at the same event that “the shipment of missiles has fallen significantly in the lifetime of PSI.”

However, Rice did not claim that the BBC China was a PSI interdiction. Instead, she described the initiative as providing the “framework for action” for intercepting the ship.

Department of State spokesperson Richard Boucher later that day indicated Rice chose her words carefully because “[t]here were other efforts being pursued in the case of Libya and Khan that contributed to successfully…finding out and stopping this shipment.” He continued, “So in that case, we did not want to say it was solely a matter of the Proliferation Security Initiative because [it] was, if I remember, at an early stage back then.”

Rademaker maintained June 3 that “[i]t really becomes impossible to say whether an interdiction that took place involving a number of countries involved in PSI was a PSI interdiction.” He further stated, “PSI exists to facilitate these kinds of operations and when these operations successfully occur involving the participating countries, we would regard that as a success for PSI.”

Germany and Italy, both of which are PSI members, played major roles in the BBC China interdiction. Still, Germany, as well as other countries, had stopped proliferation in transit prior to PSI’s launch. The initiative does not legally empower or obligate countries to do anything that they previously could not do.

Rademaker said whether the BBC China interdiction was a PSI operation is irrelevant. “I am mystified by this bizarre measure of success of PSI by reducing its work to just a numerical measurement of successful operations,” the assistant secretary stated. He added, “The point is that PSI exists, interdictions are taking place, and life has become much more complicated for those entities interested in engaging in these kinds of transfers.”

One way the United States is raising the stakes for proliferators is the negotiation of reciprocal shipboarding agreements with other governments. These deals expedite the process for stopping and searching ships suspected of transporting dangerous weapons cargo. Washington has reached such agreements with Liberia; the Marshall Islands; Panama; and, most recently on June 1, Croatia. Panama and Liberia are the two countries with the most foreign vessels registered to ship under their authority.

Wolf, who retired from government in the summer of 2004, assesses PSI as a “very important initiative if made to work.” He said PSI “raises the price of, narrows the lanes [of], and makes it easier to interdict” proliferation.

 

More Testing Urged for Missile Defense

Wade Boese

A trio of outside experts commissioned by the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency (MDA) has warned that the nascent ground-based strategic missile defense system is bound for additional test failures and may not function properly if its testing regime is not revamped and made a higher priority.

Tasked last February with evaluating the system’s last three test flops (See ACT, March 2005.), the experts provided their findings to MDA head Lt. Gen. Henry Obering in a Mar. 31 report, a copy of which was obtained by Arms Control Today. The Independent Review Team included former NASA administrator William Graham; Maj. Gen. Bill Nance, a former program manager of the ground-based missile defense system; and William Ballhaus, president and chief executive officer of The Aerospace Corp.

The three experts found that development of the missile defense system, which is intended to protect the United States from long-range ballistic missile attacks, has been driven by a White House schedule rather than performance benchmarks. Administration officials say that schedule is based on a growing missile threat.

The experts noted that MDA “met the challenge” of providing an initial groundbased system in accordance with President George W. Bush’s December 2002 directive to begin deploying a defense in 2004, but added that “[t]he next challenge is to verify the system’s operational performance and reliability.”

In a June 17 interview with Arms Control Today, MDA spokesperson Rick Lehner defended the agency’s focus on meeting the president’s timetable as justified by the “urgency” of deploying a defense capable of protecting against a limited ballistic missile attack. Aside from Russia and China, no other country has successfully flight-tested a ballistic missile capable of delivering a nuclear warhead to the continental United States. However, some U.S. officials claim North Korea has that capability. (See ACT, June 2005.)

By the end of 2004, MDA had stationed six ground-based missile interceptors at Fort Greely, Alaska. The Pentagon, which has yet to declare the Alaska deployment as up and running, is continuing to put these interceptors and supporting elements through a “shakedown” to assess the system’s capabilities and develop procedures for its operation. MDA plans to field 10 more interceptors at Fort Greely before 2006.

“There is a need to validate the design and reliability of the system as currently deployed,” the experts concluded. They warned, “[H]ardware and software may not accomplish [the] mission with predictable performance and reliability.”

During congressional testimony this year, Obering has maintained confidence that the system can work as intended, citing several past successful intercepts in rudimentary tests and extensive simulations and modeling experiments. But the experts reported, “[M]odels and simulations have not yet been sufficiently validated and require additional flight data to improve confidence.”

To better ensure the system will perform as intended, the experts made several recommendations. They urged MDA to prepare more rigorously for tests, establish more standards and specifications for the system, boost ground testing, increase accountability, and put quality assurance ahead of meeting planned schedules.

Democratic lawmakers who have criticized the pace of the missile defense deployment saw some vindication in the report. Rep. John Tierney (D-Mass.) told Arms Control Today June 21 that the report’s emphasis on verifying the system’s effectiveness and reliability is “an important recommendation, which has been self-evident to those of us who have long been critical of deploying an untested and unproven system.”

Rep. Ellen Tauscher (D-Calif.) told Arms Control Today June 17 that the experts’ “prediction that continuing with business as usual would likely result in additional test failures leads me to believe that missile defense testing must be shifted to the office of testing and evaluation.” This office is an independent Pentagon entity responsible for testing weapons systems.

Lehner reported that the experts’ recommendations are currently being evaluated by Rear Adm. Kathleen Paige, who Obering recently appointed as MDA’s director of mission readiness. (See ACT, April 2005.) Paige is expected within weeks to provide Obering with proposals on how to implement the experts’ recommendations, as well as her own recommendations for improving testing. The next system flight test has not yet been scheduled.

 

Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty Meeting Sputters

Wade Boese

After four sterile weeks, the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) review conference ended May 27 as it began, with competing agendas, widespread distrust, and no consensus on next steps for stopping the spread of or eliminating nuclear weapons.

Egypt and the United States emerged as the main protagonists at the New York gathering, but their disputes reflected age-old splits among the 189 treaty members on how best to realize the accord’s visionary goal of a world without nuclear weapons. Still, the fissures seemed to widen and spread at the conference as some of the 150 attending states-parties, particularly Egypt and the United States, demonstrated little inclination to compromise or move beyond positions held prior to the May 2 start of the once-every-five-years event.

Many governments expressed their frustration and regret about the fruitless outcome of the conference and echoed the sentiment of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan that the states-parties had “missed a vital opportunity to strengthen our collective security against the many nuclear threats to which all states and all peoples are vulnerable.” Still, despite the pervasive disappointment with the conference, governments refrained from suggesting that it imperiled the treaty, at least for now.

Conference president Sérgio de Queiroz Duarte of Brazil told Arms Control Today June 9 that states-parties are “progressively drifting apart” on nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament issues. He cautioned that, if this trend continues, the future of the treaty could be cast into doubt.

The divergence among states-parties stems in large part from tensions between the nuclear-weapon haves and have-nots over how to implement the treaty’s dual obligations: the five states-parties possessing nuclear weapons—-China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States—-are supposed to work toward giving them up, while all other states-parties have pledged to forgo acquiring them.

Discontent among the have-nots with what they judge as the nuclear-weapon states’ paltry progress toward nuclear disarmament has always been palpable, but the grousing has swelled since the 1995 NPT Review Conference. The non-nuclear-weapon states complain that the nuclear-weapon states have not pursued the disarmament measures to which they committed that year as part of a bargain to extend the treaty indefinitely. Specifically, the non-nuclear-weapon states protest the Bush administration’s exploration of new and modified types of nuclear weapons, opposition to the 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), and withdrawal from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. All these moves contravene a package of 13 disarmament steps agreed to at the 2000 NPT Review Conference by the United States and all other NPT states-parties. (See ACT, June 2000.)

At the same time, U.S. pique with the have-nots has also risen because of its view that they have shown insufficient willingness to take to task some of their brethren, notably Iran and North Korea. Pyongyang announced its withdrawal from the NPT in January 2003 and has declared itself a nuclear-weapon power. The International Atomic Energy Agency concluded nearly two years ago that Tehran had pursued clandestine nuclear activitiesthat Washington charges are evidence of an illicit weapons program.

The mutual disenchantment between the have-nots and the nuclear-weapon states, particularly the United States, manifested itself at the conference in prolonged battles over procedural issues—-including adoption of an agenda—-that consumed almost the first three weeks of the conference. (See ACT, June 2005.) The remaining time proved too short for the states-parties to overcome their differences on substantive issues, such as how to dissuade future withdrawals from the treaty or balance a state’s access to nuclear technologies for peaceful purposes with suffi- cient guarantees that it is not secretly seeking nuclear arms.

Yet, several diplomats told Arms Control Today in interviews that more time would not have yielded different results because of the entrenched positions and acrimony on all sides.

The United States and some other Western countries blame Egypt for how the conference unfolded because it blocked consensus for action on several procedural issues. In June 9 The 2005 nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty Review Conference ended May 27 without any substantive decisions on stopping the spread of or eliminating nuclear weapons.testimony to the International Terrorism and Nonproliferation Subcommittee of the House International Relations Committee, Assistant Secretary of State for Arms Control Stephen Rademaker said that “Egypt was second to none in creating obstacles.”

Other diplomats told Arms Control Today that the seeds for the conference’s failure were planted before it began, with the Bush administration’s rejection of some of the 13 disarmament steps. One diplomat told Arms Control Today June 9 that Washington had essentially “rearranged the playing field and moved the goalposts” prior to the conference. Even though the United States has generally served as the lightning rod for non-nuclear-weapon state criticism, the other four nuclear-weapon states have also failed to embrace or have discounted some of the 13 disarmament measures.

Egypt’s permanent representative to the United Nations, Ambassador Maged Abdelaziz, told Arms Control Today June 16 that countries seeking to ignore the agreements of the past and shirk additional disarmament measures bear the real responsibility for the conference outcome. He defended Egypt’s actions at the conference as motivated by the desire to preserve the “balance of commitments” between the nuclear-weapon haves and have-nots.

Egypt’s unhappiness with the U.S. position on the 13 disarmament steps was not only shared by its fellow members of the Nonaligned Movement (NAM), but also by some Western countries. In a June 9 interview with Arms Control Today, one European official explained that “those countries that no longer accept the 2000 [NPT Review Conference] document in [its] entirety undermine the value of any [NPT] final document.”

Washington’s rigidity also sunk an effort by the five nuclear-weapon states to issue a joint conference statement. Another European official told Arms Control Today June 8 that there had been a real drive to conclude such a statement up until the final days of the conference but that in the end the United States refused to meet a Russian demand to promote the CTBT.

The contentious climate of the conference also produced rifts among groups of states that have generally tried to bridge the differences between the nuclear-weapon states and the NAM. The seven members of the New Agenda Coalition—-Brazil, Egypt, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa, and Sweden—-failed to produce their own final statement, and the 25-member European Union reportedly had difficulty maintaining unity when it found itself opposite the United States in a dispute because the United Kingdom sometimes broke ranks.

On the last day of the conference, Canadian Ambassador Paul Meyer ripped some countries, without naming names, for their intractable approaches. “We have witnessed intransigence from more than one state on pressing issues of the day, coupled with the hubris that demands the priorities of the many be subordinated to the preferences of the few,” he fumed.

Despite Meyer’s clear frustration, a few diplomats speculated in interviews with Arms Control Today that some capitals were likely content with how the conference turned out: the nuclear-weapon states were probably pleased to avoid any new disarmament obligations, some NAM members could take satisfaction in preserving the 2000 NPT Review Conference package rather than having it supplanted by a weaker set of commitments, and Iran had to be relieved to escape without an official rebuke of its nuclear activities.

In a closing statement to the conference, New Zealand’s ambassador for disarmament, Tim Caughley, observed that “the outcome of this review conference needs to be viewed in the context of the broader malaise and paralysis that abounds in multilateral disarmament diplomacy.”

 

Repairing the Nonproliferation Regime

Daryl G. Kimball

Six decades after the first atomic blasts, the world’s leaders agree that nuclear weapons pose one of the greatest threats to global security and human existence. But as the recently concluded nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) review conference demonstrates, there is a growing divide about how to address this danger. The four week-long conference closed in New York on May 27 without any agreed assessment or plan to bolster the global nonproliferation and disarmament regime.

Future progress will depend on correcting the policies that sank the 2005 review conference. Well before the meeting, the Bush administration signaled that it would not support core disarmament-related commitments and decisions made at the 2000 and 1995 review conferences, including supporting the entry into force of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, irreversibly and verifiably reducing nuclear arms, and negotiating a verifiable ban on the production of fissile material for weapons. Yet, U.S. representatives claimed their disarmament record is “unassailable.” At the same time, they argued that peaceful nuclear cooperation is put at risk unless cases of noncompliance involving North Korea and Iran are forcefully addressed.

Predictably, Egypt and other nonaligned states did not want to allow the repudiation of past NPT conference commitments, which include pursuit of a nuclear-free Middle East and negative nuclear security assurances. Meanwhile, Iran, under investigation by the International Atomic Energy Agency for safeguards violations, mischaracterized concern about its nuclear ambitions as an assault on developing states’ treaty “right” to peaceful nuclear endeavors. As a result, participants took weeks reaching agreement on an agenda and none of the three “main committees” could produce consensus reports.

U.S. officials deny any responsibility for the breakdown of the conference and blame Cairo’s stubborn resistance. But Egypt and others might have been more flexible if the United States did not seek to discard prior NPT agreements. U.S. intransigence scuttled the chance for agreement on Western proposals to make treaty withdrawal more difficult; toughen treaty monitoring, compliance, and enforcement; and tighten controls on nuclear weapons-related technology.

The NPT remains vital, but a crucial opportunity to strengthen it was squandered. Overcoming the differences revealed at the 2005 NPT Review Conference and avoiding further setbacks will not be easy but are possible, especially if the United States can adopt a more balanced, pragmatic, and flexible strategy.

The most urgent tasks are the resumption of talks leading to the verifiable dismantlement of North Korea’s nuclear capabilities and the successful conclusion of an agreement between the European Union and Iran that recognizes Iran’s “right” to pursue peaceful nuclear endeavors but produces a voluntary and indefinite freeze of its uranium enrichment program. Failure on either front could lead neighboring countries to rethink their nuclear options and/or lead to a military confrontation.

The Bush administration must seize on North Korea’s recently stated intention to resume long-stalled negotiations on its nuclear program and be prepared to offer a new and more practical proposal to resolve the crisis. To increase Iran’s incentives to cooperate and comply with the NPT, the White House must make it clear that it will not seek regime change and that it will support the guaranteed and controlled supply of nuclear energy fuel as a substitute for an Iranian uranium enrichment program.

To prevent the further production and proliferation of weapons-usable nuclear material, the United States, EU, and others should back an indefinite moratorium on all new uranium enrichment and plutonium separation plants. Even with tougher international inspection authority and tighter controls on nuclear technology transfers, confidence in the nonproliferation system will erode if more states produce more nuclear bomb material. The pause would provide time to consider options for the guaranteed supply of nuclear energy fuel services and launch long-stalled talks on a global ban on the production of fissile material for weapons.

Finally, the leaders of the nuclear-weapon states must restore confidence that they will continue to reduce the number and the role of nuclear weapons. It is in the United States’ self-interest to resume talks with Russia on verifiable strategic nuclear reductions before START I and its verification provisions expire in 2009. NATO should move to withdraw the obsolete U.S. tactical nuclear weapons stockpile in Europe to encourage Russia to account for and reduce its even larger tactical nuclear arsenal, parts of which could fall into terrorist hands. The nuclear-weapon states should also disavow the development of new types of nuclear weapons and the use of nuclear weapons against nonnuclear- weapon states and targets.

The dangers of the bomb are obvious and the need for action is as clear as ever. Without more effective global leadership in all—not just some—of these areas, the struggle against nuclear proliferation will fall short and leave behind an even more dangerous world for generations to come.

 

 

A Tragic Life: Oppenheimer and the Bomb

American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer
By Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin
Alfred A. Knopf, 2005, 721 pp.

109 East Palace: Robert Oppenheimer and the Secret City of Los Alamos
By Jennet Conant
Simon & Schuster, 2005, 425 pp.

Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan
By Tsuyoshi Hasegawa
Harvard University Press, 2005, 382 pp.

The Ruin of J. Robert Oppenheimer and the Birth of the Modern Arms Race
By Priscilla McMillan
Viking Press, July 2005, 384 pp.

Peter J. Kuznick

J. Robert Oppenheimer was a fascinating, complex, and extremely seductive figure, but one defined almost as much by his flaws as by his prodigious talents and achievements. As director of the Los Alamos laboratory, Oppenheimer, or “Oppie,” as his friends called him, bore major responsibility for building the atomic bomb and some responsibility for obstructing scientists desperately seeking to prevent its use.

Understanding clearly what he had wrought and terrified by the future this augured, he later struggled for international control of nuclear weapons and fought to prevent development of the hydrogen bomb. His contemporaries found him compelling. His best students revered him. Many women adored him. His colleagues appreciated his quick mind, erudition, and brilliance as a theoretician, and they admired his leadership of the Manhattan Project. In the final accounting, Oppenheimer’s was a tragic life, the life of a man who succeeded as a weapons maker and failed as a peacemaker.

Because Oppenheimer was such a unique, conflicted, and often embattled individual, historians have always delighted in counterposing him to other dominant figures of his era with whom he collaborated and clashed, including Nobel Prize-winning physicist Ernest Lawrence, Manhattan Project director General Leslie Groves, hydrogen bomb proponent Edward Teller, and Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) chair Lewis Strauss. I would add President Harry Truman, who ordered the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to that list.

As we approach the 60th anniversary of those attacks and observe, with justifiable trepidation, the erosion of the nonproliferation regime, Oppenheimer’s life has many lessons to offer us. Valuable new studies by Priscilla McMillan and Jennet Conant and a magisterial biography by Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin take pains to distill these lessons.

In American Prometheus, Bird and Sherwin paint a rich portrait of Oppenheimer’s early years. Born in 1904 to wealthy, cultured, German-Jewish New York parents, he was a precocious, though sickly, child who at age nine challenged an older cousin, “Ask me a question in Latin and I will answer you in Greek.” He delivered his first scientific paper at age 12, graduated from Harvard in three years, and received his doctorate from Gottingen University in Germany at the age of 23. During these years, he could be insufferably arrogant. Future Nobel Prize winner Maria Goppert once presented Oppenheimer’s adviser Max Born with a petition signed by seminar members stating that, unless Born reined in the “child prodigy,” she and the other students would boycott the class. Oppenheimer also suffered from serious bouts of depression and other forms of emotional instability. In 1928 he received job offers from 10 universities, including Harvard University, accepting a joint position at the University of California Berkeley and the California Institute of Technology.

At Berkeley, he developed a close friendship with Lawrence despite fundamental differences in background, outlook, and approach to physics. The gulf between their worlds became more pronounced during the 1930s as Lawrence, a conservative South Dakotan, gravitated toward California high society and Oppenheimer became part of a Communist milieu socially, intellectually, and politically that included many of his closest students, friends, lovers, and family members. Motivated by intense anti-fascism and abhorrence of social injustice, he joined numerous Communist Party-linked organizations. He regularly contributed money to the party to aid the republican effort in Spain and support other progressive causes.

Bird and Sherwin handle the question of Oppenheimer’s communist involvements with particular skill and dexterity, showing how fine the line was between fellow-traveling and membership during this period, especially for professionals such as Oppenheimer. The authors find no evidence that Oppenheimer ever joined the party, accepted party discipline, or tailored his opinions to conform to party views. By 1942, eager to aid the war effort, Oppenheimer began toning down his politics and severing relationships with party members, although he maintained enough ties to keep FBI and army security investigators busy.

That year, Groves chose Oppenheimer to direct the Los Alamos laboratory. How the privileged, leftist, Jewish, harddrinking, stick-thin intellectual and the bullying, right-wing, overweight, straitlaced minister’s son from a hardscrabble background managed to collaborate to produce the atomic bombs used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki has fascinated scholars for decades. Both 109 East Palace, Conant’s colorful account of the people at Los Alamos and the challenges they faced, and American Prometheus depict Oppenheimer’s skillful mediation between free-spirited scientists and security-conscious military officials who wanted to restrict access to information and limit discussion. Associate Director E. U. Condon still found the security obsessions “morbidly depressing” and resigned after six weeks. Isidor Isaac Rabi decided not to join Los Alamos, expressing serious qualms about atomic bomb research. Others shared these concerns, but their passionate anti-fascism and fear of Adolf Hitler getting a bomb before the United States overcame their doubts. And while Oppenheimer kept the scientists focused and motivated, Groves exploited Oppenheimer’s vulnerable security status to keep him in line. Groves also understood that Oppenheimer, much like himself, was driven by an overweening ambition and desperately sought the fame and adulation that would ensue from successful completion of the bomb.

Spurred by troubling questions from Danish Nobel laureate Niels Bohr and Manhattan Project physicist Leo Szilard about slaughtering civilians and precipitating a potentially catastrophic arms race between the United States and Soviet Union, many scientists pondered the ethical implications of what they were doing far more deeply than Oppenheimer, who had earlier dismissed Nobel Prize winner Enrico Fermi’s suggestion that they poison the German food supply with radioactive fission products on the grounds that “we should not attempt a plan unless we can poison food sufficient to kill a half a million men.” Oppenheimer certainly understood the frightening world they were ushering in, having had to resist Teller’s effort to bypass the relatively puny atomic bombs and proceed directly with production of super bombs. At the May 31, 1945 meeting of Secretary of War Henry Stimson’s Interim Committee, Oppenheimer acknowledged that within three years it might be possible to produce bombs with an explosive force equivalent to between 10 million and 100 million tons of TNT—thousands of times more powerful than the bombs that would destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki. At that meeting, he advocated sharing information with the Soviets prior to dropping the bomb but also acquiesced in the decision to target civilians. In June, Oppenheimer’s memo on behalf of the Scientists Panel to the Interim Committee disputed colleagues who decried using the bomb against Japan or preferred a demonstration, instead urging “military use” and hoping for consequences sufficiently horrible to put an end to war. His subsequent refusal to expedite Szilard’s petition to Truman, signed by 155 Manhattan Project scientists opposing the bomb’s use, ensured that it would arrive too late to matter.

Oppenheimer’s initial jubilation over the destruction of Hiroshima quickly turned to despair as the significance of what he and the scientists had achieved hit home. The mood at Los Alamos darkened perceptibly following news of Nagasaki and reports of massive destruction. Oppenheimer and others at least comforted themselves with the belief that the bomb had brought a rapid end to the war and avoided a costly invasion of the Japanese homeland. Tsuyoshi Hasegawa’s definitive study of the end of the Pacific War, Racing the Enemy, should dispel that myth once and for all.

The first to make effective use not only of U.S. and Japanese sources, but also the former Soviet archives, Hasegawa presents a much more thorough and complex picture of the military and diplomatic endgame than that offered by previous studies of Japan’s surrender. Hasegawa convincingly shows that the Soviet entry into the war on August 9 had a much greater impact on Japan’s decision to surrender than did the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

While Oppenheimer and the scientists worked feverishly to develop atomic bombs in 1943 and 1944, U.S., Japanese, and Soviet officials were maneuvering to secure national objectives at the war’s end. By the summer of 1944, Japanese leaders had largely abandoned hope for a decisive military victory and focused on preserving the kokutai (emperor-centered national polity). They later concluded that procuring Soviet mediation offered the best chance for achieving an acceptable peace. Furthermore, Japan’s entire Ketsu-go (“Decisive” Operation) strategy was predicated on keeping the Soviets out of the war so that Japan could draw the United States into an attack on the homeland—they correctly anticipated this would occur in Kyushu—and inflict heavy casualties on the invading forces.

The willingness of Japanese leaders to suffer heavy civilian casualties was matched by the eagerness of U.S. leaders to inflict them through an all-out bombing of Japanese cities that prompted Stimson to urge Truman to stop targeting civilians before the United States got “the reputation of outdoing Hitler in atrocities.” That the United States achieved with one bomb in Hiroshima what it had elsewhere achieved with fleets of bombers disturbed Japanese leaders but did not throw them into a frenzy. In fact, after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Army Minister Korechika Anami told the other members of Japan’s Supreme War Leadership Council (the Big Six) that the United States had 100 more such bombs and Tokyo might be next. Despite this harrowing bit of misinformation, Anami vowed to fight on, and none of the top leaders favored unconditional surrender. The Nagasaki bombing had little discernible effect on Japanese decision-makers. The Soviet entry, however, proved devastating, confirming the bankruptcy of Japanese diplomacy and eliminating once and for all the hope of securing Soviet assistance in mitigating surrender terms, while heightening the risk of popular uprisings and Soviet seizure of Japanese territory. Although some leaders still preferred to fight on, the emperor’s intervention sealed the victory for the peace party.

Japanese strategy had been doomed from the start. Stalin, wanting to make sure that the Pacific War continued at least until the Soviet invasion of Manchuria had begun, had no interest in brokering a peace agreement between the United States and Japan. Not trusting Truman to live up to the terms of the Yalta Agreement, in which the United States promised the Soviets major territorial and other concessions in Asia in return for entering the war against Japan, and fearing that the use of atomic bombs would bring a hasty Japanese surrender, he pressured Soviet military leaders to speed the invasion. Truman, on the other hand, prodded by Secretary of State James Byrnes, hoped that the atomic bombings would induce Japanese surrender before the Soviets invaded. Also motivated by a desire for revenge against Japan and fearing the political fallout from easing the surrender terms, Truman resisted pressure to inform the Japanese that they could keep the emperor following surrender, a move that, combined with the Soviet invasion, would likely have ended the war without resorting to the bombs. Nevertheless, Truman, despite his own apocalyptic fears that he was unleashing forces that could someday annihilate the human species, preferred using the bomb to seeking other viable alternatives.

Although it would be some time before Oppenheimer discovered how this dramatic competition to achieve geopolitical goals formed a backdrop to the use of the atomic bombs, he, unlike Truman, felt an appropriate revulsion at what he had helped achieve. When Oppenheimer met Truman for the first time on October 25, 1945, Truman asked Oppenheimer to guess when the Soviets would develop a bomb. When Oppenheimer said he did not know, Truman shot back that he did: “Never.” Unnerved, Oppenheimer said at one point, “Mr. President, I feel I have blood on my hands.” The president, furious at Oppenheimer, informed David Lilienthal, “I told him the blood was on my hands—to let me worry about that.” Apparently relishing this story, Truman later offered alternative versions. He told Dean Acheson, “I don’t want to see that son of a bitch in this office ever again,” and another time called him a “cry-baby scientist.”

At that meeting, Truman and Oppenheimer also differed over the urgency of achieving international control of atomic weapons. Recognizing that Byrnes and others planned to use the bomb to bully the Soviet Union, Oppenheimer feared the worst. After meeting with Oppenheimer, Secretary of Commerce Henry Wallace, the former vice president, wrote in his diary, “I never saw a man in such an extremely nervous state as Oppenheimer. He seemed to feel that the destruction of the entire human race was imminent.” As McMillan notes in her penetrating, in-depth study of the 1949-1954 period, The Ruin of J. Robert Oppenheimer and the Birth of the Modern Arms Race, Oppenheimer possessed “the gift of seeing further into the future of nuclear weapons than anyone else, either then or later.”

Oppenheimer threw himself into the effort to create an international authority to control nuclear weapons. In early 1946, he dominated the drafting of the Acheson-Lilienthal report, an ambitious blueprint for international control through creation of an Atomic Development Authority that would own all uranium mines, atomic power plants, and laboratories. Even the hard-headed Acheson called this “a brilliant and profound document.” Oppenheimer deliberately framed the proposal so as to assuage Soviet fears, but Truman dashed all hopes by choosing virulently anti-Soviet financier Bernard Baruch to present his own revised version of the plan to the United Nations, sabotaging the last real chance for forestalling an arms race.

At the war’s end, the “success” of the Manhattan Project brought Oppenheimer not only newfound celebrity, but entrée into the inner circle of Washington power brokers. He hoped to use his chairmanship of the General Advisory Committee (GAC) to the new AEC to counter the influence of Cold War zealots in the increasingly paranoid and security-obsessed world of postwar Washington. He hoped that his wartime contributions, continued indispensability, and disavowal of his once-radical views would insulate him against his enemies within the bureaucracy. He had already cooperated with government inquisitors and, in 1949, testified about his own leftist Berkeley students at Un- American Activities Committee hearings. When word leaked about his incriminating testimony, Condon upbraided him: “One is tempted to feel that you are so foolish as to think you can buy immunity for yourself by turning informer…. You know very well that once these people decide to go into your own dossier and make it public that it will make the ‘revelations’ that have been made so far look pretty tame.”

Fortunately, for the sake of history and for Oppenheimer’s own reputation, he was ultimately brought down not by such betrayals but by his much more principled opposition to development of the hydrogen bomb. Oppenheimer hoped that announcement of the Soviet Union’s August 29, 1949, atomic bomb test would jump-start the long-stalled international control effort and campaigned for a less-secretive and “more rational security policy.” Strauss, Lawrence, and Teller pushed instead for a crash program to develop super bombs. Lilienthal described them as “drooling with the prospect and bloodthirsty.” Goaded by Harvard President James Conant (grandfather of Jennet Conant), the GAC unanimously opposed development of the hydrogen bomb, describing it as a potential weapon of “genocide.” The AEC commissioners voted 3-2 to endorse the GAC recommendations, with the arch-conservative Strauss dissenting. Truman, siding with the hard-liners, opted to push development and placed a gag order on all scientists involved in the deliberations, further enshrining secrecy and limiting public debate about this quantum leap in the calculus of destruction.

Any illusion that the election of Eisenhower— still today the only president to condemn the 1945 atomic bombings— would reverse U.S. policy was dispelled when he appointed Strauss his atomic energy adviser and, in July 1953, chairman of the AEC. Ever vindictive and still smoldering over Oppenheimer’s humiliation of him during a 1949 congressional hearing, Strauss enlisted the support of Teller, congressional staffer William Borden, FBI officials, and top Air Force brass in his carefully orchestrated campaign to destroy Oppenheimer’s reputation and block renewal of his security clearance. The ensuing hearing, which Bird and Sherwin describe as “patently unfair and outrageously extrajudicial” and Oppenheimer labeled a “dry crucifixion,” found Oppenheimer, despite his support for expanding the atomic arsenal, to be a security risk and condemned him for obstructing hydrogen bomb development. The commission voted 4-1 to strip him of his security clearance, disregarding his overwhelming support from the scientific community and key establishment figures.

Following this profound humiliation, Oppenheimer shied away from public controversy, effectively silencing perhaps the most knowledgeable and articulate critic of America’s nuclear policies. He remained deeply troubled, though. He had come to understand that the United States and the United Kingdom, in what may have been “a tragic mistake,” had “used atomic weapons against an enemy which was essentially defeated.” Perhaps recognizing his own fallibility and certainly recognizing the recklessness of the world’s political leaders, he trembled at the thought of what the next “tragic mistake” would produce. As these outstanding new books show, his desperate attempts to corral the forces that he helped unleash were undone by a hornet’s nest of mostly execrable characters who, in the name of national security, not only destroyed him but laid the foundation for many of the problems plaguing us today.


Peter J. Kuznick teaches history and directs the Nuclear Studies Institute at American University. He is the author of Beyond the Laboratory: Scientists as Political Activists in 1930s America and co-editor of Rethinking Cold War Culture. In 2004, he co-founded the Nuclear Education Project.


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A Review of:

American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin

109 East Palace: Robert Oppenheimer and the Secret City of Los Alamos by Jennet Conant

Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan by Tsuyoshi Hasegawa

The Ruin of J. Robert Oppenheimer and the Birth of the Modern Arms Race by Priscilla McMillan

IAEA Board Seeks Strengthened Safeguards

Paul Kerr

In an effort to strengthen the ability of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to detect clandestine nuclear activity, the agency’s Board of Governors in June established a committee to recommend improvement in agency safeguards and considered the shortcomings of the IAEA’s Small Quantities Protocol.

The board discussed a report from IAEA Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei, which detailed the constraints that the Small Quantities Protocol places on the agency’s verification abilities as well as proposed two options for strengthening safeguards in states with such protocols. During the board’s previous meeting last February, ElBaradei described the Small Quantities Protocol, which the IAEA developed in 1971, as “a remaining weakness in the safeguards system,” adding that the agency had “begun informal consultations” with governments on the matter.

Three days after the meeting’s June 13 opening, Saudi Arabia raised eyebrows by signing its own protocol. Saudi Arabia is one of several countries that the IAEA is investigating as possible customers of a clandestine nuclear procurement network run by former Pakistani nuclear official Abdul Qadeer Khan. (See ACT, March 2005.)

The board will again discuss the protocols during its next meeting in September, ElBaradei stated June 17.

Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) states-parties are required to conclude an IAEA safeguards agreement, which allows the agency to monitor certain declared nuclear activities and facilities to ensure that they are used for peaceful purposes.

However, a non-nuclear-weapon NPT state may conclude a small quantities protocol to its safeguards agreement as long as the state does not possess more than 1 kilogram of “special fissionable material,” which consists of 1 kilogram of plutonium or progressively larger amounts of enriched, natural, or depleted uranium. Additionally, the state cannot have any such material in a nuclear “facility,” such as a reactor, a nuclear fuel production plant, or any other “location where nuclear material in amounts greater than one effective kilogram is customarily used.”

Both plutonium and highly enriched uranium can be used as fissile material in nuclear weapons.

According to ElBaradei’s report, the IAEA has no credible information that any states with such protocols are engaged in nuclear weapons activities, but the agency still considers it necessary to have the “right to apply appropriate verifi- cation measures” in all NPT states-parties. The IAEA warned in a 2003 report that the agency “has only very limited means” to verify that a state with the protocol has no undeclared nuclear activities or does not possess more nuclear material than the protocol permits.

For example, the IAEA has very limited ability to conduct on-site verification in states with the Small Quantities Protocol that have not ratified versions of the 1997 Model Additional Protocol as supplements to their safeguards agreements. Instead, the agency must evaluate their safeguards compliance “primarily on the basis” of outside information.

A ratified additional protocol expands the number of nuclear-related activities and facilities that an NPT member-state must declare, as well as augments the agency’s authority to detect clandestine nuclear activities. Of the 75 states with the Small Quantities Protocol in force, only 20 have versions of the Model Additional Protocol in force.

Even if states with the Small Quantities Protocol conclude additional protocols, the IAEA still lacks some critical authority, ElBaradei’s report says. For example, the agency cannot require such states to produce initial reports of their nuclear material and activities; nor can it verify the accuracy of such reports.

Additionally, the IAEA cannot require these states to provide nuclear “facility design information” as soon as the decision to construct such a facility has been made or allow the agency to “determine the status of any nuclear facilities.” Absent the former requirement, such states only have to give the agency six months’ notice before introducing nuclear material into a facility.

ElBaradei’s report proposes two solutions. The first is for the IAEA to refuse to authorize any more states to sign on to the Small Quantities Protocol and to call on the current protocol states to rescind theirs.

The second is to adopt a modified protocol text that would require states concluding such a protocol to provide the agency with initial reports of their nuclear materials as well as early facility-design information and limited inspection authority. Additionally, states with planned or existing nuclear facilities would not be permitted to conclude a protocol. States in similar situations who already have such proposals would be called on to rescind them.

The first option is preferable, according to ElBaradei’s report, because it would require states to provide regular accounting reports of their nuclear activities to the IAEA and allow the agency to conduct routine inspections.

According to an IAEA official, the second option does not provide for such measures because any modified protocol is not intended to be “tantamount to rescinding” the existing one.

The timing of Saudi Arabia’s decision to sign its protocol while the board was discussing the protocol’s shortcomings concerned board members such as the United States.

Department of State spokesperson Sean McCormack stated June 10 that Washington had been encouraging Riyadh to conclude a comprehensive safeguards agreement, but did not comment on the country’s protocol when asked about the matter four days later.

Although some observers suspect Saudi Arabia, which acceded to the NPT in 1988, of having nuclear weapons ambitions, the IAEA has not found any evidence of clandestine Saudi nuclear activity, and public U.S. intelligence reports do not name the country as pursuing nuclear weapons. The Saudi Foreign Ministry stated June 12 that it does not “possess any nuclear facilities or reactors, nor any fissionable or related materials.”

New Committee Established

ElBaradei stated June 17 that the board also unanimously agreed to establish a U.S.-proposed committee to improve the agency’s verification and compliance abilities. According to ElBaradei, the advisory committee was granted a two-year term and has been charged with making recommendations to the board, which will later decide whether to extend the committee’s mandate.

Calling the committee a “reality check,” ElBaradei argued that the board should determine whether existing safeguards can “meet emerging challenges,” such as the threat of nuclear terrorism, the Khan network, and some NPT states’ clandestine nuclear programs.

The committee could meet by September but apparently does not yet have a defined agenda. State Department deputy spokesperson Adam Ereli told reporters June 17 that the committee will need to take further steps to define its agenda and formulate details of its operation. He also indicated that the United States will attempt to have the committee consider “enforcement provisions” but did not elaborate.

President George W. Bush proposed the committee, along with other nonproliferation measures, during a February 2004 speech. Although Bush called for the committee to exclude IAEA members under investigation for safeguards violations, the committee’s membership is “open ended,” according to ElBaradei.

Nevertheless, a June 17 White House press release states that the committee “will aid efforts to counter the proliferation of nuclear weapons” as well as “strengthen the IAEA’s ability to monitor and enforce compliance” with the NPT. ElBaradei noted June 14 that the board had established a similar committee in 1996 as part of an agency effort to address IAEA safeguards’ weaknesses, which had been made evident by the agency’s failure to detect Iraq’s secret nuclear weapons program. The 1997 Model Additional Protocol was one product of this agency effort. (See ACT, May 1997.)

 

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